Presidential Election Comment Spam Attempts

In the last three days, this blog has been subjected to a comment spam attack from what would appear to be supporters of Democratic Presidential candidates Clinton and Obama or people working for their opponents trying to make it appear as though their opposition is making the attack. I am very thankful that I have made my comments require approval and that no comments get published without my OK.

I will not repeat the comments here. They tend to run like as follows, "Is it true that [candidate] was a [member of X] or [voted for X]? Any information on this would be welcomed." I am not stupid. These comments will not be approved and published.

I suppose that the fact that the South Carolina Democratic primary on Saturday and that Super Tuesday is coming up is behind this. I anticipate more of these comments as the next several days progress. I will continue to reject these sorts of comments.

For all bloggers who have blogs or posts which are presidential themed, please monitor your comments carefully. If you allow comments without moderation, be vigilant in deleting posts like those I have described above. These attacks comments are not helpful and may damage the credibility of your blog.

Will Mount Rushmore Last Forever?

Mt. Rushmore is a famous landmark in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The faces of four American Presidents are carved into the mountain. According to a new book, this faces may last 7.2 million years (not forever but still a long time.)

The book is The World Without Us by Alan Weisman. A review in the New Yorker noted, "Teasing out the consequences of a simple thought experiment—what would happen if the human species were suddenly extinguished—Weisman has written a sort of pop-science ghost story, in which the whole earth is the haunted house. Among the highlights: with pumps not working, the New York City subways would fill with water within days, while weeds and then trees would retake the buckled streets and wild predators would ravage the domesticated dogs. Texas’s unattended petrochemical complexes might ignite, scattering hydrogen cyanide to the winds—a mini chemical nuclear winter. After thousands of years, the Chunnel, rubber tires, and more than a billion tons of plastic might remain, but eventually a polymer-eating microbe could evolve, and, with the spectacular return of fish and bird populations, the earth might revert to Eden."

While most signs of humanity vanish fairly quickly, not so the Presidents on Mt. Rushmore. Weisman wrote, "According to geologists, Mount Rushmore's granite erodes only one inch every 10,000 years. At that rate, barring asteroid collision or a particularly violent earthquake in this seismically stable center of the continent, at least vestiges of Roosevelt's 60 foot likeness, memorializing his canal, will be around for the next 7.2 million years" (p. 182).

If society collapses, and then comes back some distant time in the future, I wonder what they will make of Mount Rushmore? I am guessing they will think the Black Hills were sacred and that these men are the representation of gods. Or maybe they will just think that whatever society built the monument had an overdeveloped ego.

James Garfield at the Cyclopaedia of Political Science, Political Economy, and the Political History of the United States

The Cyclopaedia of Political Science, Political Economy, and the Political History of the United States by the Best American and European Writers was an encyclopedia edited by John J. Lalor, first published in New York in 1881. The 1899 edition of the work is published online by the Library of Economics and Liberty. It is now in the public domain.

There are several biographies of American Presidents. They are worth taking a look at and comparing with more recent works.

Here is the biography of James Garfield:

GARFIELD, James Abram, president of the United States 1881, was born at Orange, Cuyahoga county, Ohio, Nov. 19, 1831, and died at Elberon, N. J., Sept. 19, 1881. He was graduated at Williams college in 1856; became a professor in, and afterward president of, Hiram college, Ohio; was admitted to the bar, and served in the army 1861-3, reaching the grade of major general. He was a republican representative in congress 1863-81, was elected U. S. senator for the term 1881-7, but before he took his seat was elected president, July 2, 1881, he was shot by a disappointed office seeker, and the injury resulted in his death.

—Garfield's rise form the position of a driver of mules upon the tow-path to the presidency was great, but others before him have compassed as great an interval. His exceptional success, among the crowd of self-made presidents, Jackson, Van Buren, Fillmore, Lincoln and Johnson, lay in his attainment of a breadth of culture which none of the others approached, and which, though it lay outside of polities, had a very strong influence upon his political career. His life and letters show his constant anxiety to develop his mental powers in every department of thought, so that before his untimely death he had become an intellectual athlete. It is unfortunately useless to speculate on the breadth of development to which twenty years further life and activity would have carried him.

—In congress Garfield was one of the mass of republican members during Thaddeus Stevens' leadership, and after Stevens' death he was by no means the most prominent republican leader until 1876-8, when he met and was a prime factor in defeating the spread of the greenback or "soft money" idea in his party. (See GREEN-BACK-LABOR PARTY, REPUBLICAN PARTY.) The extra sesson of the 46th congress, March 18, 1879 (see VETO), gave him almost the first rank as a party leader. By common consent the work of the debate was left to him. His charge that the southern democrats, having failed to defeat the government in the field, were now endeavoring to "starve it to death," was a very taking and comprehensible point, and did good service for some time afterward. When, in the republican national convention of 1880, it was found that the majority of delegates were divided between Blaine and Sherman, that a strong minority (about 306 in number) were determined upon Grant, and that changes were hopeless, a sudden movement of all the factions nominated Garfield, June 8, on the thirty-sixth ballot, against his own protest. In November he was elected. (See ELECTORAL VOTES.)

—Only two points of Garfield's career have seemed vulnerable to his political opponents: his reception of a fee of $5,000 for arguing the De Golyer claim before a congressional committee, and his alleged complicity in the credit mobilier fraud. (See CREDIT MOBILIER.) As to the former case it need only be said that the arguing of cases, or giving opinions in cases, before courts or committees, by lawyers who are also congressmen, has never been condemned by public opinion and has been unhesitatingly followed by men of all parties; and that in this case the opinion seems to have been worth the fee paid for it. In the latter case the only evidence against Garfield is the naked assertion of Oakes Ames; in his favor are the facts that Garfield was notoriously poor; that he might have used his committee positions to enrich himself with far less danger of exposure than by accepting credit mobilier stock; and, above all, that the stock, which Ames claimed to have given Garfield, remained in Ames' possession for all the five years from 1868 until the explosion in 1873, that its enormous dividends were unhesitatingly appropriated by Ames, and that he showed no notion, until the explosion came, that the stock had ever been the property of any other person than himself. All this would seem absolutely conclusive in the case of any one but a presidential candidate.

—The two New York senators, Conkling and T. C. Platt, were republicans of the Grant faction. Immediately after his inauguration in March, 1881, President Garfield attempted to recognize all the factions of his party in the matter of appointments; but, as the most important New York appointment was given to their opponent, the New York senators, after vainly struggling against its confirmation until May, suddenly resigned, left their party in a minority in the senate, and brought about a great political uproar. A disappointed office seeker, thinking that the Conkling faction would justify any method of attack upon the president, chose this time to gratify his resentment for the refusal to appoint him to a consulship, and shot the president, announcing himself as Conkling's champion. The horrible calamity of the president's assassination served at least one useful purpose; it threw a vivid light upon the evils of the American system of appointments to and removals from office.

—See Hiusdale's Republican Text Book of 1880; Brisbin's Life of Garfield; Bundy's Life of Garfield; Gilmore's Life of Garfield; Balch's Life of Garfield; Smalley's History of the Republican Party.

ALEXANDER JOHNSTON.

Photos found of Lincoln's second inauguration

Some new photos have been found of Lincoln's second inauguration. An article by Johanna Neuman of the Los Angeles Times titled Photos found of Lincoln's second inauguration has the details.

Here is the text of the Library of Congress’ announcement:

Details of Abraham Lincoln's second inauguration come into clearer focus with the recent discovery at the Library of Congress of three glass negatives that show the large crowd gathered at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., for the president's address on March 4, 1865.

These negatives had been labeled long ago as being either the Grand Review of the Armies or the inauguration of Ulysses S. Grant. Carol Johnson, a curator of photography at the Library of Congress, spotted the misidentification on Friday, Jan. 4, while checking old logbooks and finding the annotation "Lincoln?" in the margin. Only two other photos of Lincoln's second inauguration were previously known, but a careful visual comparison confirmed that these three negatives portray the same event.

"These negatives add to our knowledge of this special event," said Johnson. "They show what that wet Saturday looked like with the massing of the crowd. They also convey the excitement of the people."

Johnson was prompted to examine the negatives after a Library of Congress patron alerted her to the fact that these visually similar photos had radically different identifications in the Library's online Civil War photographic negative collection. But instead of choosing between Grant and the Grand Armies Review, she opened a new door to the past by looking closely at the images and recognizing Lincoln's second inauguration.

The Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division has updated the catalog records. To view the full set of photos, visit the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog at
www.loc.gov/rr/print/catalog.html.

Here are the photo links:

Soldiers and crowd: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cwpb.01430

Soldiers lining up: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cwpb.00601

Soldiers lined up: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cwpb.00602

People arriving (previously known image used for comparison): http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsc.02927

The Library's American Memory online presentation "I Do Solemnly Swear" offers a special look at Lincoln's second inauguration, including the handwritten text of the address, which is part of the Library's Abraham Lincoln Collection in the Manuscript Division. Visit http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/pihtml/pi022.html. Lincoln's second inaugural address, coming just a few weeks before the end of the Civil War, contained such stirring phrases as: "... With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds ..."

The Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division currently includes about 14 million photographs, drawings and prints from the 15th century to the present day. International in scope, these visual collections represent a uniquely rich fund of human experience, knowledge, creativity and achievement, touching on almost every realm of endeavor: science, art, invention, government, political struggle and the recording of history. For more information, visit www.loc.gov/rr/print/.

John Adams Miniseries

As March approaches I’m getting very excited about the HBO Films miniseries John Adams. Colin Callender, the president of HBO Films, describes the miniseries, based on David McCullough’s Pulitzer-winning biography, as a moving love story, a gripping narrative and a facinating study of human nature.

Filming occurred in many different locations including Budapest, Hungary, but four locations in Virginia were also used including Colonial Williamsburg’s Historic Area and locations around Richmond, Virginia.

An extensive list of the actors and the roles they will be playing are listed at the IMDB site including Paul Giamatti as John Adams and Laura Linney as Abigail Adams. David Morse will play George Washington, Tom Wilkinson will take on the role of Ben Franklin, and Stephen Dillane will play the part of Thomas Jefferson. Many of the features of the IMDB site are currently empty; however, there are already several interesting tidbits in the trivia section for the miniseries including the fact that many of the civilian costumes were previously used in British television productions. Many of the costumes were maked with the letters “BBC” on the interior. I think that’s kind of ironic!

In an interview with Paul Giamatti published at the website Rotten Tomatoes he states:

“[John Adams] was a weird guy. For people who come to these things expecting this sort of iconic, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, white, marble bust kind of thing. He was kind of a lunatic. He was a hypochondriac, he [had a] violent temper, he was constantly sticking his foot in his mouth. He was a nightmare of a guy.”

“He was this huge figure to people and there was a lot of weird political maneuvering around that went on. Hamilton and all those guys maneuvered around to get him elected. He was a terrible president. He was a terrible politician. So, we are making a thing about a guy who was basically a failure as a politician. So it will be interesting.”

“It’s much more a kind of political history because he sat the war out. There are no battle scenes in it. It’s all about him wandering around begging for money. I don’t know how interesting that will be, but that’s what he did the whole war. He kind of traveled around Europe trying to get people to give money to finance the war. And he was sick all the time and out of his mind and depressed. He was a really weird guy.”

Laura Linney prepared for her role by getting her hands on as many books as she could. She stated in an interview for Entertainment Weekly, “At the moment I’m steeped in books about [John Adams’] wife, Abigail Adams. I’ve read about five of them. There’s the McCullough [biography], and [McCullough’s] 1776, and the Joseph Ellis book, American Sphinx, which is about Thomas Jefferson. It’s coming out my pores, all this stuff. American history is wasted on high school sophomores. I remembered not a thing.”

When HBO Programming group president Michael Lombardo and co-president Richard Piepler traveled to show it to David McCullough, Piepler reported they had natural trepidation that you are showing it to the master, [but McCullough] had tears in his eyes.

I found all of the comments above interesting, however, if folks rely simply on Giamatti’s thoughts that Adams was weird, and he isn’t sure the miniseries will be interesting, they might opt to watch something else.

I just hope the tears Richard Piepler saw in David McCullough’s eyes were tears of joy and not anger and frustration.

Poll: Which American President was the most charismatic?

The poll has closed for the question "Which American President was the most charismatic?" Thank to all those who participated by voting.

JFK was the winner with 44%. President Reagan came in second with 20%. FDR was third with 18%. President Jackson was last with 16%.