Category Archives: American History

The Patriotic Long Game

When reflecting on my career as a public classroom teacher I hold on to many fond memories. The subject, American History, provided a lot of fascinating stories to share with teenagers coming of age in America. The kids came from varying backgrounds and abilities but once the door closed we focused on a subject that linked us together as one people.

One memorable lesson concerned the Second Continental Congress and adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Together we unpacked the document, followed by guided questioning to clarify the contents. Thomas Jefferson lists the extraordinary circumstances that brought about the decision to split with Britain. Part of the substance listed the abuses of the King and measures colonials had to take to be heard. Toward the end of the lesson I asked the class who they thought Jefferson might be addressing with his lengthy explanation. One boy cautiously raised his hand, an astonished expression on his face, and in a surprised voice he answered  “me.”

Indeed.

Toward the end of the academic year the kids were assigned to sit down with an elder and interview the person about their recollections of life in an earlier time. Students had studied a lot of decades which prepared them for those recordings. In a particularly powerful interview a boy contacted his uncle, a Vietnam veteran, and asked him to tell about his tour of duty in that bygone war. This veteran had not spoken of his service to anyone since returning in the late 1960’s. And although this poor man wept through the recording he apparently cleansed his soul for after decades of self-imposed isolation the uncle began to join family get-togethers.

My student said it was a miracle.

Lessons from the past such as these are vital to understanding America’s present. Though the course required a great deal of writing and analysis, a sense of accomplishment filled the room with an aura of confidence, and national belonging.

Today, over a decade has passed since my retirement, and much has changed in American classrooms. Rather than sanctuaries of learning classrooms have become battle fronts in the culture wars. A small, but loud minority has succeeded in chipping away at the foundation of public education, ironically something Mr. Jefferson promoted as vital to freedom. Sadly those misguided assaults imperil our nation’s ability to survive intact. 

The underlying cause appears to concern social class, power, and money. To educate all requires tax dollars, dollars fewer want to pay. Further, education implies looking toward the future, providing hope that the promise of America will pass on to new generations. Making money now and keeping it is more important than any investment in other people’s kids. Besides the upper classes can afford to educate their children, and believing they must shelter them from the lower classes. That attitude runs counter to America’s motto: E Pluribus Unum, Out of Many, One. Education is a promise that opens up a world of possibilities. That power and possibilities the well-heeled wish to hoard.

Take, for example, Betsy DuVos appointed by Trump 1.0. She took the job as Secretary of Education for the sole purpose of defunding and dismantling public schools. This is not hyperbole. As Secretary of Education, she made no secret of her contempt for public education. In her official role she pushed for school vouchers, charter schools, private institutions, all designed to ensure gated-community education. Stripping down federal education statutes and funding marked her time in Washington.

With Trump 2.0 even the Department of Education is gone. Critics attacking public education lack serious understanding of our public system, and that threatens our national viability.

History could not be more clear regarding the obligation to America’s youth. After the Revolutionary War as land opened up in the Great Lakes area, Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance (1787). This law organized a numbered survey grid mandating revenue from section 16 of the survey be earmarked for public education.

In the years after the Civil War waves of immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe flooded upon America’s shores. To aid the newcomers settlement houses, such as the Neighborhood Guild in New York City, and Chicago’s Hull House, children attended classes to learn to be American. Too bad we can’t rally the same enthusiasm for all our kids today.

Now self-appointed curriculum experts pack local school board meetings, demanding removal of books, blaming and bullying over-worked teachers which isn’t helpful. Understandably many educators leave after only a few years, while the rest bravely persevere. What our teachers need is meaningful support as they shoulder the duty of classroom instruction plus all the distractions of behavior problems, lockdown drills, bomb threats, and active shooter protocols.

This is an issue of national self interest. There is nothing sentimental or saccharine about how it takes a village. It does take all of us. We all bear responsibility to all of our kids, for they cannot do this for themselves.

Leave teachers alone and let them continue to weave that same magic I experienced for all of our students. We have and will continue to turn potential into reality.

Whether a parent or an educator, or a retired senior, we are depending on you all to protect the patriotic long game.

Gail Chumbley is the author of the two-part memoir “River of January,” and “River of January: Figure Eight,” co-writer of the screenplay, and “Dancing On Air” based on those books. She has penned three stage plays on history topics, “Clay” on the life of Senator Henry Clay, “Wolf By The Ears” examining the beginnings of American slavery, and “Peer Review” where 47 is confronted by specters of four past presidents.

The Gadget

FDR had an agreement with Winston Churchill. Though the Japanese had hit Pearl Harbor in the Pacific, the two leaders prioritized the European theater. Meeting on the HMS Prince of Wales, the two men met face to face (for the first time) agreed defeating Hitler’s Germany was job number one.

The US economy transformed quickly. America took the position as the arsenal of democracy for our allies. Jeeps, halftracks, Higgins boats, aircraft, and munitions were produced, largely, all largely produced by thousands of women on assembling lines. The United States was in full warfare mode. Some of these wartime innovations are still around today; ranging from radar to M&M’s to penicillin.

One such innovation came from the work of refugee physicists, Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard. Both refugees had escaped Hitler’s antisemitic reach. Fermi was a pioneer in nuclear fission, Hungarian-born Szilard, embraced Fermi’s calculations. But Szilard knew he needed assistance to get this theory into the hands of President Roosevelt. Enlisting the help of a former colleague, Szilard contacted Albert Einstein. Though a pacifist, Hitler’s treatment of Jews, moved Einstein to use his celebrity to reach out to the White House. 

Events moved quickly after FDR read Einstein’s communication, and that was the genesis of the Manhattan Project. J. Robert Oppenheimer, a physics professor at UC Berkeley was tapped to head the program. He had argued that a remote central laboratory was essential for security and secrecy. New Mexico’s Los Alamos had been a childhood haven for his family and the US Army agreed to the proposed site. Subsequently, universities across the country began to noticed colleagues disappearing from science departments. Gone in secrecy these people were sent by rail to New Mexico.

The horror of Hitler and the Nazi regime fueled the furnace of urgency in the New Mexican desert. The pace itself became a force of its own. The work never ceased. A genocidal German dictator controlled Europe and this weapon became essential to end the war. Eventually in July, 1945 the “Gadget” as the device was nicknamed, stood ready for a test.

Of course the detonation was successful in a culminating in a horrific, frightening cataclysm. 

But by July 1945 the war in Europe was over, and Hitler dead.

FDR too had passed, and Churchill would soon no longer serve as Prime Minister of Great Britain. Suddenly the vice president, Harry Truman found himself President. Inundated with intelligence and war measures, Truman, later remarked he felt as if the moon and stars had fallen upon him. That briefing included the status of the Manhattan Project still frantically underway in Los Alamos.

The rest of the story is known. A new film has been released on the project and on Oppenheimer. To speak plainly the atom bomb was intended for Germany, but dropped upon Japan-twice. And this weapon certainly proved effective in ending the war in the Pacific. 

But bombs did not go away. Along with synthetic rubber, flu vaccines, and even computers, the atomic bomb still looms large. Science melded with military matters into what Eisenhower would call “the military industrial complex.” This Cold War triggered an arms race as the bombs grew in scope and in size, leaving all of America in a state of frightened readiness.

As for Oppenheimer, he lingered the rest of his life a tormented man. The why of the effort was never considered during the frenzied development of the weapon. However, once witnessed, in all of its glorious horror, the physicist lived in perpetual agony 

In his own words the physicist anguished “I have become death.”

Gail Chumbley is the author of the two part memoir, “River of January,” and “River of January: Figure Eight.” In addition Chumbley has penned two plays, “Clay” a study of Statesman Henry Clay, and “Wolf By The Ears,” exploring the underpinnings of racism.

National Longevity

Titled the National Defense Education Act of 1958, this federal legislation aimed to set more rigorous standards for American public schools, and low rate loans for college students. Curricular revisions set out by the act focused primarily on math and science so America could maintain its technological preeminence across the globe.

Spurred by the launch of the Soviet-made satellite, Sputnik, panicked lawmakers believed American schools faced the danger of falling woefully behind our Russian adversaries, and the U.S. had to catch up.

Sputnik had followed a series of Cold War crises focusing on Communist threats at home and Communist aggression abroad.

Labor activist, Gene Dennis served five years in prison for his public association in the American Communist Party, while Josef Stalin kept the Red Army in East Germany, and blocked the Autobahn (freeway) into the free sector of West Berlin. Through Soviet agents the Russians had absconded with America’s hydrogen bomb secrets, and in 1953 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed as Soviet spies..

Perhaps today this lone Soviet satellite would alarm no one, nor trigger such alarm, but at that perilous moment the Russians were the first to launch a hostile electronic eye in the sky. Understandably when newspapers screamed “Do you want a Soviet moon orbiting America?” President Eisenhower, and the American public answered in unison a decisive no.

In my Spokane elementary school we practiced “duck and cover” drills to offer the veneer of protection in the event of a nuclear attack, and endured Wednesday noon air-raid tests that blared throughout the city’s neighborhoods, as they did in every American city in that era. Inside the lobby of my grandparents apartment building yellow and black Civil Defense signs pointed residents to a basement bomb shelter, to hopefully ride out a nuclear holocaust.

Though termed a Cold War, fear and anxiety simmered, permeating every aspect of national life.

Urgency filled the halls of Congress, members certain Soviet schools were producing higher level mathematicians and physicists. American schools, in the minds of legislators had to buckle down to compete in the Atomic Age. 

The crucial piece of this narrative concerning the launch of Sputnik? The United States came together as one and and met the challenge.

Our leaders wished to protect and preserve America for generations to come, and the best means of doing so centered on public schools. The United States would continue forward and American children educated so that one-day as adults, they would assume their places for a new generation..

To educate inherently implies a future–that learning is a vital investment and tomorrow will come. Education is an act of faith in America and continuity.

Sadly that period of purpose and unity is long gone.

The Department of Education is no more, universities are under siege, and public schools underfunded. No longer are students encouraged to buckle-down for their own personal, national, or existential longevity. There is no vision of a future for many of our kids.

Facts, understanding, and open inquiry is viewed as subversive.

Today’s blaring sound isn’t an air raid siren. A bellowing of conspiracists and deniers, plus the politicians who coddle them undermine our ability to effectively meet this generation’s challenges.

The dangerous years of the Cold War were scary. National defense colored every facet of our lives, especially in the classroom. JFK encouraged us to “do for our country,” and we were inspired by the challenge. Today is far less certain. Poverty, hunger, and the wealth gap smothers hope and squanders our greatest asset, our children, and that loss dims America’s longevity.

On a personal note New Math became the bane of my existence. Even today algebra and the like trigger stress and self doubt. That being said I did my best because I knew I had a future in a country that cared.

Gail Chumbley is the author of the two-part memoir, River of January, and River of January: Figure Eight. In addition Chumbley has penned two plays: Clay regarding the life of Senator Henry Clay, Wolf By The Ears, an examination of racism and slavery, and Peer Review where 47 converses with four past presidents.

Life Experience

I present history talks here and there, most recently focused on American presidents. The thesis for these programs looks at how each brought their life experiences to the presidency. For George Washington, a man who did his duty, for Andrew Jackson, his iron will, Abraham Lincoln’s push for opportunity, and Theodore Roosevelt’s sense of purpose.

This analysis rests on the old Hamilton/Jefferson dichotomy, particularly views on the proper size of government. Washington supported the supremacy of federal power, crushing the 1794 Whiskey Rebels by force, in Western Pennsylvania. Jackson had an inconsistent record on federal power. He was tough on South Carolina’s refusal to collect a new tariff, threatening to send in the military, as well. Oddly, at the same time, Jackson, without a blush, sided with the state of Georgia in removing the Cherokee and other indigenous people west. Lincoln embraced the Union, waging war, over allowing to let the government fail. Last, Theodore Roosevelt grew the size of government, and placed the federal government as the defender of righting wrongs. Set aside were National Parks, tracts of wilderness and game preserves. TR, protected America’s natural beauty for American’s for all time. Not to forget consumer protections in food and medicine.

For now, I haven’t gone beyond those four individuals, but with that premise as a guide, how do 20th, and 21st Century presidencies stand up to analysis?

Like Washington, Dwight D Eisenhower too, operated from a deep sense of duty. One of seven sons, Ike sought and received an appointment to West Point. A man of conviction, Dwight Eisenhower, as President, sent 101st Airborne to Little Rock, Arkansas to desegregate Central High School. Though not a progressive when it came to civil rights, he still enforced the law. And as a side note, Ike promoted the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, creating America’s first interstate freeways system. This piece of legislation came about from Ike’s early days in the army. In 1919, Lieutenant Colonel Eisenhower commanded a cross-country convoy of Army vehicles, Atlantic to Pacific, spending more time pushing rigs out of the mud than making forward progress. A lesson he never forgot.

A child of affluence, John F. Kennedy had to overcome considerable health problems and the expectations of his prominent father. Like Theodore Roosevelt, or Franklin Roosevelt, for that matter, Kennedy spent a lot of his youth ill, and hospitalized. Besides, “Jack” wasn’t meant to be the presidential nominee from the Kennedy clan, it had been his older brother, Joe Jr., his father’s first choice. Sadly Joe Jr. perished in a secret mission when his aircraft exploded over England in 1944. JFK, too, had nearly lost his life in the South Pacific, but survived, inheriting his father’s ambition.

After a brief stint in the Senate, Kennedy faced off against Richard M. Nixon for the White House. Prevailing in the 1960 contest, with his father’s sponsorship, JFK entered office and soon faced down Soviet aggression. This young president weathered a thirteen-day crisis when the Russians were detected building IRBM missile sites in Cuba. The Kennedy Administration successfully negotiated a stand down to Soviet aggression. This President, despite his medical ailments, and injured spine (from the war) most certainly fulfilled his father’s purpose.

As had Lincoln before, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama promoted opportunity. Both men rose from modest beginnings, and possessed keen minds. Clinton had been a Rhodes Scholar, and Obama a constitutional lawyer. Both men pushed for public health insurance, and the Dreamers Act protected children of Mexican nationals providing opportunity for education. Clinton was the first president to address the plight of LGBTQA in the military, (the first chief executive to utter those words). 

And not to be forgotten, opportunity was heavily woven into LBJ’s Great Society objectives.

As for Jimmy Carter, duty seemed to shape his administration. After Nixon’s scandals, and Gerald Ford’s presidential pardon, prospects dimmed in 1976 for the GOP. As president, Carter labored long to warn Americans about dependence on fossil fuels, appearing on television to discuss America’s malaise. However, the country had no interest in belt tightening, and Carter found himself replaced by Ronald Reagan. 

Reagan, HW Bush, and George W Bush are interesting commanders-in-chief. All three were nice, decent men, as well as patriots. A Navy man, Bush senior flew in the Pacific in WWII. Young Bush showed leadership in the aftermath of 911. However, in comparison to the four presidents in my programs these gentlemen aren’t as easy to label. The three were financed by large-monied interests, oil producers, and powerful lobbyist to lift regulations on business. In an interesting side note, Reagan’s own favorite president had been the 30th, Calvin Coolidge. Silent Cal once stated, “The business of America is business,” and Reagan felt the same. 

Each individual brought a unique imprint on the presidency. Extending federal power, or paring down central control. Life experiences shaped the character of each administration. Current President, Joe Biden looks out for middle and working class Americans, as he was raised in that community. Biden, looking out for the rest of us pushed the infrastructure bill and succeeded in lowering health care and drug costs for all Americans.

The last guy made it his duty, purpose, will, and opportunity, as cover for lining his own pockets and launch a coup against America.

Just saying.

Gail Chumbley is the author of the two-part memoir, River of January, and River of January: Figure Eight. Chumbley has also penned two plays “Clay,” concerning the life of Statesman, Henry Clay, and “Wolf By The Ears” an examination of racism and slavery in America.

Lost Their Way

In spite of fascist aggression in Europe the Republican Party of the 1930’s opposed foreign intervention even in the face of world war.

Staunchly isolationist, Republican members of Congress, particularly Senators William Borah of Idaho and Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan, carefully crafted legislation to block aid to democracies under Nazi threat. When World War Two did erupt in 1939 and blitzkrieg shrouded Europe isolationists refused to act. While England stood alone and fearfully vulnerable Franklin Roosevelt sent Churchill what he legally could, but certainly not enough.

Not until December, 1941 did Congress approve a declaration of war, however, not against Germany. The warlords of Japan had launched a direct air assault upon US bases on the island of Oahu, and only then did America rise to the moment.

Ironically, one week after Pearl Harbor it was Hitler who declared war against the US, and that freed FDR to channel significant aid to Great Britain, and to new ally, the Soviet Union.

Four long years of bloody trial and sacrifice finally ceased with the detonation of the Fat Man Bomb over Nagasaki. Hitler was dead, Mussolini was dead, and the Japanese islands quelled.

The war years left in its wake massive changes reshaping America. In point, no group emerged more transformed than the Republican Party. The postwar GOP fully embraced internationalism, no longer obstructing foreign aid, either military or humanitarian.

A fateful change in the aftermath of war was America’s important wartime alliance with the Soviet Union. In an ominous move Josef Stalin did not, and would not withdraw his Red Army dominating Eastern Europe. Any hope of a peaceful postwar world quickly faded. A paranoid despot, Stalin flatly refused aid from the United States for Russia and Eastern Europe, though the entire region had been shattered.

In place of the alliance a perilous atomic arms race, a Cold War, commenced between the two nations.

However, this time around a bipartisan Congress took action.

When Russian expansion threatened Greece and Turkey, President Truman quickly dispatched money and matériels, as did later President Eisenhower, who extended US support to Southeast Asia, and the Middle East.

In Congress no group took the fight against Russian aggression more seriously than the Grand Old Party. Chastened Republicans had learned well the lessons of prewar isolation and stepped up aggressively to check Soviet expansion around the globe.

Influenced by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, and red baiter, Senator Joe McCarthy, the Republican Party pursued a dogged response to Russian aggression at home and around the globe. Risking a nuclear showdown America went toe to toe with the Soviets from the 1948 Berlin Airlift to Korea, to Vietnam.

American presidents and leaders in Congress kept up the pressure until Presidents Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush aided the 1989 fall of Russian and Eastern European Communism, ending the Cold War.

Through all of these episodes and so many others, the GOP stood tall in the fight against all foreign foes threatening the United States.

Where once Dwight Eisenhower faced down the Russians, and Nixon defended America directly with Beijing and the Kremlin, Republicans now kneel before a man who, in Helsinki, privately had unrecorded talks with the current despot of Russia, and publicly took sides with Putin at the cost of American security. Moreover, this same man, a grifter, attempted to extort Ukraine’s new President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy in order to smear his own stateside political rival. After the end of his first term the freeloader stole thousands of sensitive intelligence documents from Washington, wedging American secrets among toilet paper, plungers, and plumbing fixtures.

It’s a bit of a gob smack that older hands, men who lived through the Cold War years, Senators Mitch McConnell, Lindsay Graham and Chuck Grassley, among others, excuse and downplay 47’s outrageous, dangerous, and treasonous conduct.

So it’s easy to understand mainstream America’s distress over today’s Republican stances. (Especially Putin’s aggression into the Crimea and the war in Ukraine.)

Welcomed by the GOP, cyber interference from Russia continues to spread misinformation to undermine our elective democratic process. This party and its messiah has opened the inner sanctum of national security inviting thugs into the Capitol, and outsiders to destabilize the United States.

Where once Republicans defended America from all foreign threats they are today passively holding open the door. The party of Eisenhower and Reagan is filled with cold opportunists coddling an overgrown toddler with neofascist leanings.

The Kremlin has not changed, nor have the Chinese. And though symbolized by an elephant this Republican Party has clearly forgotten who they are.

They have lost their way.

Gail Chumbley is the author of River of January, and River of January: Figure Eight. Chumbley has also penned two historical plays, Clay and Wolf By The Ears. A third play, Peer Review.

A Silent Genius

In mid-September a few years back, I chanced upon news of James Castle Days in Crouch. The name didn’t ring any bells, but a banner over the old arts center announced the schedule of festivities. A curator from Boise drove up to share Mr. Castle’s life and work with our community, the place Castle too, called home. My dear friend who specializes in art history, joined me at the talk.  

We attended that presentation at the Community Center, and became acquainted with James Castle’s unique story that began here, in Garden Valley.

Born in 1899, young Castle appeared to have joined the world profoundly deaf. He never spoke or learned to read or write, though he attended a school in Gooding. But the boy could draw. As a child, he produced drawings and objects crafted from materials he scavenged around the family homestead in Garden Valley. To view the original location of his home, it was set on the west side of the Middlefork between the new, white barn entrance, and the Seventh Day Adventist Church. Later the family relocated to a farm in Star, then to a home near Hill Road down in Boise. Despite the moves, James pursued his art, every day from garbage inspection, to finished compositions. 

Like poet Emily Dickinson, Castle shared only a few of his works with family and others. For the most part he squirreled away pieces in unlikely spaces at each location. Behind walls, under floorboards, and any other secreted hideaway he could find. Like Beethoven, James worked in the utter silence of his internal fortress. Instead of symphonies, Castle produced images of his world.

Wrappers, labels, cardboard, blank pages from books, and even old Christmas cards were among the organic materials that made up Castle’s preferred medium. What most people considered trash, Castle manufactured into his vision of his universe. The curator explained, in her presentation, that though he was given sketch pads, and art pencils, the silent artist kept up his scrounging ways, perhaps finding unusual materials a part of his creative process. 

The artist made use of stove soot he scraped from a wood stove firebox, then mixed it with his saliva, drawing with sharpened, pointed sticks. Interiors, exteriors, letters and lists, anything that happened to catch Castle’s eye. Through other small bits of debris, he fashioned mobile objects, and though his works may appear primitive, it is his artistic experience we embrace as authentic. 

Somehow James Castle’s style appears flat, and boxy, bordering on Rocky Mountain Byzantine, but that impression is misleading. His compositions were not only complex, but depicted the interiors of empty matchbooks or canned food labels. This artist managed to duplicate what he saw into precise, complex, miniature representations.

In particular, Castle played with letters and numbers. In some pieces the precisely drawn symbols are in some kind of familiar sequence. Using small memo books the artist depicted tiny ink calendars in a conventional format, but Castle’s letters and numbers often lack a familiar order. Perhaps in his world, it is not sequence that has meaning, but atheistic precision in duplicating the shapes.  

In the 21st century, a time of aggressive social media, artists compete for attention in the overcrowded cyber world. The market is fierce. So it is almost a miracle that Castle’s creations were discovered at all. One source maintained that his work would have been, without a doubt, relegated to unappreciated oblivion if Castle hadn’t given some of his creations to his immediate family. Castle found fame due to a nephew attending art school in Oregon. This young man showed his instructor a smattering of Castle’s work, and this event introduced Castle to the art world. 

The teacher, intrigued, requested more of the collection, and an exhibit opened in Portland, then moved on to Seattle. Castle’s anonymity in the art world ended.

Still, this artist didn’t create for the critics, or for any recognition at all. True to his expression, Castle created art for its own sake, and would have continued working either way. His surrounding world remained his muse where the substance of his vision concerned recording the life he observed around him.

After his 1951 discovery, Castle’s pieces appeared in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Whitney in Manhattan, and even in Madrid. The Smithsonian American Art Museum has exhibited a lion share of Castle’s art, in the museum’s folk collection. Another art exhibit is in Boise, located in the last house in which he dwelled.  The beauty of the collection is that it is open to the public, meaning we all can share the vision of an extraordinary artist born along the Middlefork. Here in Garden Valley and we have the privilege of living in the same locale, along the same river, the same trees, and the same mountains that inspired Castle. 

James Castle’s life spanned through the 20th Century, America’s formative years. Wars and economic hard times ebbed and flowed, and he created. Man landed on the moon, and James continued to create. We met the Beatles, and watched color television, and Castle explored his soundless world, generating the visual snapshots he perceived in his Idaho landscape. 

At the end of the curator’s presentation, she introduced two bearded men in bibbed overalls. These elderly gentlemen were two of Castle’s nephews, and grew up with their Uncle James in the house. They mentioned that Castle happened to enjoy The Red Skelton Hour on CBS. Other than that Tuesday night slot Castle showed little interest in other shows. That struck me as rather interesting, since I, too, liked Skelton. And the difference? The comedy hour rested on Skelton’s amusing pantomime skits. So, of course Castle tuned in with the rest of the family—he could laugh along. 

The surprise of Castle is how he transcended place and time. For a child born in a tiny settlement in the Idaho mountains to emerge as an accomplished artist is remarkable. Though hearing impaired at birth, and forever silent, James Castle’s story is our unexpected Garden Valley treasure.

Gail Chumbley is the author of “River of January” and “River of January: Figure Eight. Chumbley also has written two plays, “Clay” exploring the life of statesman Henry Clay, and “Wolf By The Ears” examining the origins of racism and slavery in America.

gailchumbley@gmail.com

Bull Moose

The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know. Harry Truman

The story began with a promise. Following his electoral victory in 1904, Theodore Roosevelt vowed to the public he would not run again in 1908. Assuming office in 1901, following the death of William McKinley, then Vice-President Theodore Roosevelt could have run in ‘08. But he had made that promise. 

Selecting an heir, TR tapped the occupation governor of the Philippines, William Howard Taft. TR believed he could happily step aside and pursue private interests with Mr. Taft in the White House. Taft did not want to be president, but his wife did. Though preferring a seat on the Supreme Court, Taft soon caved to his wife and accepted TR’s offer. 

Reform and good government played a large part in Roosevelt’s administration. He challenged unfettered capitalism, pushing for regulations of railroads, and breaking John D. Rockefeller’s stranglehold on the oil industry. One of Theodore’s paramount issues was preserving America’s treasure trove of national parks, and wilderness areas. 

TR loved the West and wished to regulate development where it wasn’t needed. After completing his term, and Taft safely elected, TR went on safari in Africa with one of his sons. By the time Roosevelt returned he learned things were not to his liking in Washington. Taft had made decisions, and endorsed policies Roosevelt had opposed during his administration. 

In short, Taft had the audacity to run his own administration. 

A big issue of contention was conservation of lands and natural resources. Unlike TR, Taft opened up Alaska’s Chugach National Forest to coal mining. Worse, Taft fired TR’s man in the Forest Service, Gifford Pinchot, a spokesman for public land as recreational for the people. Suffice it to say this, and other disputes turned ugly.

The 1912 campaign season began with TR’s new third party, the Progressive or Bull Moose Party. William Howard Taft also announced his run for a second term for the GOP. New Jersey Governor, Woodrow Wilson, received the Democratic nomination in Baltimore. 

Of course the Republican Party split between Republican conservatives, and the Progressives backing Roosevelt. And Wilson became the 28th President of the United States.

What does that moment of time portend for today? Certainly a major Republican split between traditional and reactionary members is in the offing. Much like TR’s progressive agenda, and Taft’s middle-of-the road-conservatism, GOP voters are going to have to decide. 

Clearly this same party is sliding into another major split in 2024. Is neofascism the preference of today’s organization? That one announced candidate has another term coming, and has made plenty of promises too. Will middle of the road conservatives tone him down and redeem the party in their own image? Maybe. But for today the smart money is on that 80-year-old moderate incumbent.

Gail Chumbley is the author of the two-part memoir, “River of January,” and “River of January: Figure Eight.” Chumbley has penned two historic plays, “Clay” about the life of statesman Henry Clay, and “Wolf By The Ears,” exploring the the beginnings of slavery and racism.

gailchumbley@gmail.com

A Bright Side

Donald Trump, without a doubt has answered the centuries old question of the worst president in American history. His standing as the biggest moron lends Harding, Buchanan, Pierce, and other lackluster presidents a step up from the cellar. 

Is there a bright side to the bedlam unleashed by 45’s insanity? I believe so. Americans have witnessed how not to preside over our democracy in real time. Now that’s a powerful civics lesson. 

Once misunderstood, most American’s were reminded how the Electoral College functions—a big deal demonstrating how a candidate can win the Electoral College, but not the popular vote. From irregularities identified in the 2016 race, shocked citizens across the country wonder if this election procedure has a purpose in the 21st Century. 

The legal tradition of checks and balances took a rough bruising with Congressmen and Senators scurrying to the Oval Office to kiss the ring of their messiah. Two clearly illegal actions by the President; pressing Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to open an inquiry on Hunter Biden, and Trump would offer an invitation to Washington.The second came after the January 6th insurrection using violence to disrupt the ceremonial certification of Electoral College. The House impeached both times, and the Senate refused to convict. The moral of that story? The Executive Branch went rogue and the upper chamber of the Legislative Branch failed in their duty. However, both branches somehow remained intact and horrified voters learned what they didn’t want. 

That elections and voting truly matter may be the most profound lesson of the Trump years. The right to vote is power, and denying citizens of that power became the GOP’s endgame. Even now, the far right longs to deprive many of us, especially minorities from exercising that power. The lawsuits are still flying to undermine our most sacred right under the law.

Another teachable moment touched on the Supreme Court. The 2020 death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and the retirement of Anthony Kennedy in 2018 shed light on manipulating the Judiciary. Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell lobbed the first volley through the customary practice of filling Supreme Court vacancies. Before 2016 the sitting president had the privilege to put forth judicial nominees. That had been a long tradition. But the sitting President happened to be Barack Obama. So of course McConnell blew that up. Obama’s choice for the court was Merrick Garland, and McConnell would not hear of it.

Following the 2016 election that tradition resumed. Trump put forth Amy Coney Barrett, and later Brett Kavanaugh. Both lied in hearings to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Barrett testified she would allow Roe to remain, and Kavanaugh was a reputed date raper. The clause allowing lifetime terms for judges added gravity to Trump and McConnell’s shenanigans. 

Perhaps the Trump fiasco holds a silver lining. Americans have become more aware of the workings of our democracy, what functions under the hood, so to speak. Perhaps democracy is indeed fragile, but our near collapse into tyranny has forced us all to wake up and pay attention.

PS contact your Representative in Congress. Request a hand pamphlet of the Constitution like the one above. They have them in their DC office or their home office. We’ll show ’em.

Gail Chumbley is the author of the two-part memoir River of January, and River of January: Figure Eight. Chumbley has written two plays, Clay about 19th Century Statesman Henry Clay, and Wolf By The Ears exploring the genesis of racism and slavery in America.


The only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know

Harry Truman

They Were Wrong

“Slave owners and white racists were afraid that the world they had always known was slipping away from them. Fear was a great motivator—fear of change, fear of losing power, fear being that they were wrong. The roots of white anxiety over threats to enslavement and to legalize white supremacy ran deep.”

John Meacham, And There was Light. Random House, 2022, page 55.

Reading this passage last night stunned me. A myriad of thoughts rushed at once, promptly crystallizing into one central truth; racial dynamics in America have not changed. Not. One. Bit.

Meacham’s book, a biography of Lincoln, focuses on the shaping events that made Lincoln arguably America’s greatest President. However, those same circumstances left the Southern slave power angry, and lethally dangerous. This metastasizing rancor ultimately exploded into Civil War, and to Lincoln’s 1865 murder.

The Missouri Compromise triggered the first alarm below the Mason-Dixon Line. That slavery could be limited through any federal legislative act left slavers touchy and suspicious. Sensitive to any criticism Southern owners  (as Mr. Meacham pointed out), viewed any outside opposition to their standing as a dishonorable insult.

Congressmen and Senators frequently squared off years before soldiers manned battle lines. A Massachusetts Senator suffered a severe beating on the Senate floor for an anti-slavery address. So volatile became the rhetoric that the House chamber finally adopted a “gag rule” prohibiting any mention of slavery in any deliberations.

As Northern abolitionists grew more strident, Southerners grew more militant. A flash of arms became only a matter of time.

Any abolitionists tracts, or books, such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin quickly landed in the trash bin, tossed out by local Southern officials.

The politics of race entered houses of worship with church leaders twisting the Bible inside out to oppose or justify slavery. Today the Southern Methodist and Southern Baptists churches are evidence of the war before the war.

After the guns silenced, into the Reconstruction era the newly emancipated found protection only through Yankee bayonets. Outraged and unrepentant Southern whites waged guerrilla warfare with violence and terror. The Ku Klux Klan, the Knights of the White Camelia, and the White League galloped through the night spreading fear and intimidation to any black-man who dared claim the blessings of liberty. 

Contrasting the 21st Century to the 19th provides strikingly similar dynamics.

In 2008 Barack Obama became 44th President of the United States, and white power interests again lost their minds.

Though at first it appeared that America had turned a positive corner in race relations, Senator Mitch McConnell quickly reacted decreeing the GOP would not work with the new president. Soon after the Congressional Republicans sunsetted a clause in the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Signed into law by Lyndon Johnson, the act protected black voters from discrimination at the polls. McConnell’s handy work placed the onus on the voter to prove they were illegally denied. (Much like the old poll tax and literacy tests days.)

Once again white supremacist perceive their alpha-position slipping away, and they, too, are suspicious and lethally dangerous. The hate group names have changed, but not the mission. Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, neo-Nazi’s, MAGA, and Christian Nationalists gallop now through the internet on the dark web, surfacing to attack as was done on January 6th, 2021.

The signs are all there, fear of a changing America, fear of being wrong, and fearful of losing control.

Those who witnessed the dissolution of the Union believed their blood-soaked sacrifice had settled for all time the issue of race in America. But that is clearly false.

But then is now. Now is then. Eras are intricately and forever intertwined. This nation has remembered nothing and again defaulted to the same old norms of hate and boastful ignorance.

And though those same feelings run deep, and they are still wrong.

The only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know. Harry Truman

Chumbley is the author of the two-part memoir, River of January, and River of January: Figure Eight. She has penned two stage plays, “Clay,” exploring the life of Henry Clay, “Wolf By the Ears,” a study of racism in America, and “Peer Review,” where 47 is confronted by four past presidents.

Fighting Bees

Young Abraham Lincoln came of age, politically speaking, during the administration of Andrew Jackson. And the rough, aspiring frontier politician did not approve of the Democratic Party and their blind, cult-like dedication to “Old Hickory.” Speaking first in New Salem, Illinois, then in Springfield, Lincoln held forth on the subject of Jackson’s arbitrary and autocratic style compared to his man, Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky.

Young Mr. Lincoln viewed Henry Clay as a true statesman. He admired Senator Clay for his rational, stable economic plans to nurture a growing America bursting with potential.

Central to Clay’s program was a bank, a central depository to finance new infrastructure projects like roads, canals, and railroads. Senator Clay championed the Federal Government as the best instrument to plan and carry out public works, improving commercial activity across the young nation.

To Lincoln scratching out a life in a muddy, stump-ridden western wilderness, Clay’s American System of improvements was welcome. Clay’s platform would bring order, jobs, prosperity, and hope to Lincoln’s own rough-hewn region.

Young Lincoln also shared Clay’s conviction that slavery did not belong in new western territories. All Lincoln wanted was a fair chance for all Americans, and that slavery impeded human talent, and he believed, like Clay, that slavery also devalued free labor. Free market capitalism and slavery could not co-exist.

To Lincoln, President Jackson’s mercurial style of leadership did not serve America’s future either. Jackson not only vetoed many improvement bills, arguing one state benefiting from federal funds was unfair to others, he in one instance vetoed a road bill because the project lay entirely in Kentucky, Henry Clay’s home state.

Excessive emotional discord in politics caused more problems than it remedied, and impeded national growth. Nation building wasn’t a sectional competition, a personal challenge, nor a game to pit political egos.

At the time of Jackson a religious revival burned hot across the country. Known today as the Second Great Awakening this movement, foaming over with emotion, had drenched politics as well, with candidates often taking on an evangelical, absolute tones.

Lincoln’s once joked he didn’t much like these stump orators unless they looked like they were “fighting bees.” To Lincoln, such emotional public displays had no value in advancing America.

So what did Lincoln believe? In the founders ideals of the United States of America. Embracing presidents as religious, messianic manifestations had no purpose, and produced only the tainted fruit of extremism.

Lincoln was, above all else, a moderate, logical, and measured man. His inspiration, his convictions, centered on a secular faith in the ideals of America.

Mr. Lincoln like to think of the Declaration of Independence as a golden apple, (equality and rights) set in the silver frame of the Constitution (the law). In other words certain inalienable rights protected by We the People.

Former President Obama exemplified Lincoln’s America in so many ways; relying on his cabinet, advisors, or his own formidable intellect to govern. And Lincoln’s Jackson nightmare repeated when a dumber version of Old Hickory proclaimed America is a terrible place.

Today the United States’ perpetual election cycle keeps emotions raw, but accomplishes little else. Mr. Lincoln would take a dim view of today’s constant political turmoil, arguing that we need to keep our wits about us and vote with our heads.

More infrastructure needs attention as well as national security, civil rights, and climate change. Instead a thin-skinned ego maniac welcomes billionaires to pilfer and taint good government. And the computer age has presented a complicated network neither Lincoln nor Clay could have imagined. We rely on those cooler heads to prevail, making policy, and conducting the people’s business, or we end up paying homage to wannabe dictator who is as arbitrary as he is vacuous.

Today, at this moment, in a country full of pointless Jacksons, be a thoughtful Lincoln. There is no need to fight bees all of the time, over and over, when the real work of America needs to be done.

Gail Chumbley is the author of “River of January,” and “River of January: Figure Eight.” Chumbley also penned two stage plays, “Clay,” examining the life of Senator Henry Clay, and “Wolf By The Ears,” a study of racism and slavery in America. Currently Chumbley is working on “Peer Review.” This piece is a cross of Dickens A Christmas Carol converges with presidential history.

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