A daily miasma of frivolity by two wanna-be cultural critics. Or: just, like, some good links, dude.

Tag Archives: 1800s

Feb 09 2012
Mark Twain, probably

Letters of Note: To My Old Master

Letters of Note: To My Old Master

Letters of Note posted this amazing telling off by ex-slave Jourdon Anderson of his former master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, after the colonel requested Jourdon return to work for him:

Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor’s visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to.

And that’s not even the best part. Read it.

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Jan 20 2012
Mark Twain, probably

These here are the remnants of the H. L. Hunley, a Confederate submarine from the Civil War. Reuters has an excellent article about it:

Scientists have found the vessel to be a more sophisticated feat of engineering than historians had thought, said Michael Drews, director of Clemson’s Warren Lasch Conservation Center.

“It has the ballast tanks fore and aft, the dive planes were counterbalanced, the propeller was shrouded,” Drews said. “It’s just got all of the elements that the modern submarines have, updated.”

MSNBC’s Photoblog has a few photos of it, including the one accompanying this post, taken by Bruce Smith for the AP.

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Aug 27 2011
Mark Twain, probably

Rubbish

Rubbish

Albin J. Kowalewski contributed a piece to The New York Times’s Civil War liveblog, Disunion, on the 1861 search for a national anthem by the self-named “National Hymn Committee” of New York:

The committee wrote off the three existing contenders immediately: “Yankee Doodle” was “childish,” they said. “Hail, Columbia” was “pretentious.” The “Star-Spangled Banner” was just too hard to sing — indeed, according to the committee’s spokesman, Richard Grant White, they found it “to be almost useless.”

The committee turned to the literary public for help. From mid-May to early August, it held a contest challenging Yankee poets to compose “a national hymn or popular and patriotic song appealing to the national heart,” as George Templeton Strong, a committee member, described it. The competition would be judged blindly, and the committee retained the rights to publish and market the entries, the proceeds of which would go to the local “Patriotic Fund.” To the winner, however, the 13 committeemen promised $500 and the thanks of a grateful nation.

Punchline: it didn’t end well.

The problem was, the committee couldn’t agree on a clear winner. But not because there were so many good options — rather, it was because there were hardly any. On Aug. 9, 1861, the hymn committee announced that it couldn’t, in all fairness, choose a winner. “Although some of [the songs] have a degree of poetic excellence which will probably place them high in public favor as lyrical compositions,” it said in the New York Times, “no one of them is well suited for a National Hymn.” Strong was more blunt in private: most poems were “rubbish.”

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Apr 08 2011
Mark Twain, probably

The Other Verses of “Oh Where, Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone”

The nursery rhyme ”Oh Where, Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone” was originally written in 1864 by songwriter Septimus Winner. I’ve never heard of him before, but he was a pretty interesting guy. He wrote a lot of songs, including “Ten Little Injuns,” and arranged quite a bit more. He was also jailed during the Civil War for treason after he wrote a song requesting that General George B. McClellan be reinstated.

The song was published under the title “Der Deitcher’s Dog.” The melody Winner used was originally from the German folksong “Zu Lauterbach hab i’ mei Strumpf verlorn.” The lyrics, written in a mock-German accent, were original. The first verse of the song is the one sung as a nursery rhyme today:

Oh where, Oh where ish mine little dog gone;
Oh where can he be.
His ears cut short und his tail cut long:
Oh where, Oh where ish he.

But the next verse and the ones after it, well. Let’s just say that I think I know why only the first one caught on.

I loves mine lager’tish very good beer,
Oh where, Oh where can he be.
But mit no money I cannot drink here.
Oh where, oh where ish he.

Across the ocean in Garmanie,
Oh where can he be.
Der deitchers dog ish der best compagnie.
Oh where, Oh where ish he.

Un sasage ish goot, bolonie of course,
Oh where can he be.
Dey makes um mit dog und dey makes em mit horse,
I guess de makes em mit he.

(Lyrics taken from this collection of 1800s popular songs.)

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Apr 02 2011
Mark Twain, probably

200th Birthday for the Map That Made New York

200th Birthday for the Map That Made New York

Sam Roberts of The New York Times, writing about the grid plan of Manhattan’s streets on the 200th anniversary of its publication:

The grid was the great leveler. By shifting millions of cubic yards of earth and rock, it carved out modest but equal flat lots (mostly 25 by 100 feet) available for purchase. And if it fostered what de Tocqueville viewed as relentless monotony, its coordinates also enabled drivers and pedestrians to figure out where they stood, physically and metaphorically.

It’s a fascinating story of how a rectangular grid was imposed on the island: houses and property were seized and destroyed when they didn’t fit neatly in the master plan, and the topography of the island itself was leveled by flattening hills and filling in swamps.

Dr. Rose-Redwood calculated that in 1811, of the 1,865 buildings north of Houston Street, 721 stood on newly mapped streets and had to be either razed or moved. As executed, natural topography was ignored (stranding some houses on bluffs). Driving streets through private property sparked not-in-my-backyard revolts. Owners were compensated, though tax assessments also rose on properties bordering the new streets. Clement Clarke Moore, before making a fortune parceling out his Chelsea property and claiming authorship of “A Visit From St. Nicholas,” characterized the commissioners as “men who would have cut down the seven hills of Rome.”

I love that quote at the end.

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Apr 01 2011
Mark Twain, probably

Bats, Balls and Bullets

Bats, Balls and Bullets

George B. Kirsch, writing about the development of the modern game of baseball:

The English national game of cricket was the first modern team sport in the United States. During the 1850s, an estimated 10,000 English immigrants and native-born men and boys founded about 500 clubs in at least 22 states in the Union. By 1861, Philadelphia had become the cricketing capital of the nation, boasting the most organizations and the largest contingent of proficient, American-born players. But cricket also faced major challenges from two upstart versions of baseball that had recently exploded in popularity. “The Massachusetts game” reigned supreme in Boston and most of New England, while “the New York game” ruled Manhattan, Brooklyn and New Jersey.

And how it was affected by the looming Civil War:

Thousands of members of northern cricket and baseball clubs volunteered for service in the Union Army, while a handful chose the Confederate side. In Cincinnati, Abraham G. Mills, a future president of the National League, packed a bat and ball with his Army gear before reporting for military duty. In late May Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times reported that the pitcher of St. Louis’ Union club planned to resign from his team to accept a commission in the Second Missouri Artillery after leading his team to victory in a city championship match. According to that paper, his fans hoped that “the balls he will pitch at the foes of his country’s flag, may be as successful in putting down their insolent presumption, as were those pitched against his civil opponents yesterday,” the former champions of St. Louis.

Fascinating stuff as usual from Disunion, The New York Times’s liveblog of the Civil War.

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Apr 01 2011
Mark Twain, probably

Walt Whitman on Baseball

Walt Whitman on Baseball

In 1846 Whitman wrote:

In our sundown perambulations of late through the outer parts of Brooklyn, we have observed several parties of youngsters playing “base,” a certain game of ball.

…

The game of ball is glorious—so are leaping, running, and wrestling. To any person having the least knowledge of physiology, it were superfluous to enter into any argument to prove the use and benefit of exercise. We have far too little of it in this country, among the “genteel” classes. Both women and men should be careful to pass no day of their lives without a portion of outdoor exercise.

America: fat even in 1846.

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