John Tyler: The only US president to take part in the Confederate government

“I do solemnly swear [that] I will faithfully execute the office of the President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

– Text of the presidential oath of office (as taken by John Tyler), from the United States Constitution (written 1787), Article 2, Section 1, Paragraph 7

When the American Civil War began in 1861, the former president John Tyler initially supported a peace conference. When that failed, John Tyler sided with the Confederacy. He was a slaveholding Virginian, and would preside over the opening of the Virginia Secession Convention. John Tyler would even serve as a member of the Provisional Government of the Confederate States. Later on, he won election to the Confederate House of Representatives, but died before it was first assembled. Earlier in his career, John Tyler had been the tenth president of the United States. He had presided over this very same Union, from which he was now voting to secede. John Tyler is thus the only president who took an active part in the Confederate government. When he died, John Tyler’s coffin was draped with a Confederate flag – the only president ever laid to rest, under a different flag from that of the United States. But who was John Tyler? What is the legacy of his presidency? And where did this man come from?

John Tyler

The English Empire: The predecessor of the British Empire

In 1485, the last Plantagenet king of England fell in battle. His name was Richard the Third, and he was killed on the battleground of Bosworth Field. The winner of the battle was a young man named Henry, who then became “Henry the Seventh.” He was the first of the Tudor rulers of England. Henry had been on the Lancastrian side of the “Wars of the Roses.” But, when he married a Yorkist lady in 1486, the two factions from the civil war were finally united, since he was marrying someone from that faction. Her name was Elizabeth of York, and she would eventually give birth to a son in 1491. The boy was the future “Henry the Eighth,” who would eventually form the new “Church of England.” (More about that here.) But, at that time, the boy’s birth signaled a formal end to the “Wars of the Roses.” The following year was 1492, the year that Christopher Columbus was arriving in the Americas. Spain and Portugal would soon be creating massive overseas empires, in which they spread their longtime Catholic faith to distant shores. Henry the Seventh was still the king of England in 1496, when he commissioned John Cabot to sail to Asia. Cabot sailed in 1497, but instead landed on the coast of Newfoundland – in what is today Canada. They did not yet attempt to found a colony there. Cabot later made another voyage to the Americas, but did not return. To this day, no one knows what happened to Cabot’s ships.

A replica of John Cabot’s ship the Matthew

A review of “Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead” (audiobook)

Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead once collaborated on a book. It was a three-volume work entitled “Principia Mathematica” – not to be confused with the similarly-named work by Isaac Newton. Both Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead were mathematicians, as well as philosophers. They had a lot in common. But they would diverge significantly in their later years, in religion and politics as well as in philosophy. This audiobook covers both of them, although it may cover Bertrand Russell even more.

A review of “Skepticism and Religious Relativism” (audiobook)

I was expecting something very different from this audiobook. Specifically, I was expecting to get an overview of agnostics, atheists, and other like-minded groups (including “secularists”). And these groups are certainly covered therein. But it is really a treatment of religious skepticism, including within the religious community. This audiobook also talks about the different kinds of skepticism, and the responses to it from within the believing community. And it finally talks about religious relativism – the idea that all religions are just a “state of mind,” and that none of them is more valid than any other. (More about that later.)

William Henry Harrison: A great general and a 30-day president

In the United States, the most famous general in our War of 1812 was probably Andrew Jackson, who now appears on our $20 bill. But my vote for the greatest American general of the war would go to William Henry Harrison, whose name has never even been heard by most contemporary Americans. He was one of the great generals in American history, but he is remembered mainly for being just a 31-day president. As the Animaniacs would later joke, “William Harrison, how do you praise? That guy was dead in thirty days!” He is the shortest-serving president in American history, when you exclude all currently-serving presidents from this category. A president who has just been inaugurated would technically have even less time in office, but usually has a good chance of making it past day 31 in good shape. Mr. Harrison is often excluded from presidential rankings, because his brief tenure provides little data by which to judge his administration. But his pre-presidency life provides much greater insight into his character, and makes his story much more interesting than his anticlimactic death by natural causes in 1841. He was first and foremost a great soldier, who contributed much to the early American republic.

William Henry Harrison

William McKinley: President during the Spanish-American War

In 1898, President William McKinley sent American troops to fight in Cuba and the Philippines. This conflict is now known as the “Spanish-American War.” It lasted for only six months, but had a profound influence on world affairs. The war is now controversial – but at the time, it was viewed as a great success. But only three years after the war, William McKinley would be assassinated. In 1901, he was visiting Buffalo, New York, when he was shot by the anarchist Leon Czolgosz. Who was William McKinley? What was his legacy as president? Why was he struck down at the height of his glory? And where exactly did this unknown man come from? These are the questions that this post will try to answer.

William McKinley

A review of “Complexity & Chaos” (audiobook)

In 1993, the original “Jurassic Park” film brought chaos theory to a wide audience. In that movie, the character of Ian Malcolm predicts that the act of bringing back the dinosaurs for this park will cause “terrible instability” (to paraphrase what he said). Many in the film’s audience probably wondered why they made a mathematician into such a prominent character for this movie. But, if you listen to this audiobook, you will see why they did so. Chaos theory has much to tell us about how unpredictable the world is. Thus, there’s more to chaos theory than what you’ve heard in “Jurassic Park” – although I love that movie, and its summary of this field. This audiobook explores the subject, and tells us what this mysterious area is all about.

Top secret: The role of spying and code-cracking in the World Wars

In the 1970s, a British television network made a series called “The World at War,” possibly the most comprehensive television history ever made about World War II. But it contains not one word about Bletchley Park, the primary British codebreaking operation of World War II. The reason is very simple: In the 1970s, information about Bletchley Park was still top-secret, since releasing this information would have risked compromising current espionage efforts. Thus, the existence of Bletchley Park was still a closely guarded secret in the early 1970s. But, after enough time had gone by, it was no longer necessary to keep these things confidential. Thus, in the decades since “The World at War,” much of the information about the era’s espionage (including code-breaking) has been officially declassified. Thus, historians today have somewhat more information to work with, in talking about the state secrets of that time. For example, we now know things that were once top-secret, and we now know how some of that information changed hands – while other parts remained protected. This post will try to use some of the now-declassified information, along with more traditional information, to tell the stories of spies and code-crackers in both world wars – especially World War II. But, in order to achieve a true understanding of the Second World War, it may help to consider the prior events of the First World War. The “Great War,” as it is sometimes called, had some spy stories that are fascinating in their own right – rivaling any others in their human interest. These juicy stories may help to shed some light on the later espionage of the Second World War – the conflict that most continues to fascinate people today.

Rear of the rebuilt British “Bombe” computer, used at Bletchley Park in World War II England

How much was Latin America involved in the World Wars?

Anecdote about the European blockade of Venezuela, in the early twentieth century

In 1902, three European nations imposed a naval blockade on the Caribbean-and-Atlantic coastline of Venezuela. The three European nations were Great Britain, Germany, and Italy. All of these European countries would later be fighting both of the others at least once during the future world wars. But, at this time, these three European countries were united – due to some foreign debts that the Venezuelans were then refusing to pay. The Venezuelan president, Cipriano Castro, assumed that the United States would then invoke the Monroe Doctrine on Venezuela’s behalf. But the American president (which was Theodore Roosevelt) saw this doctrine as applying “only to European seizure of territory, rather than intervention per se” – as Wikipedia’s page on the crisis puts it. Thus, the blockade instead went unopposed, and managed to disable the navy of Venezuela. A compromise was eventually worked out in 1903, with the European blockade being maintained in Venezuelan waters throughout the negotiations. But it was one of a number of precursors to the Latin American involvement in the World Wars. Despite the American Monroe Doctrine, there had been much European colonization in the Americas during the nineteenth century. But the Venezuelan Crisis of the early twentieth century reminded Latin Americans of how connected with Europe they still were. And naval affairs in South America would soon lead to a naval arms race.

Blockade of Venezuelan ports, 1902

A review of Ken Burns’ “Benjamin Franklin” (PBS)

Long before I watched this film, I watched another PBS documentary about Benjamin Franklin. This earlier film was by Muffie Meyer, who has made a few documentaries for PBS. These included “Alexander Hamilton,” “Dolley Madison,” and “Liberty! The American Revolution.” The Muffie Meyer film is an excellent film in its own right, which is some three hours long. This Ken Burns film is even longer: some four hours long. But I had low expectations going into this Ken Burns film. That is, Ken Burns’ “Thomas Jefferson” was practically a hatchet job on Mr. Jefferson. Specifically, among other things, it had great emphasis on the hypocrisy of Jefferson’s slaveholding. I actually agree with a number of their criticisms of Jefferson, but still found their take on him to be excessively negative. Thus, I was expecting to get the same kind of treatment in this later film about Benjamin Franklin. And, at first, it seemed like this film would be in the same vein as Ken Burns’ “Thomas Jefferson.” But, surprisingly, I ended up liking “Benjamin Franklin” a lot. I may like Ken Burns’ “Benjamin Franklin” even better than Muffie Meyer’s “Benjamin Franklin.”

A review of Ken Burns’ “Muhammad Ali” (PBS)

He was born Cassius Clay, but joined the Nation of Islam and then changed his name

He was one of the greatest athletes of the twentieth century. He was born “Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr.,” but would later consider that to be his “slave name.” The name had been given to him by his parents, both of whom were African Americans. But the world would instead remember him by another name: “Muhammad Ali,” an Arabic name meaning “blessed of God.” This second name came partially from the seventh-century founder of Islam – that is, after the Prophet Muhammad. But, much closer to home, he had joined the “Nation of Islam” in the United States. This was a Black Muslim group, known for its radical politics. He would be good friends with Malcolm X, but would later abandon his friendship with Malcolm, when Malcolm X later broke with the Nation of Islam. Malcolm disapproved of the more “personal” conduct of Elijah Muhammad, the founder of the American “Nation of Islam.” That is, Elijah Muhammad had impregnated seven of his secretaries. Angry members of the Nation of Islam later murdered Malcolm X as revenge in 1965. Only later in his life would Muhammad Ali express some regret over his earlier break with the controversial Malcolm X.

Cassius Clay and his trainer, 1960

Millard Fillmore: A moderate on slavery who pleased no one

In July 1850, President Zachary Taylor mysteriously died while still in office. Most seem to believe that his stomach disease was from natural causes, but there has long been a theory that it came from arsenic poisoning instead. This actually led to Mr. Taylor’s long-dead body being exhumed in 1991, nearly a century and a half after his death. The medical examiner failed to find any evidence of arsenic poisoning. Thus, most seem to believe that his stomach disease was indeed from natural causes, and that Millard Fillmore had no involvement in his death. There were open sewers in Washington, D.C. at that time, which caused an epidemic in the city. Nine of Mr. Taylor’s Cabinet officials were sick with the same disease as President Taylor. Thus, most believe that the poor sanitation led to Taylor’s food and drink being contaminated. As vice president, Millard Fillmore succeeded Zachary Taylor upon his death. And, fortunately for Mr. Fillmore, relatively few Americans suspected him of any involvement in his predecessor’s death. But Millard Fillmore would fail to be elected president in his own right, and only served for two-and-a-half years. Specifically, Fillmore finished out the term that he had inherited from Zachary Taylor. Fillmore would destroy the Whig political party, by enforcing the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.

Millard Fillmore