The Nixon Quartet

This article brings to light a normally overlooked member of Nixon's inner circle of advisors: Fritz A.G. Kraemer, who was Kissinger's mentor. It was Kraemer who brought in Alexander Haig, another one of his proteges:
Nixon, Kissinger, Kraemer, and Haig would form a quartet whose machinations and interactions would be the steps of an intricate dance that had a major impact on the country’s foreign policy, not only during the Nixon years, but also throughout the presidencies of Nixon successors Ford and Carter, and on into the Reagan presidency, when Haig served as secretary of state.

There is only one known meeting between Nixon and Kraemer, but his influence is felt through his proteges, Kissinger and Haig, who continued to rely on his for advice:
Kissinger met with Kraemer weekly, when schedules permitted, for advice and/or “for absolution,” as Kraemer later told a journalist. In between such meetings, Kraemer would forward cables to Kissinger whose significance would otherwise be missed, and would occasionally write memos to Kissinger on various subjects. Kissinger would send some on to the president, usually with Kraemer’s name taken off. After the first couple, when the next one came in Nixon recognized Kraemer’s writing style and point of view; the president always took the Kraemer memos seriously as arch-conservative but well-reasoned articulations of what was wrong with current policy.

Haig continued to support Kraemer’s ideas in NSC and similar meetings, and on the infrequent occasions when the president asked his opinion. Haig had picked up very quickly on Nixon’s need to be verbally bellicose, and fed it; he too recognized that his route to power lay in getting closer to Nixon.

Kissinger and Haig did not get along and were engaged in a fierce rivalry, that Nixon used to his advantge. The author of this article says that there is much to be discovered on this topic:
There’s much more to the story of this quartet, including Haig’s efforts to push Nixon up the plank toward resignation, and how those who detested Nixon’s foreign policies became the neocons in the Ford and Carter years, when they continued and magnified their efforts to undermine those presidents’ Nixonian foreign policies.

Future biographers of Nixon, Kissinger, and Haig will certainly need to take the whole, tangled story of this quartet into account in order to properly evaluate their subjects.

No previous biography of Nixon does so. As for Kissinger’s biographers, some have dealt with Kraemer but only as an early influence, not as a continuing one, although the evidence for that continuing influence is now available in archived documents, White House tapes, and transcripts of Kissinger’s phone calls. Haig hardly mentions Kissinger in his autobiography, and Kissinger, in his two massive volumes of memoirs on the Nixon and Ford years, devotes only three pages to Kraemer out of a total of more than 2600.

New Jefferson Letter Found

Never forget the potential of library gifts. As a librarian, I am used to having "junk" boxes dumped on me. I have had vanity press books, old comic books (with no value), and worthless records (phonodiscs), donated to my library. However, all donations are worth looking through. As the CNN article Student finds letter 'a link to Jefferson' indicates, take a look at every item donated!

From the site:

In a nondescript conference room tucked inside the library at the University of Delaware, a graduate student found a historian's equivalent to a needle in a haystack.

Amanda Daddona said she discovered a personal letter from Thomas Jefferson amid one of 200 boxes of legal documents, minutes from meetings and day-to-day correspondence of a prominent Delaware family.

"The first thing I recognized was his signature," said Daddona, 22, who is getting her master's degree in history. "It was really, really exciting. I just sat with it for a few minutes and looked it over and savored the moment."

First Lady’s Slave Ancestor

Frances Hunter mentioned Mrs. Obama’s slave ancestor in reference to my post on Presidential Nobel Peace Prizes, so I did a little research on the topic.

This New York Times article gives a short history of the path Mrs. Obama’s family took out of slavery:
Melvinia Shields, the enslaved and illiterate young girl, and the unknown white man who impregnated her are the great-great-great-grandparents of Michelle Obama the first lady…Now the more complete map of Mrs. Obama’s ancestors — including the slave mother, white father and their biracial son, Dolphus T. Shields — for the first time fully connects the first African-American first lady to the history of slavery, tracing their five-generation journey from bondage to a front-row seat to the presidency.

The new research shows more on this slave girl who was one of Mrs. Obama’s forebearers:
When her owner, David Patterson, died in 1852, Melvinia soon found herself on a 200-acre farm with new masters, Mr. Patterson’s daughter and son-in law, Christianne and Henry Shields. It was a strange and unfamiliar world.

In South Carolina, she had lived on an estate with 21 slaves. In Georgia, she was one of only three slaves on property that is now part of a neat subdivision in Rex, near Atlanta.

….It is difficult to say who might have impregnated Melvinia, who gave birth to Dolphus around 1859, when she was perhaps as young as 15. At the time, Henry Shields was in his late 40s and had four sons ages 19 to 24, but other men may have spent time on the farm.

…In 1870, three of Melvinia’s four children, including Dolphus, were listed on the census as mulatto. One was born four years after emancipation, suggesting that the liaison that produced those children endured after slavery. She gave her children the Shields name, which may have hinted at their paternity or simply been the custom of former slaves taking their master’s surnames.

Even after she was freed, Melvinia stayed put, working as a farm laborer on land adjacent to that of Charles Shields, one of Henry’s sons.

But sometime in her 30s or 40s, census records show, Melvinia broke away and managed to reunite with former slaves from her childhood on the Patterson estate: Mariah and Bolus Easley, who settled with Melvinia in Bartow County, near the Alabama border. Dolphus married one of the Easleys’ daughters, Alice, who is Mrs. Obama’s great-great-grandmother.

The article goes on to share the history of Dolphus Shields and interviews people who remembered him. The author states that, “while President Obama’s biracial background has drawn considerable attention, his wife’s pedigree, which includes American Indian strands, highlights the complicated history of racial intermingling, sometimes born of violence or coercion, that lingers in the bloodlines of many African-Americans.”

Book Review: Washington Burning

Book Review: Washington Burning: How a Frenchman's Vision for Our Nation's Capital Survived Congress, the Founding Fathers, and the Invading British Army by Les Standiford, Review by Joyce Salisbury (Central Michigan University)

The title:Washington Burning is slightly misleading. The subtitle of this book, “How a Frenchman’s Vision of Our Nation’s Capital Survived Congress, the Founding Fathers, and the Invading British Army,” more closely describes what this book is all about. It is largely the story of Peter Charles L’Enfant and his struggle, along with that of our Founding Fathers, to create the new country’s Federal City.

The author, Les Standiford, is chiefly a novelist, though he has two other non-fiction books to his credit. Washington Burning benefits from his experience as a novelist and reads almost like a novel, yet it is well-researched. The narrative is not interrupted by footnotes, but the Notes section details the sources used in each chapter.

The book is divided into three parts, but fully half of the book, part one: Idea of Order, is devoted to the issue of choosing the site for our nation’s capital and L’Enfant’s vision for the new city. The choice of a site was highly political and divisive for the new country. “[Thomas] Jefferson, too, saw the so-called Compromise of 1790 as having averted disaster... ‘It is not foreseen that any thing so generative of dissension can rise again.’” The compromise involved federal assumption of debt incurred by the former colonies during the Revolutionary War and residence (or the seat of government.) The cities of Philadelphia and New York both fought to be the home of the government, with George Washington being one of the key proponents for locating the new government in a more central location. John Adams later questioned Washington’s motive saying “the decision had raised the value of the Washington and Custis property by 1,000 percent.”

Part two, On the Potowmack, continues the saga of the building of the Federal City with Adams surprisingly taking possession of the White House according to the schedule set by Congress 10 years earlier despite the many delays and the fact that only half of the rooms in the house were completed. Part three, Forged by Fire, finally brings us to the War of 1812 and the burning to which the title refers, although it still follows the story of L’Enfant and his attempts to be paid what he believed he was owed for his work on the city. It also discusses the rebuilding of the city after the British burned the capital and the White House. Standiford likens the British burning of our capital with the 9/11 attacks on our country.

This book is an interesting look behind the scenes, so to speak, of the early days of our country and the political maneuverings of the men who would be our first four presidents. It is also the story of the determination of one man, L’Enfant, to carry through his vision despite many hardships and obstacles.

Chelsea Clinton Engaged

While rumors swirled earlier that Chelsea Clinton was engaged, this time it seems to be the real thing that she will marry her boyfriend, Marc Mezvinsky:
Clinton, 29, is the only child of the former president and current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She and Mezvinsky -- the son of former Rep. Ed Mezvinsky and former Rep. Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinksy -- became friends in Washington, D.C., and became closer friends when they both attended Stanford University.


The couple sent out an e-mail the Friday morning, Nov. 27, saying: "We're sorry for the mass e-mail but we wanted to wish everyone a belated Happy Thanksgiving! We also wanted to share that we are engaged! We didn't get married this past summer despite the stories to the contrary, but we are looking toward next summer and hope you all will be there to celebrate with us. Happy Holidays! Chelsea & Marc."


Mezvinksy also comes from a political background:
Mezvinsky also has a political pedigree and is no stranger to political scandal. His father, former Iowa Rep. Ed Mezvinsky, was released from federal prison last April after serving a sentence for his role in a Nigerian fraud scheme.