AMERICA 250
My series on the highlights and lowlights of American history, marking this nation’s 250th birthday. The whole idea being we, as a nation, have done great things and we’ve done rotten things. And sometimes the things we’ve done have been both great and rotten. We are, to be sure, all too human.
A couple of weird things, both lowlights (sorta) happened in 1835.
Had there been late night TV comedians in existence back then, they’d have had field days riffing on these happenings.
BTW, thank all gods, odds, stars, Tarot cards, tea leaves, and Ouija boards that there weren’t late night TV comedians, nor TV, nor social media, nor smartphone news alerts 191 years ago. Had there been, think of how awful Americans’ reactions to ensuing world events would have been! We’d probably still be squabbling over the relationship between the races in this holy land. So, again, thankfully there were no…, um…. Oh, yeah…, I take that back.
Anyway, Weird 1835 Event No. 1: The first assassination attempt on the President of the United States is made on January 30th.
Just a few weeks earlier, former US vice president and future South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun pretty much called for the assassination of the then Chief Executive. Jackson, by early ’35, already was known as “King Andrew” and not in a complimentary way, for a slew of reasons. “Tyrant,” was a word a lot of newspapers and political opponents used to describe him. Among his most vociferous detractors was his own first vice president, Calhoun. Jackson and he never really saw eye to eye on important national matters, especially nullification. Calhoun resigned as VP in a huff, the first in history to do so, and became the US Senator from what would go on to be the first state to secede in 1861. Calhoun said Jackson was becoming America’s Caesar “who ought to have a Brutus.”
Well, if you’re up on your Shakespeare, you know Julius Caesar’s old pal Brutus plunged the coup de grace dagger into the emperor’s chest. Was Calhoun hinting he might do something similar? Who knows?
What is known is an out of work house painter named Richard Lawrence caught up with Jackson outside Washington, DC as the prez walked home from a funeral. Lawrence carried two pistols. He tried to fire both. Click, click. But no Bam, Bam. The odds that two such pistols would misfire simultaneously have been characterized as “astronomical.”
Again, imagine if TV, the internet, etc. were in existence back then! Imagine the conspiracy theories!
What happened next would make a lot of the testosterone-laden, self-proclaimed he-men running around America these days become tumescent. Jackson turned on his would be attacker and beat the living hell out of him with his walking stick.
Lawrence was swiftly apprehended, put on trial, and found not guilty by reason of insanity. He was locked up in insane asylums for the rest of his life.
Yikes. The newspapers must have loved that story.
Which brings us to…
Weird 1835 Event No. 2: The Great Moon Hoax. William Herschel was the noted German-British astronomer who catalogued nebulae and discovered the planet Uranus. His kid, John Herschel, was a polymath who, among other things, picked up on studying the night sky where his old man left off.
(A quick aside: William Herschel is generally credited with scads of astronomical discoveries, sure, but what is much less known is a lot — even most — of his work was done in conjunction with his sister, Caroline Herschel. She’s been credited as being the first woman to earn a salary as a scientist. Like Lise Meitner, Rosalind Franklin, and scores of other brilliant scientists who had the misfortune of being born with the “wrong” genitalia, her name has been lost in the shuffle.)
Anyway, in August, 1835, the New York City daily newspaper, The Sun, ran a series of breathless articles proclaiming that William’s kid/Caroline’s nephew, John, had discovered life on the moon!
A wholly fictional astronomer named Andrew Grant revealed, exclusively, to the newspaper (so it claimed) that he’d accompanied John Herschel on an expedition to the Southern Hemisphere where they could obtain clear telescopic views of the moon. Lo and behold (The Sun reported), Herschel fils and Grant faux observed forests and lush gardens on the moon. Birds and mammals, too. Rather than a big ball of cheese, the moon, if one were to believe the stories (and many did), was actually a rich zoo and nursery, the rival of Earth as a home for flora and fauna.
This Image Accompanied One Installment in The Sun‘s Series.
Digging into this story, I learned that in the mid-19th century, loads of writers tried their hand at such fabulosity. Making up stuff was seen as an almost respectable genre among scribes, including the likes of Edgar Allen Poe and, later, Mark Twain. In fact, writers who concocted cock and bull tales that hoodwinked large numbers of readers were congratulated on their persuasive abilities.
Twain actually became nationally known thanks to his story, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.” The tale, wrote Twain, had been told by a bartender who’d heard it from a gambler. Any number of readers at the time bought it hook, line, and sinker.
Laugh if you want at the gullible dupes of the 1800s. We of the 21st century are far too sophisticated, too discerning, too smart to believe bullshit.
Aren’t we?