MAJOR, GENERAL, WIFE, SPY and other stuff

The 23^rd September presents another mixed bag of events. In keeping with the current release of Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy, it was on the 23^rd September 1780, during the American Revolution or War of Independence (depending on your point of view) British Major John André was arrested as a spy, thereby exposing American General Benedict Arnold’s transfer of allegiance, i.e. treason to the American cause.

The stories of both men are well worth exploring, but I note that whilst Arnold became a hate figure in America and was regarded with disdain and suspicion by most British; in contrast, the spy André was applauded as a hero by both sides. The tale has all the attributes of the spy story including the femme fatal.  

André

André was born on May 2, 1750 in London to wealthy Hugenot parents, Antoine André, a merchant from Geneva, Switzerland, and Marie Louise Girardot, from Paris, France. At age 20, he entered the British Army and joined his regiment, the 23^rd Foot, in Canada in 1774 as a lieutenant. He was captured at Fort Saint-Jean by General Richard Montgomery in November 1775, and held a prisoner at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, until December 1776, when he was exchanged. He was promoted to captain in the 26^th Foot on January 18, 1777, and to major in 1778.

He was a great favorite in colonial society, both in Philadelphia and New York, during their occupation by the British Army. He had a lively and pleasant manner and could draw and paint and cut silhouette pictures, as well as sing and write verses. He was a fluent writer who carried on much of General Clinton’s's correspondence. He was fluent in English, French, German, and Italian. He also wrote many comic verses. During his nearly nine months in Philadelphia, André occupied Benjamin Franklin’s's house, where it has been claimed that, on the orders of Major-Gen. Lord Charles Grey he took several valuable items from Franklin's home, including an oil portrait of Franklin, when the British left Philadelphia. General Grey's descendents returned Franklin's portrait to the US in the early half of the 20th Century.

Arnold

Peggy Shippen

In 1779 Major André became adjutant-general of the British Army in America. In April of that year he took charge of British secret intelligence. By the next year (1780) he had begun to plot with American General Benedict Arnold. Arnold's Loyalist wife, Peggy Shippen, was a close friend of André's, and possibly a paramour; the two had courted in Philadelphia prior to Shippen's marriage to Arnold. She was one of the go-betweens in the correspondence. Arnold, who commanded West Point, had agreed to surrender it to the British for £20,000 ($1.1M in 2008 dollars) — a move that would have enabled the British to cut New England off from the rest of the rebellious colonies.
André went up the Hudson River on September 20, 1780, to visit Arnold. At night, André rowed ashore in a boat from the sloop-of-war Vulture and met Arnold in the woods below Stony Point. Major André accompanied Arnold to Thomas Smith House (Treason House) in West Haverstraw, New York, which was occupied by Thomas Smith's brother, Joshua Hett Smith. Morning came before they had finished talking, and American troops (under James Livingston) guarding Verplanck's Point across the river had begun to fire on the Vulture, forcing it to go down the river without André. André met with Arnold on September 21. In order to escape through American lines, André was provided with common clothes and a passport by Arnold. André took the name John Anderson which led to his being captured as a spy and not a prisoner of war had he been in uniform. Arnold also gave six papers (written in Arnold's hand) showing the British how the fort could be taken - a foolish move since Clinton already knew the fort's layout. André hid them in his stocking. Another unwise move occurred when Joshua Hett Smith, who was accompanying him, left him just before he was captured. André rode on in safety until 9 am on September 23, when he came near Tarrytown, New York, where armed militiamen John Paulding, Isaac Van Warf and David Williams stopped him.

At his subsequent trial André's defence was that he was suborning an enemy officer, "an advantage taken in war" (his words). However he never to his credit tried to pass the blame onto Arnold. André told the court that he had not desired to be behind enemy lines and had not planned it. He also noted that because he was a prisoner of war he had the right to escape in civilian clothes. On September 29, 1780, the board found André guilty of being behind American lines "under a feigned name and in a disguised habit", and that "Major André, Adjutant-General to the British army, ought to be considered as a Spy from the enemy, and that agreeable to the law and usage of nations, it is their opinion, he ought to suffer death." Sir Henry Clinton, the British commander in New York, did all he could to save André, his favourite aide, but refused to surrender Arnold in exchange for André even though he despised Arnold. André appealed to George Washington to be executed by firing squad, but by the rules of war he was to be hanged as a spy at Tappan on October 2, 1780.

Self-portrait on the eve of André's execution

A religious poem, written two days before his execution, was found in his pocket after his execution.

While a prisoner he endeared himself to American officers, who lamented his death as much as the British. Alexander Hamilton wrote of him: "Never perhaps did any man suffer death with more justice, or deserve it less." The day before André's hanging he drew, with pen and ink, a likeness of himself, which is now owned by Yale College. The hanging was described by a witness: “…as he perceived that things were in readiness, he stepped quickly into the wagon, and at this moment he appeared to shrink, but instantly elevating his head with firmness he said, "It will be but a momentary pang," and taking from his pocket two white handkerchiefs, the provost-marshal, with one, loosely pinioned his arms, and with the other, the victim, after taking off his hat and stock, bandaged his own eyes with perfect firmness, which melted the hearts and moistened the cheeks, not only of his servant, but of the throng of spectators. The rope being appended to the gallows, he slipped the noose over his head and adjusted it to his neck, without the assistance of the awkward executioner. Colonel Scammel now informed him that he had an opportunity to speak, if he desired it; he raised the handkerchief from his eyes, and said, "I pray you to bear me witness that I meet my fate like a brave man." The wagon being now removed from under him, he was suspended, and instantly expired; it proved indeed "but a momentary pang." He was dressed in his royal regimentals and boots, and his remains, in the same dress, were placed in an ordinary coffin, and interred at the foot of the gallows; and the spot was consecrated by the tears of thousands ..."

In 1821, at the behest of the Duke of York, his remains, which had been buried under the gallows, were removed to England and placed among kings and poets in Hero’s Corner at Westminster Abbey under a marble monument depicting Britannia mourning alongside a British lion over André's death.

Also on the 23^rd September in 1969 the trial of the Chicago Eight opened in Chicago.

Victoria Woodhull

As to birthdays of the 23^rd September, one of my favourite ladies Victoria Woodhull was born in 1838 – See previous Blogs Thursday 7^th April 2011 The Women of 1838 and Emancipation and Equality  Saturday 2nd April 2011.

The 23^rd September is also the birthday of a remarkable collection of musicians. The following were all born in this day:

1926 -  John Coltrane, American saxophonist (d. 1967)

1926 – Jimmy Woode, jazz bassist (d. 2005)

1927 - Mighty Joe Young, American Chicago blues guitarist (d. 1992)

1928 - Frank Foster, American tenor and soprano saxophonist, flautist, arranger, and composer (d. 2011)

1929 - Wally Whyton, English musician (d. 1997

1930 - Ray Charles, American musician (d. 2004)

1935 - Les McCann, American soul jazz piano player and vocalist

1939 – Roy Buchanan, American guitarist (d. 1988)

1949 - Bruce Springsteen, American singer and songwriter

What is it about the 23^rd September?

WRITERS AND ACTORS - THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT

The 22^nd September is rather a mixed bag for me. It marks the end of the 60’s. That is to say I am 69 today and am entering my 70^th year.  Not sure what to make of that, but there are various things theatrical which occurred on this day. To wit:

On the 22^nd September 1598, the playwright Ben Jonson killed an actor in a duel and was indicted for manslaughter. He was not  stranger to difficulties with the law. In 1597 a play which he co-wrote with Thomas Nashe, The Isle of Dogs, was suppressed after causing great offence. Arrest warrants for Jonson and Nashe were issued by Elizabeth's so-called interrogator, Richard Topcliffe. Jonson was jailed in Marshalsea Prison and charged with "Leude and mutynous behavior", while Nashe managed to escape to Great Yarmouth.

A year later, Jonson was again briefly imprisoned, this time in Newgate Prison, for killing another man, the actor Gabriel Spenser, in a duel on 22 September 1598 in Hogsden Fields, (today part of Hoxton). Tried on a charge of manslaughter, Jonson pleaded guilty but was subsequently released by benefit of clergy, a legal ploy through which he gained leniency by reciting a brief bible verse (the neck-verse), forfeiting his 'goods and chattels' and being branded on his left thumb. In 1598 Jonson produced his first great success, Every Man in his Humour. William Shakespeare was among the first cast.

It appears history does not relate what the duel was all about, but it is not too difficult to image what might bring a writer and an actor to blows. There is a scene from All About Eve (1950) which demonstrates the problem.  Note the dialogue between actress Margo (Bette Davis) and  writer Lloyd Richards (Hugh Marlowe).


Continuing with matter entertaining, on 22 September 1910, the Duke of York’s Picture House opened in Brighton, and is now the oldest continuing operating cinema in Britain; and on the 22 September 1955 the UK television channel ITV went live for the first time.

I also share this birthday with the following: Erich von Stroheim (1885), John Houseman (1902), Joseph Valachi (1903), Arthur Lowe (1915), Dannie Abse (1923), Rosamunde Pilcher  (1924), Fay Weldon (1931), Ann Karina (1940), Nick Cave (1957), Andrea Bocelli (1958), Bonnie Hunt (1961), Rupert Penry-Jones (1970) and my ‘twin’ Marlena Shaw born in 1942. Here she is with a rendition of a Ramsey Lewis number.

IS THERE A SANTA CLAUS?

Reflecting on a comment from Ian Bowater on the gullibility of Indian Tribes, I think there is something in the character of the American citizen that permits her/him to express wonderment about the most straightforward and indisputable facts of life. This characteristic is most often pointed out by European intellectuals and writers, as well as some American intellectuals and writers who have been heavily influenced by European society. These are usually expatriates who spend some time living ‘abroad’, usually in England. Consider Henry James, Edith Wharton, Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrims' Progress; although in Twain’s case there is also, aside form the naïve, a quality of the canny and down to earth New Englander. Twain had little time for European class ‘society’; however, on the whole, the American citizen maintains a degree of guilelessness. It is not necessary that s/he be born and bred in America, merely living there for a short time and it seeps into the brain like some form of osmosis. Perhaps it’s something in the water? I include most of the North American continent in this attribute.

In keeping with my general theme, I noticed the following item. Is There a Santa Claus? was the title of an editorial appearing 114 year ago, today,  in the September 21, 1897 edition of The New York Sun. The editorial, which included the famous reply "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus", has become an indelible part of popular Christmas folklore in the United States and Canada.

In 1897, Dr. Philip O'Hanlon, a coroner's assistant on Manhattan's Upper West Side, was asked by his then eight-year-old daughter, Virginia (1889–1971), whether Santa Claus really existed. She had begun to doubt there was a Santa Claus, because her friends had told her that he did not exist.

Dr. O’Hanlon suggested she write to The Sun, a prominent New York City newspaper at the time, assuring her that "If you see it in The Sun, it's so." He unwittingly gave one of the paper's editors, Francis Pharcellus Church an opportunity to rise above the simple question and address the philosophical issues behind it.

The Sun was a New York newspaper that was published from 1833 until 1950. It was considered a serious paper, like the city's two more successful broadsheets, The New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune. The Sun was the most politically conservative of the three.

In replying Yes There is a Santa Claus, Church added, “ He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy…You might as well not believe in fairies…The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see…Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.”

Tolkein 1916

It was 140 years later, that on the 21^st September 1937, that J.R.R.Tolkein’s The Hobbit was published. The British have always believed in fairies, but not in a naïve way, more of a display of eccentricity. But…

Five years on from that, on the 21^st September 1942, a World War was raging. The B-29 Superfortress made its maiden flight; whilst to celebrate Yom Kippur, on this day in 1942, the Nazis sent 1000 Jews of Pidhaytsi in the West Ukrain to Belzec extermination camp, they ordered the permanent evacuation of Konstantynow to the Ghetto in Biala Podlaska (established to assemble all Jews from the nearby towns) and in Dunaivtsi, Ukraine, they murdered 2,588 Jews.

Twenty two years later, on the 21^st September 1964, the North American XB-70 Valkyrie, the world’s first Mach 3 bomber, made its maiden flight from Palmdale, California.

I guess some stopped believing that “love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy.”

DELAWARE APPEAL TO GEORGE II

Yesterday I was in Calais. You can just spot the White Cliffs of Dover on the Horizon from Bleriot Plage. A nice lunch at Le Channel and a number of bottles of wine were obtained from Carrefour. 

This is a dish called avocado and prawns revisited. It is well worth a visit. Tee hee.

I reported on the 17^th September that in 1778 the United States had entered into its first written treaty with the Lenape-Delaware Indians. The authors of the treaty were apparently knowingly dishonest and deceitful. I now find that 41 years earlier, on the 20^th September 1737 there had been another ‘treaty’ with the Lenape-Deleware tribe.

The Walking Purchase (or Walking Treaty) was a purported agreement between the Penn family, the proprietors of Pennsylvania, and the Lenape (also known as the Delaware). The 20^th September 1737 was the finish of the Walking Purchase which forces the cession of 1.2 million acres (4,860 km²) of Lenape-Delaware tribal land to the Pennsylvania Colony.

By it the Penn family and proprietors fraudulently claimed an area of 1,200,000 acres (4,860 km²) and forced the Lenape to vacate it. The Lenape appeal to the Iroquois for aid on the issue was refused.

In Delaware Nation –v- Pennsylvania (2004), the current nation claimed 314 acres (1.27 km²) included in the original purchase, but the US District Court granted the Commonwealth's motion to dismiss. It ruled that the case was nonjusticiable, although it acknowledged that Indian title appeared to have been extinguished by fraud. This ruling held through the Circuit Court Appeal. The US Supreme Court refused to hear the case. 

Justiciable -Essentially, justiciability in American law seeks to address whether a court possesses the ability to provide adequate resolution of the dispute; where a court feels it cannot offer such a final determination, the matter is not justiciable. How convenient.

In 2006 the Delaware Nation claimed in its appeal that the King of England-not Thomas Penn-was the sovereign over the territory that included Tatamy's Place. Therefore, Thomas Penn could not extinguish aboriginal title via the Walking Purchase and, consequently, the Delaware Nation maintains a right of occupancy and use. This claim got them nowhere.

How sad is it that the American Indian tribes kept on believing in the various ‘white men’ who made promises they consistently failed to keep. Is that just being naïve of is it a natural decency and dignity that allows them to see the best in others rather than the worst? Perhaps I’m being naïve.

SEEDS OF BANKRUPTCY - JUMP ON THE CYCLE

The repercussions following on from the Franco-Prussian War and the Treaty of Frankfurt 1871 (see blog Seeds of Resentment 15-9-11) not only resulted in continuing vindictiveness between various countries, but three days after France made its final reparation payment in gold to Germany, on the 18^th September 1873, the banking firm of Jay Cooke and Company filed for bankruptcy. Thus the economic disasters of 1873 in Europe led to the Panic of 1873 worldwide. A variety of things occurred to bring this about.

Bismark

In 1871, having extracted the large indemnity in gold from France, Otto von Bismark, Minister President of the Kingdom of Prussia and 1^st Chancellor of the German Empire, ceased minting silver thaler coins. Various financial failures followed on. On the 9^th May, 1873, the Vienna Stock Exchange crashed. It was known as Black Friday. The exchange was no longer able ‘to sustain false expansion, insolvency, and dishonest manipulations’.  How familiar does that sound.

Black Friday
9th May 1873, Vienna

This decision of the German Empire to cease minting silver coins in 1871 caused a drop in demand and downward pressure on the value of silver; this had a knock-on effect in the USA, where much of the supply was then mined. As a result, the Coinage Act of 1873 was introduced and this changed the United States silver policy. Before the Act, the United States had backed its currency with both gold and silver, and it minted both types of coins. The Act moved the United States to a de facto gold standard, which meant it would no longer buy silver at a statutory price or convert silver from the public into silver coins (though it would still mint silver dollars for export in the form of Trade Dollars).

The Act had the immediate effect of depressing silver prices. This hurt Western mining interests, who labeled the Act "The Crime of '73." The coinage law also reduced the domestic money supply, which raised interest rates, thereby hurting farmers and anyone else who normally carried heavy debt loads. The resulting outcry raised serious questions about how long the new policy would last. This perception of instability in United States monetary policy caused investors to shy away from long-term obligations, particularly long-term bonds. The problem was compounded by the railroad boom, which was in its later stages at the time.

The American economy was in crisis.  In September 1873, Jay Cooke & Co., a major component of the United States banking establishment, found itself unable to market several million dollars in Northern Pacific Railway bonds. Cooke’s firm, like many others, was invested heavily in the railroads. At a time when investment banks were anxious for more capital for their enterprises, President Ulysses S. Grant’s monetary policy of contracting the money supply (again, also thereby raising interest rates) made matters worse for those in debt. While businesses were expanding, the money they needed to finance that growth was becoming scarcer.

Cooke and other entrepreneurs had planned to build the nation's second transcontinental railroad, called the Northern Pacific Railway. Cooke's firm provided the financing; but, just as Cooke was about to swing a $300 million government loan in September 1873, reports circulated that his firm's credit had become nearly worthless. On the 18^th September 1873, the firm declared bankruptcy.

Cooke

Clews

The failure of the Jay Cooke bank, followed quickly by that of Henry Clews, set off a chain reaction of bank failures and temporarily closed the New York stock market. Factories began to lay off workers as the United States slipped into depression. The effects of the panic were quickly felt in New York, and more slowly in Chicago; Virginia City, Nevada; and San Francisco.

The New York Stock Exchange closed for ten days starting 20^th September 20. Of the country's 364 railroads, 89 went bankrupt.  A total of 18,000 businesses failed between 1873 and 1875. Unemployment reached 14% by 1876. Construction work halted, wages were cut, real estate values fell and corporate profits vanished.

All that was 138 years ago. Much of what happened on the stock exchanges round the world seems to be happening again. The exchanges are no longer able ‘to sustain false expansion, insolvency, and dishonest manipulations’.  
I don't know if this view of Mike Maloney is correct or not, but he is just another pundit selling his book.
"Gold and Silver are just in their cycle" he says, or is he just reflecting an already existing cycle that has been going on for the last 138 years and before that. Is he just a part of the dishonest manipulations of the exchanges, or just trying to make a buck or two on the back of the cycle?

SETTLEMENTS, TREATIES AND PROMISES

The 17^th September has a strong American flavour about it.  On the 17^th September, 1630, the city of Boston was founded by the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. This was an English settlement on the East Coast of North America in the area that is now referred to as New England. The territory administered by the colony included much of present-day central New England, including portions of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Connecticut. Territory claimed but never administered by the colonial government extended as far west as the Pacific Ocean. The owners and investors in the Massachusetts Bay Company, after a first failed venture, established a successful colony from 1628 with about 20,000 people migrating to New England in the 1630’s; hence, the cities of Boston and Salem. The population was very Puritan and its governance was dominated by a small group of leaders strongly influence by Puritan religious principles. They were not so very tolerant of other views on religion. But they remained and together with other groups of colonists forged a new nation in 1776.

That nation, the United States of America, entered into its first written treaty with an American Indian tribe on the 17^th September 1778. The treaty was the Treaty of Fort Pitt, a treaty with the Delawares, known as the Lenape. A formal document was signed at Fort Pitt, Pennsylvania (a site that later grew into the city of Pittsburgh) on the 17^th September by White Eyes, Captain Pipe (Hopocan) and John Kill Buck (Gelelemend) for the Lenape, and Andrew Lewis and Thomas Lewis for the Americans. Witnesses to the treaty included Brigadier General Lachlan McIntosh, Colonel Daniel Brodhead and Colonel William Crawford.

Hopocan

Andrew Lewis

The Treaty recognised the Delewares as a sovereign nation and guaranteed their territorial rights. It has been suggested (surprise, surprise) that the authors of the treaty were knowingly dishonest and deceitful. The treaty gave the United States permission to travel through Delaware territory and called for the Delawares to afford American troops whatever aid they might require in their war against Britain, including the use of their own warriors. The United States was planning to attack the British fort at Detroit, and Lenape friendship was essential for success. In exchange, the United States promised "articles of clothing, utensils and implements of war", and to build a fort in Delaware country "for the better security of the old men, women and children ... whilst their warriors are engaged against the common enemy." Although not part of the written treaty, the commissioners pointed out the American alliance with France and intended that the Delaware would become active allies in the war against the British.

McIntosh

Crawford

Within a year the Delaware Indians were expressing grievances about the treaty. A delegation of Delawares visited Philadelphia in 1779 to explain their dissatisfaction to the Continental Congress, but nothing changed and peace between the United States and the Delaware Indians collapsed. White Eyes, the tribe's most outspoken ally of the United States, was murdered by frontiersmen, and soon afterwards the Delawares joined the British in the war against the United States. So much for the United States’s first formal treaty.

What makes this so appalling, in my view, is that nine years later, on the 17^th September 1787, the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania formally adopted the Constitution of the United States, which begins “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

The Treaty of Fort Pitt was clearly an inauspicious beginning for the establishment of Justice, ensuring domestic tranquillity, providing a common defence, promoting welfare and securing the blessings of liberty.