Hiram Rhodes Revels

On 25 February 1870, Hiram Rhodes Revels, a Republican from Mississippi, was sworn into the United States Senate, and became the first African-American to sit in the United States Congress. He represented the state for two years during the reconstruction period after the Civil War.

Born on 27 September 1827, in North Carolina to a black father and white mother, Revels was educated by a black woman (even though, at this time, the educating of black people was illegal in the state) until 1838, when he was sent to become an apprentice in his brother's barber shop. Unfortunately, his brother died when he was only 14 years old, but he left his assets to Revels, meaning he was able to purchase an education, first at Knox College, Illinois, which had been founded as an anti-slavery establishment, then later at a seminary in Ohio.

Revels was ordained as a minister in the Methodist church, and in the pre-Civil War years, he preached all over the United States, though this was not without its dangers. In Missouri, he was imprisoned for the "crime" of preaching the gospel to African-Americans, though he was fortunate not to be subjected to violence during his time in prison. In 1845, he settled in Maryland where he remained throughout the Civil War. He organized regiments of African-American soldiers for the Union, and even took part in some battles himself.

After the war was over, he moved himself and his wife and five daughters down to Mississippi, where he continued his ministerial work and founded several schools for black children. His work in education led him into politics in the state, where, though he was first reluctant to become involved, soon made him very popular with both black and white people.

When two vacancies appeared in Mississippi's senate seats (one of which was the result of Jefferson Davis, the ex-Confederate President leaving), the state governors wanted to fill one seat which had a tenure of 1870-75 with a white man, and the seat which was due to expire in 1871, with a black man. Revels seemed the natural choice, and he concurred. On 20 January 1870, the Mississippi state legislature voted 85 to 15 in favour of Hiram Rhodes Revels becoming the first black senator in the whole of the United States (if only for one year).

Though he traveled to Washington almost as soon as he had been elected by the Mississippians, Revels had to wait until Mississippi was readmitted to the Union on 23 February before he could join the Senate, and even then, his troubles were not over. Democratic senators tried to argue against him taking his seat, and some even suggested that, under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, he was not eligible to become a senator, despite the fact that neither he nor his parents had ever been slaves. Eventually, they were overruled, with the Senate voting 48 to 8 in favour of allowing Revels to take his seat.

Whilst in the Senate, Revels worked for racial equality, though he was mostly unsuccessful. His campaign to end segregation in schools failed, as did his attempt to nominate a young black man to the US Military Academy. He did however successfully overturn legislation which had previously barred black men from working at the Washington Navy Yard because of their colour. He was also praised for his oratorical abilities, which helped to persuade some of the Senators that black people were as capable as whites in taking roles of high office.

Revels resigned two months before his term was over, and took a job teaching Philosophy at a Mississippi college, where he later became President. He also continued his Ministerial work until his death, on 16 January 1901. Shockingly, there have only been five other African-Americans in the United States Congress since Revels.           

The Missouri Compromise and the dangers of history

On 17 February 1819, the United States Congress passed the Missouri Compromise, an event which led to Civil War and the death of thousands. 

The issue, you see, was the expansion of slavery - each state was allowed to rule whether slavery should be legal or illegal in their territory, and at that moment, the number of slave states and the number of free states was exactly equal. However, there was a lot of unpopulated territory in the country which was perfect for growing cotton, and the anti-slavery Northerners were very worried about Southern plantation owners upping sticks to one of these incredibly fertile areas, growing cotton, using slave power to harvest it and then deciding that they would like to make the area into a state of the United States, with senators and congressmen who voted in favour of slavery. This would obviously upset the balance of slave and free states, leaving the North at a disadvantage. 

They proposed that slavery be made illegal in all new states joining the Union, but this would clearly lead to a massive imbalance against the South, which they felt would be very unfair. So naturally a compromise had to be reached, and it was.

It was decided that Missouri would be brought into the Union as a slave state, but at the same time so would the state of Maine, as a free state, thus maintaining the balance. They then drew a big line across a map of the United States, and said that any state entering the Union below this line was permitted to allow slavery, and all those above, weren't. (They weren't just waving a marker pen about; the line in question was the 36°30' line of latitude so it did have some significance geographically.)

However, though the compromise worked in the early part of the nineteenth century, by the middle it was proving a great hindrance and eventually ended up causing Civil War.

Of course, it didn't. The problem with history is that it's impossible to exactly pin down one cause for a great event - some could feasibly argue that the Missouri Compromise caused Civil War, others might say that it was working just fine until it was scrapped in the 1850s by Senator Douglass, who believed that each state should have the right to vote on whether a state was 'free' or not, and introduced the Kansas-Nebraska Act to this effect (it was a nice idea, but led to all out war and violence in Kansas, with pro and anti slavery mobs rioting and sometimes killing each other).

Other causes of the Civil War might include, depending on your viewpoint: Abraham Lincoln's winning of the 1860 election on the Republican Party ticket; the huge chasm between Southern and Northern values; slavery itself; the fact that slavery was not outlawed in the whole country when the slave trade was; the Dred Scott court case and its ramifications or even, looking at the very short term, the fact that the Southern states seceded, formed the Confederate States of America and opened fire at Fort Sumter on Northern troops.

A good case could be made for all of those examples being the sole reason for war, but as usual in history, they acted together, and it was only a culmination of all the events which eventually caused war. It is possible, of course, to argue that a certain event was more significant that another event, but it is very, very rare that one person can categorically state that X and X alone was responsible for the American Civil War, or the Reformation, or the decision to give women the vote or whatever. 

This is why I love my subject. You can never be wrong (well, you could if you were to argue that Winston Churchill was the cause of the American Civil War, but very few people try to do this, oddly enough...), and you can argue (read: waffle) your way out of, or into any situation. But seriously, you do learn how to prioritize arguments; review the most important causes of any given event; and critically analyze primary and secondary sources as evidence for and against a particular line of thinking, all very important skills. Which is why the government's proposals for a shake up of the history curriculum are especially worrying; focusing as they do on just one form of history - the 'Britain and the Empire were excellent' one. Michael Gove should realize that just because he learnt it in should, doesn't make it true. If he was a proper student of history, he would know this already...      

Juxtaposition

I'd like to take a break from identifying cell organelles (yeah!...) to talk about the marvelously ironic country that is the United States of America. Flipping through the Wikipedia article on 31 January, you will discover that, on this day in 1865, the "United States Congress passes the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, abolishing slavery", yet on this day in 1876, a mere eleven years later, the country "orders all Native Americans to move into reservations". Huh.

America is a very interesting country. It's only been officially independent since 1776, yet in that relatively short time, it has risen to become the world's greatest superpower. (You could argue for days, I am sure, as to whether this is a title it retains, but it is very true to say that it was the dominant world power for almost all of the twentieth century.) A melting pot of many, many different races and religions, and containing immigrants who often arrived incredibly poor, America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had the potential to completely fail as a democracy, simply because of its diversity. From some countries, you had Catholics escaping persecution, other countries, Protestants and others still Jewish (and that's just counting the major European religions), yet these incredibly different groups of people managed to exist side by side once they were in America.

The sheer size of the country probably had something to do with this. There was enough room, if you so required, to pack up and move thousands of miles away from the people who were annoying you, and still be assured of land and space to call your own when you arrived there, unlike in the highly overcrowded European nations. Often, new states sprung up where people of the same religion congregated - Pennsylvania, for example, was founded (first as a colony, then later as a state) by William Penn, a very prominent Quaker leader, and the religion dominated the state's governance for decades; Utah was founded by Brigham Young, a leading Mormon and has retained that connection to the Mormon religion to this day.

Though there were instances of segregation such as these, there are other examples of many different nationalities and creeds living side by side. New York, for example, had a very diverse population simply because it was home to the largest immigration center in the country; California after 1848 had an equally diverse population because of the myriad prospectors arriving from all over the world hoping to try their luck in the gold rush.

This is not to say that the US was not without its problems. Slavery was not formally banned in the country until 1865, whereas most European countries had banned it much earlier in the century (Britain, for example had banned in 1833). Even after this point, treatment of black people, particularly in the Southern states, was often terrible - the so-called 'Jim Crow' laws continued right into the twentieth century, and the Civil Rights Movement was still (understandably) very active until over a century later, when ethnic minorities were finally granted equal rights.

Their treatment of the Native Americans was equally despicable - the forcible moving to reservations of the peoples was just the beginning of the end, with many "savages" having been treated as second class citizens since Europeans had first started coming over to the country. 

Women and other ethnic minorities were also often treated poorly, though in some cases, this was not much different to the rest of the world. Irish and Chinese immigrants were often little better than slaves, as they worked in highly dangerous occupations such as mining or building railways for an incredibly small wage, and no rights to protest, but, sadly, this was pretty much the same as the rest of the world. Though some states allowed women to vote in the late nineteenth century, the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution (which allowed universal women's suffrage) was passed in 1919, very comparable to most European countries. 

Obviously, the country was not perfect at all, particularly in their treatment of ethnic minorities, but it is truly remarkable that it was able to become such a dominant world power in so little time. They have often been held up as a bastion of democracy, and though clearly there are examples which can be found that illustrate that this was most definitely not true, there are plenty more examples to show that it is. Not for nothing do we still hold true the idea of the "American dream" - that a penniless man could come to the country, escape the rigid class systems of Europe, and make himself a millionaire. Naturally, these situations were very rare, but they did occasionally happen. Social class was much more fluid in eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth century  America than it was anywhere else.

It will be interesting to observe what direction the United States takes over the next few decades. Once a model of democracy, the right-wing Tea Partiers, such as Sarah Palin seem to be having more and more influence on life there - the recent shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the other innocent victims is directly attributable to the violent rhetoric that is more and more forthcoming from certain political leaders; and the new Republican congress wants to restrict abortion still further, even going as far as redefining rape (you can be 'forcibly raped' or 'not really raped it was just a bit of harmless fun and who says a woman should be conscious during sex anyway') as if women who have been attacked haven't been through enough. Ironically, we may see, in a few decades time, the Middle Eastern countries that the US has been determined to invade in order to bring democracy to, actually being more democratic and allowing women more rights than America itself.

But who knows? I am a historian, not a fortune teller, after all.     

25 Presidents in Rhyming Couplets

A Dreadful Poem Commemorating the Achievements of the First 25 Presidents of the United States

because today is Number 25's birthday. 

American presidents number forty four,

with George Washington the first to take the floor.

(Though he didn't live in the White House

because it hadn't been built yet).

John Adams is next, a bit of a bore,

his main achievement: an undeclared war.

(It was against France - the 'Quasi War'

and basically nothing happened in it.)

Next up was Tom Jefferson, who went down a storm,

always on tip-top intellectual form.

(He wrote the Declaration of Independence

and was a polymath - Greek for "bloody clever".)

James Madison, the Bill of Rights' author

comes in as President number four[ther..]

(Look, rhyming isn't my strong point, okay?

You try finding a rhyme for 'leader of the House of Representatives'...)

James Monroe wrote his own famous doctrine

instructing Europeans to "keep out, the swine!"

(Though as I wrote earlier, he didn't exactly have an army to back him up

so it was a miracle they did, really...)

John Adams' son, John Quincy, was five

well - they had to keep the family name alive!

(The Quincys were a political dynasty

which means they get cities in Massachusetts named after them, and stuff...)

Andrew Jackson's next - and what a meanie!

The things he did to the natives were quite unseemly.

(If you want to know more, check out this book

it's really good, but quite depressing, so ready your tissues...)

Martin Van Buren isn't really known for much,

though was the first President whose parents were Dutch.

(He also is thought to have popularized 'OK'

though when he used it, it was to describe where he came from - Old Kinderhook.)

President Harrison lasted but thirty two days,

dying of the flu, that terrible malaise.

(His death sparked a bit of a consitutional crisis because no one knew what to do

but obviously they sorted it out because the US is still running...)

Successor John Tyler was very unpopular when

he ignored his party's principles as President ten.

(They later excluded him from the party, and most of his cabinet resigned

but it was a bit late by then.)

Polk increased the land mass by twenty percent

but only secured one term as President.

(He won most of what is today California, Arizona and New Mexico

in the peace treaty at the end of the Mexican-American War.)

President twelve, Zach Taylor, was the last Whig

but ate poisoned cherries, thus ending his gig.

(Which was quite unlucky really,

he escaped death as a soldier in many wars, and then...that?!)

The VP took over - Mr. Millard Fillmore

who opposed allowing slavery in territories gained in war.

(Which made him very unpopular in the South

where rumblings of the Civil War were already starting.)

Franklin Pierce, number fourteen, was loved at first,

then became considered one of the worst.

(Though most contemporary historians agree that he was just out of his depth

with the US descending further and further into war and chaos.)

James Buchanan did not have a wife

and his Presidency was marred by strife.

(Not that, you know, I'm suggesting those facts are related

I just couldn't find a rhyme for Buchanan...)

Lincoln delivered the Emancipation Proclamation 

which some say caused his assassination.

(Everyone talks about his being the most loved leader of the US

which is clearly a posthumous accolade because he was so loved at the time that someone shot him...)

 Andrew Johnson led the country through post-war reconstruction

but ultimately, this led to his own destruction.

(He'd been a military man during the war and wasn't really cut out for politics,

ending up the first President to be impeached.)

President Grant had been a military hero

but when he left office, his popularity was zero.

(This was mainly due to lots of scandals when he was leader

and severe economic depressions, which always tend to be a bit of a bummer.)

Nineteenth on the list is Rutherford Hayes,

a President known for his liberal ways.

(He spent one term encouraging and laying the groundwork for meritocratic government

then stepped down and spent his life promoting educational reform. Nice chap.)

James Garfield's Presidency was also cut short,

and his killer was dealt with by the Supreme Court. 

(He wasn't killed by the bullet of his assassin, but the infection that developed afterwards.

He was moved to the sea, in the hope it would aid his recovery, where locals laid a train track for him to get there in a matter of hours!)

The VP, Chester Arthur, took over, as was the norm

soon becoming "the Father of Civil Service reform".

(Which, you know, I'm sure was a very good thing,

but it isn't really very exciting, is it?)

Grover Cleveland became President Twenty-Two

the only one to serve non-consecutively, too.

(Bugger, this means I have to come up with more rhymes

which is a challenge, when he didn't really do much. What rhymes with 'boring'?)

The Twenty-Third President was Benjamin Harrison

who admitted six states into the Union.

(North & South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Idaho and Wyoming

if you were interested.)

Now we're back to President Grover Cleveland

Whose second term wasn't really all that grand

(It was full of economic panics and depressions,

which ruined the Democratic Party and led to Republican landslides.)

The final President for us to see

was the last of the nineteenth century - William McKinley

(about whom I know two facts:

today was his birthday, and the high school in Glee is named after him.)

  

Proud & Prejudiced: Female writers in the early nineteenth century

For Christmas, my lovely friend Christina got me a copy of the novel Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen. I've never read it, nor indeed any other of Austen's works, and I haven't seen any of the film or TV adaptations of it either, but the copy she bought me is an absolutely beautiful book (look! It has swans on! Or at least, I think they're swans... And it's gold! What's not to love?!) and Christina insisted that I simply had to read it because it would revolutionize the way I looked at love and I figured that since so so many people rave on about it, it can't be all that bad, so I'm reading it. And it is pretty interesting. 

It's not the first thing I would have picked up in a bookshop, so I'm glad it was given to me because there isn't much chance I'd have read it otherwise, and it's actually quite good. For something that was written at the beginning of the nineteenth century, it's still very readable, and the love story itself (yeah, I'm yet to finish it, but I'm pretty sure of exactly who is going to end up betrothed to whom...) is a fairly timeless one.

By which I mean to say, 'Thank you very much for this gift Christina, I'm actually enjoying it'. But I'm not an English student thank God not that they aren't completely lovely people; I just loathe most poetry and I have no idea how to analyse a text, so I couldn't tell you about the writing styles and the hidden metaphors and whatever else it is that write-y people bang on about. Not that you would want to read my analysis of a half-read book anyway. No, I'd much rather talk about the book's author, Jane Austen herself, as today in 1813 was the day the book I've been rambling on about was first published.

There are books and website a-plenty out there about her, so I'm not going to waste time filling you in on facts about her birth, death or daily life - instead, I'm going to attempt to put her writing into context: how, as a woman in the early nineteenth century, did you get published?

With great difficulty, it appears. Pride and Prejudice was not Austen's first published novel, and had in fact been a work in progress for many years prior to it's publishing, but when it finally went to print in 1813, it did so anonymously and only after Austen's brother, Henry, had persuaded Thomas Egerton to publish the novel. Her books, once published, remained steady sellers; they were often reviewed favourably and were fashionable amongst the elite aristocracy of the early nineteenth century, but despite this success, Austen was not persuaded to 'come out' as the author of the books, and when she died, in 1817, her achievements as a writer were not mentioned at her funeral, though the 'extraordinary endowments' of her mind were.

Austen was not the only female author in the nineteenth century and beyond to hide behind a veil. Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, which was first published a year after Austen's death in 1818, had the first few editions of her book published anonymously; Charlotte Bronte wrote under two pen names - Lord Charles Albert Florian Wellesley and Currer Bell,  the name which appears on early versions of her most famous novel, Jane Eyre. 

It wasn't until much later in the nineteenth century that authors such as Louisa May Alcott were able to print under their own names as men were - Little Women was published in 1868. Though Alcott herself was a passionate advocate of women's suffrage - she was the first woman to register to vote in the state of Massachusetts - there are some schools of thought which say that she was only published because her novels were deemed 'mere' women's books. Her semi-autobiographical stories were seen as fairly trivial, and not radical enough to be threatening to most men, who in the nineteenth century, and beyond had a firm idea of where women 'belonged' - and it was not in the publishing house. 

Clearly, this is not something I agree with at all, but I can at least understand where most of these men were coming from. They had been brought up in an incredibly patriarchal society, which firmly believed that women should not be involved in business of any description - some even believed that educating women beyond the basic skills needed to write letters or perhaps speak a little French was too much. They were a product of the society they had been brought up in; it took a World War and the womens' suffrage movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to show them how wrong they had been in their ideas, and fortunately for us today, there would be no need for a female author to publish anonymously or under a male pseudonym, because we no longer live in such a sexist society.

Except, a few years ago, around the turn of the millennium, I remember listening to a radio interview with a female author, who was asked why she had used a pseudonym (of sorts) to publish her (very well selling, and well written) books under. The author replied that she had been advised that publishing her stories, which had been written to appeal to neither boys nor girls specifically, under her obviously female name might turn boys off reading the books - young boys wouldn't want to been seen reading a book written by an (eurgh!) GIRL. Her publishing house advised her that she should at least attempt to make her name less obviously feminine, in order to appeal to a male fanbase. 

So she did, choosing to publish using her first initials and surname - 'J' and 'K' and 'Rowling'. It's such a remarkably progressive society we live in.     

15 Reasons Why Wars Are Utterly Stupid & Daft:

15 Reasons Why Wars Are Utterly Stupid & Daft:

A list which came about because I am in the middle of revising for my final exam on the history of warfare, a topic I loathe, and the only interesting facts I manage to find about the battles are ones that are far to trivial to write about in an essay

and

because I like lists a lot. 

1) Shoes are important:

The Battle of Gettysburg, in 1863, remains the largest battle ever to have been fought on American soil. Ever. And do you know why it came about? Confederate General Robert E. Lee's army had no shoes, and when they found themselves outside the small Pennsylvanian town of Gettysburg, they thought to themselves, 'Oh hey guys, these Northerners have lots of shoes! Let's go raid the town for them!'. So they did. Where they happened to bump into the massive Union army, and realized that they'd better start fighting. The Confederates lost the battle, sadly, so I don't think they got any shoes at the end of it all. Sadface.

2) No really, they are: 

My friend Phil told me this story: during the Crimean War, the British were hopelessly disorganised, and decided to send all the left boots down to the Crimea on one ship, and all the right ones on another. And one of the ships sank. You couldn't make it up...

3) Actually, the whole of the Crimean War was a bit of a farce: 

I feel a bit bad making fun of the Charge of the Light Brigade, because so many people died, which is obviously a horrible thing, and would've been devastating for their families and everything, but the whole thing was completely preventable. British cavalry were given the order to charge up the 'Valley of Death', waving their swords about, whilst the Russians blasted them to pieces with cannons on all sides, thinking the British must be drunk.

4) To be honest, most nineteenth century wars were totally ridiculous:

Take the Franco-Austrian War of 1859, for example. It's a fairly insignificant one, in the grand scheme of things, but one thing it is famous for is the fact that the French had the bright idea to utilize the new railways to get their troops to the battlefield fresh and ready to fight, whereas the Austrians went on a two week march to get there. Anyway, the Austrians eventually cottoned on to this train business, and sent their reserve force to the next battle this way. Except they got off at the wrong station and completely missed the battle. Really.

5) And if they weren't missing battles, they were being inadequately prepared:

So a few years later, in 1870, the French were fighting the Prussians, and they had this amazing new weapon, called the matrielleuse. It was a forerunner to the machine gun, so if you were into slaughtering innocent soldiers, it should totally have been your weapon of choice. The Prussians should have been completely wiped out, but they weren't, because the French soldiers hadn't been trained in how to use their new gun, so it was effectively completely pointless.

 

6) Still, at least the French actually had an army:

After Charles II was restored to the throne, Parliament wanted to control his actions as they were afraid he'd do what his father had done, and plunge the country into Civil War again. Their solution, therefore, was to pay for and control the Navy, whilst allowing Charles an army only if he promised to pay for it himself. (Which, y'know, doesn't seem like the brightest move ever - 'Of course you can have an army! Just as long as you're in total control of it, not us! That'll ensure you won't try to attack us or anything...') In the end, Charles didn't attack the MPs (he was too busy partying and being a closet Catholic, two things which totally go together...) but for many years, the English army wasn't officially recognised as such, and the country at least technically had no army. 

7) However rubbish and unofficial the English army was, at least it wasn't full of sheep:

So the Civil Wars themselves were very complex, and their origins even more so, but one of the reasons they occurred was because Charles I needed money from Parliament for a war he was fighting in Scotland - the Bishops' War. In this war, England and Scotland were fighting over Bibles (as you do...), but the English army was much larger than the Scottish one, so the Scottish generals found themselves in a bit of a quandary. They decided that if they could trick the English into thinking their army was much larger than it was, they might be unwilling to fight them - and this plan turned out to be a good one. They did indeed manage to trick the English, by padding out their ranks with sheep, whom the English thought were...particularly woolly soldiers? God knows how this one worked...

8) Mind you, at least they weren't being paid in wool:
During the 100 Years' War, coinage was in short supply, so the English soldiers were paid in sacks of wool. Because all a fighting bloke really wants to do is learn to knit...

9) And about that '100' Years' War business:
Yeah, it actually lasted 116 years. But looking on the bright side, standards in numeracy had improved immeasurably by the time the Seven Years' War rolled round, and that ended bang on time, in 1763.

10) Also, at least numeric names make sense:
100 Years' War, 30 Years' War, Seven Years' War - they're all fairly logical, no? War of 1812 - that's another fairly self-explanatory one. The War of Jenkins' Ear...yeah, perhaps not. Though thinking about it, it started because Captain Jenkins had his Ear cut off by Spanish coast guards, so the name isn't that daft, even if the war itself was...

11) If you thought the names of wars were daft, wait until you hear what's going on on the battlefield:
So there's a very famous miscommunication about the First World War, where some field commander or another sent a message via telegram saying, "We're going to war, send reinforcements" but this got mistranslated and ended up as "We're going to a ball, send three and fourpence", and I can kind of see how this happened but honestly, didn't anyone think to check if this was the right message, coming from, y'know, a battlefield. War does this to people...  

12) Sometimes, people switch sides in the middle of conflicts:
Have you ever watched a children's cartoon and seen one of those montages where the good guys chase the monster through a door, then you see them turning around with the monster chasing them, then next thing you know, they're chasing the monster again, and no one knows what's going on? You have? Good. Visualize that happening in real life, 'cause it did: in 1460, the Earl of Warwick invaded (I'm assuming from some far distant land, and not, y'know, the well known island of Warwickshire...) captured Henry VI and installed Edward IV on the throne. Ten years later, in 1470, Warwick invaded again (oh who knows, maybe the Midlands were suffering from a lot of flooding around that time...), this time reinstalling Henry VI. You couldn't make it up...


13) We didn't get much better in World War Two either:
So Dunkirk was this terribly disorganised thing, where a load of British soldiers were trapped on a beach in Normandy with German soldiers advancing towards them and readying their planes to fly over and drop bombs on them, so the government requisitioned every ship on the south coast, even little two or three man fisher-boats to go out and rescue them, and they managed it, securing the rescue of the soldiers trapped on the beaches. In fact, everyone was so elated by the events that Winston Churchill had to make a special radio broadcast reminding the country that this wasn't actually a victory - in fact, it was a pretty awful defeat.


14)Anyway, sometimes you don't even need to fight, you can just employ a terrible euphemism plonk your warship in someone else's harbour:
As the British did when the Portuguese threatened to renege on their promise to grant independence to Brazil. No shots were fired and no fighting happened, but a stern warning was issued, and the best ship in the Navy set sail for Lisbon just to reinforce the point.

15) And sometimes, you just need to sound convincing:
In 1823, President James Monroe issued the Monroe Doctrine to the rest of the world, which basically said "Hey you guys? Yeah, don't attack us, 'cause we'll so get you back worse". Well, I'm not sure he said it quite like that, but that was definitely the general gist of things. Anyway, Spain and Portugal, who had both been planning to continue or restart old wars, backed down completely upon hearing this. Even though, at the time, the US had no navy and a very poxy little army. So really, all you need to do is sound threatening enough!

Oh my God. Am I condoning bullying?! Oh dear...         

War of Dried Fruit...oh wait

I am not the best person in the world at spelling, and rely heavily on computerized spellcheckers to ensure that my work is not riddled with errors. So when I read that on 4 January, 1903, Topsy the elephant was killed in the War of Currents, I immediately envisaged a couple of sultanas bravely facing an onslaught by a handful of raisins. In my defense, I should like to point out that the idea of AC and DC currents going to war with each other is just as nonsensical as dried fruit fighting (though in the interests of balance, fairness and embarrassing myself, I should point out that it was only after reading that Topsy was killed by Thomas Edison, via electrocution that it dawned on me that this particular war may have more to do with currents than currants...).

So let's dive right in to battle, shall we? The war of currents (sometimes known as the 'war of the currents', because Historians are crazy and wild like that), began in the late 1880s, when alternating current (AC) was invented and decided to go to war with direct current (DC).

When Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb, he used the electricity created by DC to make it work. DC works by having a constant current flowing through a wire in a similar manner to the way water flows through a pipe - how much water you have in your bucket (lightbulb) at the end depends on how fast the water flows through the pipe and how long it's been flowing for. In terms of electricity, this worked really well if you had a light switch on the wall and a lamp a few metres away that you wished to light. You could even share your electricity source with your neighbours, and they could have light too! It was all rather jolly.

There were, however, some significant problems with the system. If you wished to transfer power from its source at the power station to your home, you would need metallic cables which conducted electricity to do so. However, it took a lot of volts to light a bulb, and do the other things electricity was used for, and DC cannot be altered - if you need a high voltage at the end, you have to have a high voltage at the start, and keep that voltage high whilst the electricity travels to its end point. This proved slightly problematic, as if the current had to flow for distances greater than a mile, the wires would get so hot (due to the wasted heat energy being produced) that they would often melt and stop working. 

Edison's solution was to install lots of wires which ran over shorter distances (leading one observer to point out that this left the city of New York looking like a spider's web) but this proved dangerous, as during high winds or severe snowstorms, common in autumn and winter months, the wires would fall, electrocuting the people stood below them. In a particularly severe three day storm in March 1888, around four hundred people were killed this way. It was clear that the system couldn't continue for much longer.

Luckily, a very clever scientist named Nickola Tesla invented Alternating Current (by methods that, if I attempted to explain them, would result in my brain leaking out of my ears, so please just take my word on this one). AC, as the name suggests, alternates - sometimes it's positive, sometimes it's negative. For example, if an alternating current of 50 volts were to be measured using a oscilloscope (a fancy voltmeter), it would produce a sine wave that started at 0 volts, went up to 50, came back down to 0, went even further down to -50, came back up to 0, then further up to 50 again, and so on. 

Whilst this was very interesting to scientists, the main benefit that AC has to us all is that this enables it to be transformed - which basically means it starts off at a very high voltage at the power station, before immediately going through a transformer, which uses magic physics to lower the voltage significantly, but not the power produced from it, which means that the cables no longer heated up and melted, and power could be sent over huge distances. It was clear to everyone that this was a Jolly Good Thing Indeed, and preparations were made to switch over to AC, so that hundreds of lives could be saved, as well as many, many miles of copper cables.

Edison, however, had other ideas. He had patented the DC system, as was busy making huge amounts of money off it. He knew, though, that Tesla's invention was much better, and would soon make his old system obsolete, and therefore did everything in his power to discredit it. He claimed that it was a terribly dangerous thing - "a torrent rushing violently over a precipice" - and electrocuted animals with it to demonstrate its great danger, which is where the story of Topsy the elephant comes in.

(This is actually a really sorry tale - it made me weep, but then, anything to do with animals dying will do that... Topsy was an elephant who was kept in a zoo to perform for people, but by 1903 she had killed three men - one of whom had tried to force a lit cigarette down her throat. For this reason, she was deemed too dangerous to live, and was electrocuted using 6,600 volts of AC  by Edison, in an effort to demonstrate its dangers. He even filmed the event, and the footage is available on Wikipedia if you want to view it, but please don't - it's quite distressing...)

Tesla took the admirable stance of not saying anything derogatory about his rival and using just his own invention to prove how it was the best one to be used to provide electricity for the country. In 1897, the organizer of the Chicago World Fair asked Edison to supply the electrics for the event, and Edison agreed, requesting $1,000,000 to cover the costs of cables. Tesla approached the organizer, saying he could do it for half the price, and managed this feat. Edison was so annoyed that he banned Tesla and his sponsors from buying lightbulbs which he had patented. 

The damage to Edison's invention had been done, however. Once people saw that Tesla's alternating current was much cheaper and safer than using direct current, the switch was made, and within 10 years of the Chicago World Fair, 80% of American electricity was produced using AC. 

Which is all terribly interesting, but I'm a bit disappointed at the lack of dried fruit pummeling each other...         

Rosa Parks, hero

Today marks 55 years since Rosa Parks, a black seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama, refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white man and was arrested for refusing to abide by the city's racial segregation laws. The law stated that black people must sit at the back of the bus and fill up the rows from the back to the front. If a white person got on the bus and wanted to sit in the seats at the front, the black person must go and stand at the back and give them their seat. I remember learning that, when I was six years old in primary school, and being amazed that such a law should  have existed at a time when my parents were children.

Explaining why she took the action she did, Parks wrote (in her autobiography): "People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.
 
When Parks was arrested, she was ordered to appear in court on 5th December. To show their solidarity with her cause, the black citizens of Alabama boycotted the buses for the day, encouraged to do so by Jo Ann Robinson, who was head of the Women's Political Council. Despite their actions, Parks was found guilty of disregarding the "law" and was fined $10 with an additional $4 court costs - a lot of money at the time, especially for a poor seamstress. Undeterred however, she decided to challenge the ruling.

The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) decided to use her case to test the segregation laws in the state. Interestingly, they had tried to do something similar the previous year, when a black girl named Collette Colvin had been arrested for exactly the same crime. However, as she was fifteen years old and pregnant, she was deemed an unsuitable candidate for advancing their cause, whereas the older, employed, married Rosa Parks, who had excellent standing within her community was seen as someone who would make their case winnable. 

 

the bus on which Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat 

They therefore decided to extended the boycott of the buses until Parks had won her case. A young preacher named Martin Luther King addressed a crowd at Parks' local Baptist Church where this idea was put forward, and the boycott soon spread throughout the city of Montgomery, eventually lasting 381 days, ending in late December 1956. The NAACP demanded that all bus passengers be treated courteously by bus drivers; that seats be allocated on a first come, first served basis (ie black people should no longer be forced to give up their seats for white people) and that black men should be allowed to be employed as bus drivers, and until these rules were instated, the black community (all 40,000 of them) would not use the city's buses.

The white community did not make this easy for them. When black car owners organized car-sharing schemes so that those who did not own a car were able to get to work, they pressured the local insurance companies not to ensure cars which were being used in the scheme. When black taxi drivers allowed black men and women to ride with them for only 10 cents (the price of a bus ticket), the council passed a law saying that all taxi drivers must charge passengers a minimum of 45 cents, or face a fine. Four Baptist churches, and the homes of Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy were firebombed.

There were some positive stories, though. Black communities all over the US raised money to pay for bicycles and new shoes for the people of Montgomery, and when King was sent to jail for two weeks for "hindering" a bus in June of 1956, the protest started to gain national attention. Pressure was put on the state of Alabama to remove the 'Jim Crow' segregation laws, which, eventually, the Supreme Court ruled that it must. On 20 December, 1956 it became law in the state of Alabama that black people should no longer have to give up their seats for whites - Rosa Parks had won, and helped to initiate the Civil Rights Movement, and draw national attention to Preacher Martin Luther King.

 

Sadly, she did not initially have the happy ending she deserved. She lost her job and faced so much harassment in Montgomery that in 1957 she moved to Detroit, where she worked for John Conyers, a Democratic Congressman until she retired in 1988. She died in October 2005, a hero.

(If you are interested in reading the original BBC newspaper report of Parks' arrest, it can be found here.)

Not on your Nellie

I haven't written much on my favourite topic - the horrendousness of our terribly patriarchal society - recently, and I think it's definitely time I started being more aggressively feminist, and what better way to do so than by talking about Nellie Bly, who, on 14 November 1889, began a round the world trip which she intended to complete in 80 days (like the book goes...) but actually manage in 72. She did many other pretty amazing things, too, and is my new Person I Want To Be When I Grow Up Which Technically I Have Now Because I'm 18 But I Still Don't Feel Very Accomplished Or Adult. 

Anyway. Yes. Nellie Bly...

Nellie was born Elizabeth Jane Cochran on 5 May, 1864, to a wealthy family in Pennsylvania. Her father, an entrepreneur, died when she was six, leaving her mother with fifteen children to raise. Poor old Mary Cochran didn't have it easy - she remarried, but had to sue for divorce when Nellie was 14. She herself testified in court against her stepfather, whom she insisted was drunken and violent, which may have been the basis for her strong feminist principles. 

She wasn't an exceptional school pupil - she even dropped out of boarding school after just one term - but was hired by the Pittsburgh Dispatch when she was 21, after writing a furious letter to the editor in response to a piece about women only being good for housework and taking care of children. Changing her name to Nellie Bly, she soon took up a position at the paper, writing exposés on the appaling conditions in local factories, which employed very young children and had terrible mortality rates.

The problem with this was, most advertising space in the paper was brought by the owners of said factories, who weren't best pleased with seeing their businesses slandered (even if what Bly was writing was true). She was therefore relegated to writing about "women's events" covering such fascinating topics as housework, gardening and child rearing. Clearly dissatisfied with this turn of events, Bly moved to Mexico and became the paper's foreign correspondent.

Again, this worked well for six months until the Mexican government (at the time, a dictatorship) got wind of what she was writing about (for example, an article protesting against the imprisonment of a Mexican journalist who had been criticizing the government) and ran her out of the country, where she continued to write about them in a derogatory fashion, but this time without fear of arrest. After a while though, she was shunted to the theatre and arts section, which she found somewhat unsatisfying, so moved to New York City to see what work she could gain there.

Four months later, with not a penny to her name, she walked into the offices of Joseph Pulitzer, and talked her way into a job at the New York World. Her first assignment was to be an undercover report into the conditions of the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island. There had been reports of brutality and horrendous conditions there, so Bly agreed to fake insanity and spend ten days there to see what really went on.

There were many things which could you get classed as insane in the nineteenth century (and even the first half of the twentieth century) if you were a female. Having an eating disorder, protesting as a suffragist, cheating on your husband, having a baby out of wedlock or even having showing too much interest and enjoyment in sex made you crazy, in the view of society but Nellie chose instead to spend a night practicing crazy faces in the mirror (well, who doesn't?!) and walk into a local workhouse, pretending to have amnesia. Doctors quickly declared her insane, and she was taken away to the Asylum.

The conditions she reported were atrocious. The water the patients were given to drink was dirty; the food consisted of gruel broth and spoiled beef; the women were expected to sit for many hours a day on uncomfortable wooden benches with nothing to do; the wards were unclean; 'dangerous' patients were tied together with rope; women were woken by having freezing cold water thrown over their heads and the nurses were physically abusive to their patients. 

Of course, this all proved to be very embarrassing for the Asylum when Bly was released at The World's behest - a grand jury was opened to examine the claims she put forward in her report which resulted in an annual extra $850,000 for care of the insane.

At this point, Bly had achieved nation fame and could have retired from public view, but she continued ever onwards in her quest to break boundaries for women. After spending a couple of years pioneering investigative journalism by writing about the terrible housing and labour conditions in New York (at a time when there were still very, very few female journalists, most  of whom were writing the gardening or crocheting columns), she suggested turning the fictional Around the World in 80 Days into fact, an idea that was very well received by her editor. At 9:40am on 14 November 1889, she began her journey, which The World covered and introduced a competition which called for members of the public to guess when she would arrive back in the United States (the winners were awarded an all expenses paid holiday to Europe). Bly completed her journey in a record breaking 72 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes and 14 seconds - a very respectable time in which to cover 24,899 miles without flight.

She then retired from journalism, marrying businessman Robert Seaman (40 years her senior) in 1895. When he died in 1904, she took over the running of his companies and not only patented a design for the 55 gallon oil drum (which is still in use in America today and earned her a fortune) but also introduced a series of reforms for the workers which included supplying them with essentials such as health care and luxuries such as access to gyms and libraries.

As if she hadn't already done enough with her life, Bly traveled to the Eastern Front of the First World War (she had been on holiday in Europe when the war broke out) and reported the war for the New York Evening Journal. She survived the war unscathed, but died four years after it ended, of pneumonia, aged 57. Frankly, I think it's likely that she packed more into one day than I have done in my whole life, and I'm pretty exhausted having just written all that. I also think that school History curricula should be modified to include more feminists like Nellie Bly, who made a real difference to many people's lives, rather than 'powerful' female members of the aristocracy, such as Queen Victoria or Marie Antoinette, who were little more than puppets, doing what men commanded them to, but sadly I think that's unlikely to happen...