Tag: Politics

Happy International Women’s Day

I know today is not my regular day to post but I did want to observe International Women’s Day. I would encourage everyone, as part of their celebration of the day, to begin reading Invisible Women, the book I posted about last week.

Another good thing to consider on this day is our own responsibility in dismantling white supremacy and patriarchy. Towards that end, I am linking to today’s post from the Anti-racism Daily which I started reading after George Floyd’s murder. I highly recommend the newsletter.

For a variety of reasons, I will not post again until March  31st. I hope everyone has a great rest of March. Once again Happy International Women’s Day.

The Impending Crisis

Today’s post  was going to be about my plans for 2023, however, the ongoing debacle that is the Speaker of the House election caused me to go in a different direction.

As many of you know, I have a PhD in American history from Columbia University. The first step in that process was obtaining a master’s degree. To achieve that I had to take courses and write a master’s essay. My master’s essay was entitled “A Perceptual study of the Ante-bellum Yeomanry 1820 to 1860.”

I looked at non slaveholding whites in the southern states, analyzing travel narratives and political documents. One of the books I explored was The Impending  Crisis by Hinton R. Helper, published in 1857. The book played a significant role in one of the country’s earlier protracted Speaker contests.

Here is an excerpt from my 1978 master’s essay:

On December 5, 1859, the first session of the thirty-sixth Congress convened in Washington. Three days earlier John Brown had been executed and the atmosphere was extremely tense. A major problem facing the Congress was the lack of a party majority in the House of Representatives. There were 101 Democrats, 109 Republicans and twenty-seven Know Nothings – all but four from the South. There were also a few independents. Many congressmen were armed, and John Branch of North Carolina challenged Galusha Grow of Pennsylvania to a duel.

The tension and potential for violence focused around the selection of a speaker of the house. This position had particular significance since many politicians believe the 1860 presidential election would be decided by the House of Representatives. The speaker, who had wide appointive powers, would obviously play a vital role in such an event. At the end of the first ballot, John Sherman, Republican from Ohio, and Thomas S. Borock, Democrat of Virginia, emerged as the two major candidates. John B Clark of Missouri then introduced a resolution declaring:

“… the doctrines and sentiments of a certain book called “The Impending Crisis of the South – How to Meet It”, purporting to have been written by one Hinton R. Helper, are insurrectionary and hostile to the domestic peace and tranquility of the country, and that no member of this House who has endorsed and recommended it, or the compendium from it is fit to be speaker of this House.”

This resolution served as the basis of a two month debate of the sectional controversy which had confronted the nation for many years.[1] …

Because John’s Sherman was an endorser of the compendium, Clark’s resolution was directed against him. Republican responses ranged from complete denouncement of The Impending Crisis to a denial of knowledge of the “true” nature of the book. Since the compendium had been modified, others admitted signing without having ever read the work.

Sherman’s explanation of his position contained several of these arguments, but none were particularly successful in breaking the deadlock. On February 1, 1860, two months into the term, Sherman reluctantly withdrew his candidacy. After forty-four ballots, William Pennington of New Jersey, a member of the People’s Party, was elected.[2]

The speakership contest greatly increased The Impending Crisis’s popularity, but the conflict is important historically for its prefiguring of the succession crisis of 1860-1861. Both the rhetoric and actions of the Southern Democratic congressman tell us much about their fears, concerns, and ideological justifications which are crystallized significantly since 1850 and would ultimately propel the nation towards civil war. …

The level of violence in the Congress rose dramatically and the tenseness of the atmosphere was increased by the fact that some southerners “favored disruption over the issue of John Sherman’s election to the speakership, as the spark which would set off the explosion they desired.” Most southerners did not consider secession as a viable option at this time, but the conflict increased the probability of disunion if a Republican became president.[3]

Hinton Rowan Helper c.1860 Engraving by Alexander Hay Ritchie.

[1] Congressional Globe, 36 Cong., 1st Sess. Washington, 1860, 1-3.

[2] Ibid., 147-148, 546, 548.

[3] Ollinger Crenshaw, “The Speakership Contest of 1859-1860, John Sherman’s Election A Cause of Disruption, “ Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XXIX, o. 3 (December 1942), 336.

© Amy Mittelman 2023. Do not reproduce without the author’s permission.

Happy Holidays

Everything I know about Christmas is complicated because I’m Jewish; an outsider looking in. It seems to me that every year America starts celebrating Christmas earlier and earlier. The Hallmark Channels which I frequently watch when I am trying to fall asleep, started its round of formulaic Christmas movies in October, blowing right past Halloween and Thanksgiving and not stopping to celebrate either.

In October 1996, I started working at Wing  Memorial Hospital. Simultaneously with my hiring,  the PA system began blaring Christmas music which lasted well into January. There was also a huge Christmas tree in the cafeteria. Wing Memorial Hospital is in Palmer, a semi-rural Western Massachusetts community. Many of the people who worked at the hospital were from Palmer or the surrounding towns. Several had never been to either New York or Boston.

Yesterday, because I didn’t want to watch a Christmas movie, I chose a Law and Order episode from 2009. The plot revolved around the  murder of an evangelical Christian who was planning for the end of times as described in the Book of Revelations in the Christian Bible. One of the characters’ organizations moved Jews from  Russia, transporting them to Israel. Evangelicals believe that one of the preconditions for the second coming of Christ is that there will be an ingathering of people in the Holy Land. Getting Jews there is an important part  of the evangelical project.

The Law and Order episode reminded me of something that happened while I worked at Wing. One of the nurses, Julie, was an evangelical Christian who believed in the prophecies and stories contained in the Book of Revelations. She lived in terror of having her computer password be 666, which is “the number of the beast.” One day she was expounding on her understanding of the end times,  claiming that everyone would have to accept Christ, or they would die.

I asked her what would happen to the Jews. She replied that they would face the same fate as all other non-believers, despite needing Jews to bring Christ back to Earth. After this conversation, Julie was apparently curious why I or anyone else would care about the Jews in the first place and inquired if I was Jewish. I replied yes. Someone else then  asked me if I was really Jewish  because Lori, another nurse, was married to a Jew. I replied,  “I’m Jewish, my husband’s Jewish , my children are Jewish, my parents were Jewish.” That ended the conversation.

When I started working at Wing, I didn’t  make a conscious decision to hide my Jewishness, but I didn’t advertise it either. Following the conversation, I was now outed as a Jew. With nothing to lose, I asked the dietitian who was responsible for holiday decorations, if it would be possible to have a menorah. She had an enthusiastic response and proceeded to decorate the cafeteria with  Jewish ritual objects as well as the Christmas tree.

Once the menorah was up, I got an e-mail from one of the respiratory therapists. Mike, another Jew, told me that he had worked for the hospital for many years and had always felt like an outsider until that year when I convinced them to put up the menorah.

As 2022 ends, we are living in a moment in which anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic hate crimes have exponentially increased. Much of the media has been obsessed with Kanye West and his antisemitic rantings but there are more disturbing things that have gotten less attention. An article on AlterNet cites a “recently published survey showing that one in four hiring managers exhibited antisemitism.” Because American society considers Ashkenazi Jews white, antisemitism often flies under the radar. In 2016, Donald Trump brought it above ground, where it now remains.

ATF Appointment

This past July, Steven Dettelbach became the first permanent director that the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and explosives has had in seven years. Dettlebach was not President Biden’s first choice, but he turned out to be the nominee who the Senate was willing to confirm. You can read about that here.

The ATF has always been a federal agency under attack from the NRA and the gun lobby. President Obama also had trouble staffing the Bureau. You can read my blog post about that, from 2013, here.

Dettelbach’s appointment pleased gun control and safety advocates who also had a victory with modest gun legislation passing this past summer. President Biden’s agenda for the ATF under Dettelbach includes cracking down on ghost guns and better oversight of federally licensed gun dealers.

This past week news broke that indicates Biden and his new director are making a difference. The revocation of guns has occurred at the highest rate since 2006. You can read more about the ATF’s work here. Hopefully, both the appointment of Dettelbach and President Biden’s commitment to meaningful gun control will lead to a reduction in gun deaths and mass killings.

Bad Presidents

Since I am watching the Jan 6 hearings and realizing yet again what a terrible president Donald J. Trump was, I have decided to post an excerpt from my dissertation, The Politics Of Alcohol Production: The Liquor Industry and the Federal Government, 1862 – 1900. This section deals with another one of our terrible presidents, Andrew Johnson.

In 1866 President Andrew Johnson, in an attempt to consolidate support for his Reconstruction policies and also with the hope of building a new political party consonant with his goals, began to use the considerable amount of patronage power available to him. Although clearly documented evidence of fraud and a obvious need for reform existed, these issues took a back seat to the political needs of Andrew Johnson, as well as those of his political opponents.

Both sides in the Reconstruction controversy desired to place “loyal” people in government jobs. The Treasury Department played a critical role in these plans since it had the second most patronage slots in the government. By replacing federal officials Johnson attempted to coerce adherence to his vision of Reconstruction. To avoid dismissal many employees maintained neutrality. The Tenure of Office Act of 1867, designed to prevent arbitrary dismissal of officials without Senate consent, helped these workers to feel more secure. Designed to protect middle level workers the law did not resolve the issue of removal of department heads.[1]

Andrew Johnson’s main target was the Treasury Department; however Secretary of the Treasury Hugh McCulloch refused to dismiss Republicans summarily. His steadfast support of Assistant Secretary William Chandler, disliked by other members of the Cabinet, reflected McCulloch’s desire to keep the staffing of the Treasury impartial.  McCulloch, writing in 1900, claimed the Assistant Secretary was “one of the few radical Republicans who did not permit their party allegiance to blind them to the merits of Andrew Johnson.” In a discussion with President Johnson Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles expressed a different point of view, claiming that McCulloch “had committed a great error in retaining Rollins, Chandler, and other Radicals . . .”[2]

The Secretary’s “neutrality” extended in the other direction of the political spectrum. McCulloch, a banker from Indiana, believed in an easy, swift restoration of the Southern states and a liberal interpretation of the Test Oath. McCulloch maintained that many competent Southerners would be excluded form revenue offices because they could not swear they had not taken part in the Rebel cause. After Cabinet discussion people who “could only take an oath for the faithful performance of their duties and obedience to the Constitution of the United States” held positions in the Bureau of Internal Revenue.[3]

Many people found Mcculloch’s hard-money fiscal policies unappealing; this added to the controversy surrounding the Secretary. McCulloch, however, remained loyal both to the President and a smooth running Treasury Department. On a practical level the Secretary and Commissioner divided the appointments to distribute patronage to both sides. This did not really satisfy anyone and certainly didn’t generate an efficient workforce.  Rollins, in his annual reports endorsed the concept of civil service for the Bureau of Internal Revenue yet nothing was less likely to happen.[4]

Through most of 1867 and 1868, Reconstruction and the impeachment proceedings preoccupied  Johnson, his cabinet, and Congress. During this time McCulloch stood loyally by the President. Still Johnson received several letters pleading with him to remove both McCulloch and Rollins.

“I now implore you to bring this worst, because he is most sly and deceitful of all your enemies, McCulloch to the Test.

Demand of him the resignation of Rollins, let him know that if he has not sufficient power over his subordinate, to get his resignation, that you will accept his resignation.”

As McCulloch has complete control over Rollins this will bring his resignation, as he is now trembling over his Printing Bureau and wants to remain to cover the stupendous defalcations that exist there.”[5]

The attempt to convict Johnson did not succeed and, as far as most historians are concerned, there is nothing to say about his administration after that point. However Andrew Johnson was still President and retained the prerogatives, albeit reduced, of the office. Much of Johnson’s behavior from his inauguration as Chief Executive was oriented towards running for the Presidency in his own right. His drive to create a new party failed and by June 1868 Johnson concentrated his efforts on winning the Democratic nomination. The President was however anathema to most politicians and in July the Democratic party nominated Horatio Seymour and Francis P. Blair Jr. as President and Vice-President. Bitterly disappointed Johnson still sought some degree of vindication for his policies. In an attempt to achieve this, the President turned to the arena his supporters had continuously urged him to investigate, the Bureau of Internal Revenue.[6]

[1]Michael Les Benedict, The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson (New York, 1973), pp. 39 – 40, 48 – 51.

[2] Hugh McCulloch, Men and Measures of Half A Century (New York, 1900), p. 236. William Chandler was not a Radical but he was a staunch and partisan Republican who consistently opposed Civil Service Reform.

[3] William Henry Smith, History of the Cabinet of the United States of America (Baltimore, 1925), p. 219; McCulloch, Men and Measures, p. 227.

[4]Herbert S. Schell, “Hugh McCulloch and the Treasury Department, 1865-1869,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 27 (December 1930): 413-416; Hugh McCulloch to Andrew Johnson, 19 August 1867, Andrew Johnson Presidential Papers, Library of Congress, microfilm edition; U.S. Office of Internal Revenue. Annual Report of the Commissioner, 1867, pp. xv-xviii, xxxi; U.S. Treasury Department, Annual Report of the Special Commissioner, 1867, p. 31; U.S. Treasury Department, Annual Report of the Special Commissioner, 1866 p. 4. See also the report of the Revenue Commission for a discussion of civil service reform.

[5] R.W. Latham to Andrew Johnson, 6 February 1868, 24 January 1868,  Andrew Johnson  Papers.

[6] Albert Castel, Andrew Johnson (Kansas, 1979), passim; Eric McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction (Chicago, 1960), passim.

© All Rights Reserved. Do not reproduce without author’s permission. Amy Mittelman 2022.

Women and the State Department

Madeleine Albright died March 23rd of this year.[1] She was the first of only three women to serve as Secretary of State, which is the senior most cabinet position. Prior to Albright achieving that rank, Lucy Wilson Benson, who served as Under Secretary from 1977 to 1980, was the most prominent woman in the state department.

For my book Dames, Dishes, and Degrees I researched Benson’s life. Lucy Wilson Benson was born in New York City and graduated from Smith College in 1949; she also received a Master’s of Arts in history from the school. The same year she graduated, she married Bruce Benson, an Amherst College physics professor.[2] While in college she participated in state politics, working for the election of Representative Edward Boland (Dem.). In 1951, living in Amherst, Massachusetts, she went to register as a Democrat. A perplexed town official informed her that was illegal, and that no Amherst college professor had ever been a Democrat.[3]

Despite such discouragement, Lucy did register as Democrat, becoming involved in her local League of Women Voters.[4] In the post-World War II period, many women in a similar position to Lucy joined the League. League memebrship increased forty-four percent from 1950 to 1957, when it stood at 128,000.[5]

A sizable portion of the local membership came from University of Massachusetts faculty wives.[6] Some joined the League in opposition, consciously or not, to the faculty wives clubs  on their campuses while other women participated in both organizations. Lucy Benson recalled that in the 1950s women, most probably members of the Ladies of Amherst, that school’s faculty wives club, went grocery shopping adorned with hat and gloves. She did not.

Lucy Wilson Benson, Amherst College faculty wife, was the president of the National League of Women Voters from 1968 to 1974. She commuted to Washington and spent three days there every week. After serving as national president, she was Governor Michael Dukakis’ Secretary of Human Services. She then served as Under Secretary of State for Security Assistance, Science and Technology in the Jimmy Carter administration. At that time, she was the highest-ranking female to serve in the State Department.[7] Asked about her position, Lucy said, “Don’t ask what it feels like to be a woman under secretary of state, because I don’t know. I do know what it is like to be an under secretary of state, however.”[8]

Despite her prominence, when Lucy Wilson Benson died last year, The New York Times did not publish her obituary. Her husband Bruce, who spent his whole career at Amherst College predeceased her. Despite never having held a national position, the paper, in 1990, recognized his demise.[9]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/23/us/madeleine-albright-dead.html

[2] Jonathan Thrope, “Benson Paves the Way for Working Women”, Amherst Student, Issue no. 7, October, 19, 2007.

[3] “Amherst Women on the move, 1959-2000”, panel discussion, East Lecture Hall, Hampshire College, March 6, 2009.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Eugenia Kaledin, Kaledin, Mothers and more, American women in the 1950s. Boston:1984, passim.

[6] Personal communication with Georgiana Foster, undated.

[7] Jonathan Thorpe, “Benson Paves.”

[8] “WASHINGTON TALK: WOMEN IN GOVERNMENT; Tales of the Pioneers,” New York Times, November 13, 1987.

[9] “Bruce B. Benson, 68, A Professor of Physics,” The New York Times, March 10, 1990.

 

Ecology

As you know, I attend writing groups that Nerissa Nields leads. On Wednesday she read a prompt that included a Paul Ehrlich quote to the effect that ecology is the subversive science. As soon as I heard that, my mind filled with complicating thoughts.

In 1970 I was a junior in high school and I attended the first Earth Day. My thoughts about the ecology movement or environmentalism as we call it more recently have not really changed in that time. The problem I have always had with the ecology movement is that it is by and large not a political one.

Much of the burden of fixing the planet or not damaging the planet any further falls, as is always the case in America, on individuals. Be a better recycler, compost, don’t use plastic bags, don’t buy disposable water bottles. These are all things that individuals are supposed to be responsible for and supposed to do to be a good citizen. I do these things and have for years but I am not sure it makes any difference.

Where is the part where the government does something? What is the role of the government? Once you start asking that question you get to politics. Until there is a political will to change how the country consumes fossil fuels, to direct people away from eating meat and towards vegetarianism or veganism by what appears in the grocery stores, we really won’t get through ecological change or repair.

The issue becomes even more complicated because of the intransigence of the current Republican Party. For over 30 years Republicans have tried to wish away environmental change, have denied global warming. In the current Trump Republican Party, they don’t even believe in evolution and really don’t understand how a woman conceives a baby so why are they going to do anything about climate change? To get true environmental change, we must confront power.

NaNoWriMo Day 12

Before I started NaNoWriMo, I  talked to myself about keeping my expectations in check and realizing that life happens and I would have to roll with the punches. It is good I worked on that because today we had another flood.

All of Amherst had a flash flood . The water was coming in so quickly that our sump pump couldn’t keep up and, once again, my office flooded. I had written about 150 words when this happened but I had to stop, basically in mid sentence.

I could see the water coming up through cracks in the unfinished part of the basement. It was very frightening, so we called the fire department. They came quickly and at first they could not figure out where the water was coming from. They concluded that it was coming up through the basement floor. They tried to pump the water out, using a  hose that they snaked through the downstairs bathroom window. To get the hose through the window, one of the firemen put his fist through the screen.

Their pump didn’t work because the waters had started to recede and wasn’t high enough to trigger the float. They advised us to get an external floor pump. Fortunately one of our lovely neighbors had such a pump. Anther neighbor lent us a shorter hose than the one we have and we pumped the water into the toilet.

We then used towels and our water vac to get up the rest of the water. This was particularly discouraging because last weekend we put back all the stuff from one of the rooms downstairs that we had moved out when we had the flood from Tropical Storm Ida.

It was about three hours of solid work and we still will have to put the rooms together again, probably next weekend.  The firemen said to throw out one power strip that got wet. That and the screen is really  the only damage, which is fine. My papers were all safe.

I was able to come upstairs and write a little more for a total of 319 words today. I feel that was an amazing  accomplishment. I am so grateful that we are okay and for the wonderful help from our neighbors. The firemen were very solicitous and understanding and I plan to make a donation in their honor.

As climate change increases, there will only be more of these floods and violent rain storms. The Democrats must pass true climate change legislation for the planet’s sake.

September 11, Twenty Years Later

I am sorry that I am a day late with my weekly post. We are still dealing with the consequences of our flooded basement. On Labor Day, I discovered that my paper files were all wet. Three file drawers got soaked. One had much of my research for my current project. This has been a traumatic event.

Because today is September 11, I do realize that many things have happened in the past twenty years that are far worse and much more devastating than my flooded basement. In memory of all the lives lost on that terrible day, I am reposting something from September 11, 2009.

September 11 – Eight Years Later

Today is the eighth anniversary of the terrible events of September 11 2001. This is a particularly poignant day because we are in New York. Eight years ago, I had been in New York the day before, September 10, and woke up, at home, on the morning of the 11th to hear my husband’s voice on the answering machine, ” I don’t know if you have heard what happened in New York but my parents are okay.” As everyone knows, September 11 2001 was a picture perfect New York fall day and the 10th was as well. I felt very steeped in my New York roots because I had spent the evening of the 9th reading about the  pending city elections while I waited for my friend who I was visiting to come home.

Today, September 11, 2009, is not a beautiful day. The weather is  very bad, with high winds and heavy downpours. Because of these bad conditions, we have been unable to attend any commemorative event. Many of them were outdoors.

Despite that, since 2001, I have felt that this day should not be like every other day.  Apparently President  Obama and Congress agree with me. In March the federal government designated September 11th as a National Day of Service and Remembrance.  I really hope that this takes root and becomes how  people commemorate September 11th in future years.

My thoughts are with all the people who suffered a loss on that fateful day and it is my sincerest wish that nothing like that will ever happen to any person or country again.

Ideas

One of the assignments for this month from my Pioneer Valley Writer’s Workshop Year Long class, was to read three essays to look at the craft tools used in presenting ideas.

First, I read “The Futurist Manifesto by Flippo Tommaso Marinetti. For the class assignment, we were not supposed to say whether we like a piece or not but rather, look at the craft elements used in the writing and determine if they would be valuable for our own writing.  However, this is is my blog, so I will  say that I hated this essay. The language  was over wrought, hyperbolic and flowery. I would not want to write in that style. The piece felt dated with racist and misogynistic elements and I had a strong suspicion that the author was a fascist. When I Googled him, I found out I was right.

Our teacher implied that Verlyn Klinkenborg’s, “Our Vanishing Light”, had  lyrical tone, and visual and sensory imagery.  The writing was okay but it seemed a fairly standard journalistic article. Written in 2008, it might have been startling then but felt like nothing new thirteen years later.

In “Sick Women Theory”, Johanna Hedva uses her personal story to make her point. I thought that was a good strategy or tool to use. By personalizing her ideas, it made thinking about those ideas more accessible. Hedva weaves her story of chronic illness into a compelling critique of western medicine. She explores how disability interacts with political participation, seeking a redefinition of both public and private.  I found her writing the most compelling of the three essays and I enjoyed reading it.

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