Stupid American History: Tales of Stupidity, Strangeness, and Mythconceptions

by Leland Gregory

  A NOTE TO CONGRESS

  Thomas Jefferson only communicated with Congress through written messages, even though his predecessors addressed the legislature in person. Because of this practice, it wasn’t until Woodrow Wilson that presidents began appearing in front of Congress personally. It is rumored that Jefferson wrote as opposed to speaking because he was a poor orator but an excellent writer.

  If you think members of Congress are sneaky now [which you should because they are], look at the forty-second Congress of 1873. It not only gave itself a salary raise of 50 percent, but then made it retroactive for two years.

  HOME SICK

  It’s a type of rags to riches story, but it’s more along the lines of a sick to healthy story. Theodore Roosevelt said that as a child, he was very sick and chronically asthmatic, but with fresh air and exercise, he became known as one of the most physically active presidents in history. However, in his biography of Roosevelt, David McCullough states that even though Roosevelt may have suffered as a child, he might not have been as sick as we’ve been led to believe. It seems that his asthma attacks occurred only on Sundays—the one day of the week that his father was at home.

  PULIT SURPRISE

  John F. Kennedy is the only president to date who has won the Pulitzer Prize. He was honored with the prestigious award in 1957 for his book Profiles in Courage. But like a lot of myths surrounding “Camelot,” this one isn’t quite true. Kennedy did win the Prize, but did he really write the book by himself? No. One of his speechwriters, Theodore Sorensen, actually penned most the book. This fact has been rumored for years, but it was Sorensen’s own autobiography in 2008 that let the cat out of the bag. Sorensen wrote that he “did a first draft of most chapters,” “helped choose the words of many of its sentences,” and “privately boasted or indirectly hinted that [he] had written much of the book.”

  WHAT’S IN A DREAM

  It’s a chilling story and another fascinating aspect of the life of President Abraham Lincoln—that he had a premonition of his own death by an assassin’s bullet. Several days before his death, Lincoln told of a dream in which he had been awakened in the White House by mournful cries and discovered that the wailing voices were coming from the East Room. “There I met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. ‘Who is dead in the White House?’ I demanded of one of the soldiers. ‘The President’ was his answer; ‘he was killed by an assassin.’” So Lincoln did predict his own death! No, because when the story was originally published, Lincoln made it clear that it wasn’t he who had been killed. “In this dream,” the president was quoted as saying, “it was not me, but some other fellow, that was killed. It seems that this ghostly assassin tried his hand on someone else.”

  NOT VERY REVERED

  In July 1779, forty-five American ships sailed into Penobscot Bay where the British held a half-finished fort, but the Americans did nothing to provoke the enemy. Even though they outnumbered the British, they waited for weeks without taking any action, and that gave the British plenty of time to bring in reinforcements. Confronted by a well-manned army and navy, the American ships fled up the Penobscot River. Realizing they might be attacked by the British and have their supplies and ships captured, they decided to burn seventeen of their own ships and fled by foot. Paul Revere [yes, that Paul Revere], who was the commander of artillery, was charged by the Continental Army with cowardice and insubordination. [One military committee ruled that Revere’s conduct was “crityzable”; another that it was not.] However, Revere was acquitted during his court martial in 1782.

  ANY LAST WORDS?

  An interesting story about Benedict Arnold, and one that shows he repented his treason, is that on his death bed he cried out, “Let me die in my American uniform in which I fought my battles. God forgive me for ever putting on any other.” It’s a great redemptive story, but it isn’t true. After his death, Arnold’s wife Margaret “Peggy” Shippen Arnold wrote that Benedict had been delirious in his last three days and wasn’t able to swallow or speak a word.

  WHEN JOHN F. KENNEDY WAS ASSASSINATED IN

  DALLAS IN 1963, IT WAS NOT A FEDERAL FELONY TO KILL

  A PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

  THE FINAL ACT

  Pulitzer Prize—and Tony Award—winning playwright Tennessee Williams, famous for A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, suffocated to death at the age of seventy-one on February 24, 1983, in his room at the Hotel Elysee in New York City. Coroners discovered that Williams had choked to death on an eye-drop bottle cap, which friends said he would routinely place in his mouth when he tilted back his head to administer the eye drops.

  The Woodstock Festival, technically called The Woodstock Music and Art Fair, was actually held at Max Yasgur’s dairy farm in the rural town of Bethel, New York, forty-three miles southwest of Woodstock, New York.

  ENGLISH FIRST

  Martin Van Buren, the first president born an American citizen [his predecessors were born before the War of Independence] grew up speaking Dutch, which made him the only president not to have spoken English as a first language [unless, of course, you include George W. Bush].

  In 1872, Congress passed a law requiring members of both houses to be docked a day’s pay for every day’s absence, except in the case of illness. More than 135 years later, the law has been enforced only twice.

  THE SHOT HEARD AROUND THE WORLD

  In a horrible perversion on the old saying, “third time’s a charm,” John Wilkes Booth was actually the third assassin who attempted to take the life of President Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln had been the target of two failed assassination attempts, both times while on his way to his cottage at the Soldiers’ Home on the outskirts of Washington, D.C. In his book Abraham Lincoln, Carl Sandburg tells of the first attempt in 1861, when Lincoln was shot at by a man standing less than fifty yards away. Then in August 1864, he was shot at again, and this time the bullet passed through the upper part of his famous stovepipe hat. But it was that third, fatal bullet we all remember, fired at pointblank range on April 14, 1865.

  WHAT’S BURNIN’ YA?

  The War of 1812 is remembered [if at all] for one thing—the burning of the White House by those dastardly British. Invading a country is one thing, but to maliciously burn down important and cherished buildings is just mean. But that’s just what we did to the British before they did it to us. The Americans attacked York, the capital of Upper Canada [which became Toronto, Ontario], on April 27, 1813, and burned dozens of buildings including the Parliament, all without orders. Because of this malicious attack, the British retaliated with their burning of Washington, D.C. on August 24, 1814.

  TAKE A LETTER

  On November 21, 1864, the Boston Evening Transcript printed a letter from President Abraham Lincoln to Mrs. Lydia Bixby, a widow who was “the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.” The letter, known as the Bixby Letter, was both heartfelt and beautifully written, but there are two things wrong with it. One, it probably wasn’t written by Abraham Lincoln [Lincoln’s secretary John Hay later claimed to have penned the letter], and two, Mrs. Bixby’s sons weren’t all killed. According to War Department statistics, only two of Bixby’s sons died [Charles and Oliver], one deserted, another was honorably discharged, and one was captured and became a Confederate [or died a POW]. The original letter doesn’t exist as Mrs. Bixby, who was a Confederate sympathizer and disliked President Lincoln, destroyed it shortly after it was delivered.

  SOLDIERS OF MISFORTUNE

  It was the most notorious military prison during the Civil War—Camp Sumter, commonly referred to as Andersonville Prison, located in Andersonville, Georgia. Of the 45,000 Union prisoners held there 12,913 died of malnutrition and disease—approximately 100 prisoners died every day. But it wasn’t out of cruelty that the soldiers suffered so during their imprisonment, it was primarily because of overcrowding and the fact that the South couldn’t afford to
feed, clothe, or provide proper medical treatment for the prisoners. Other military prisons didn’t fare much better. In fact, of the 195,000 Union soldiers imprisoned in the South, 15.5 percent died; and of the 215,000 Confederates imprisoned in the North, 12 percent died.

  The commandant at Camp Sumter, Henry Wirz, was court-martialed, found guilty of war crimes, and hanged on November 10, 1865. Wirz was the only Confederate official to be tried and convicted of war crimes resulting from the Civil War.

  SHORT AND STOUT

  As ten-year-old Henry Ford watched steam rising from his mother’s teapot, he deduced that if the steam were confined, it could raise the teapot into the air. He took a clay teapot, filled it with water, corked the spout, tied down the lid and placed the teapot in the fireplace. He watched the teapot carefully for signs that it was about to lift off, but what it did was blast off, or actually, blast apart. The exploding teapot broke a window and a mirror, scalded and cut young Henry, and left a scar on his face that he carried with him for the rest of his life.

  DURING THE 1918 INFLUENZA PANDEMIC, THE DEATH TOLL

  IN THE UNITED STATES WAS SO HIGH THERE WAS

  A SHORTAGE OF COFFINS.

  DUDE LOOKS LIKE A LADY

  A story told by Civil War buffs about Confederate president Jefferson Davis was that he had disguised himself in his wife’s clothing when he was arrested on May 10, 1865. The event was widely publicized, and articles and cartoons portrayed Jefferson as a humiliated, cross-dressing coward. But, like many Civil War myths, it’s not true. “I was in the party that captured Davis,” Captain James H. Parker wrote later. “Jefferson Davis did not have on, at the time he was taken, any garments such as are worn by women.”

  LOOSE LIPS

  The unprovoked sinking of the Lusitania is regarded by many as the inciting incident that brought the United States into World War I. Although the sinking incident did heighten anti-German sentiment, it didn’t bring the Americans into the war. Here are the facts: First, the ship was British, not American, even though 128 of the 1,198 killed were Americans; second, the Germans warned in advance that they would torpedo ships on the open seas; third, the Lusitania was carrying small arms ammunition [so it wasn’t a neutral ship]; and finally, the ship was sunk on May 7, 1915, and the Americans didn’t declare war on Germany until April 6, 1917 [nearly two years later].

  RUN AWAY!

  On June 4, 1754, a twenty-one-year-old lieutenant colonel in the Virginia militia and his men were ordered to build a fort and confront the French forces near what is now Pittsburgh. When they got to the location, they discovered the French had already occupied a fort called Duquesne. So the young officer attacked a French work party, took some prisoners, and then hurriedly constructed the aptly named Fort Necessity. The French immediately attacked, surrounded the newly constructed fort, and sent the lieutenant colonel and his men back to Virginia where, oddly enough, he was hailed as a hero. Unwittingly, the young Lieutenant Colonel George Washington had ordered the shots that began the French and Indian War.

  WHAT’S YOUR SIGN?

  Benjamin Franklin was the only person to put his signature on all four primary documents that created the United States of America: the Treaty of Peace with Great Britain, the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Alliance with France, and the Constitution of the United States.

  RUN, JESSE, RUN

  After Jesse Owens won a gold medal in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Germany, Adolf Hitler refused to shake his hand because he was black. This would certainly fit the impression we have of Hitler, but the story just isn’t true. It’s true that Hitler didn’t congratulate Owens, but he didn’t congratulate any of the winners, even citizens of his own country, after the first day of the Olympics. That’s because he was abiding by the International Olympic Committee’s recommendation that he remain neutral. Owens even stood up for Hitler when he said, “Hitler didn’t snub me—it was FDR who snubbed me. The president didn’t even send me a telegram.” Owens recalled that he had received the greatest ovations of his career in the Olympic Stadium in Berlin.

  NOT LIKE THE WEST

  The popular image of the early history of the Old West as a rough-and-tumble, shoot ’em up, violent, gun-fighting, homicidal era in American history is highly overrated—or, in other words, not really true. The main perpetrators of this image are the pulp fiction writers and, of course, Hollywood. In fact, more people die in most individual Hollywood westerns than died in an entire year in the West’s toughest towns. In 1878, the most violent year in Dodge City, only five people were killed. In the South Dakota town of Deadwood, only four people were killed in its most homicidal year. And in Tombstone, Arizona, the infamous hometown of the shoot-out at the OK Corral in 1881, only five people were killed [three during the shoot-out].

  NOT ALL BLACK AND WHITE

  If a question on a history test asked whether it was the North or the South that first forbade slavery, most people would answer the North. Surprisingly, that event first took place in the South—the deep South, in fact—in Georgia. In 1735, three years after Georgia was founded, its trustees outlawed the importation of blacks to the colony to forestall slavery. A short fifteen years later, under tremendous pressure from big planters, the trustees reversed their decision and allowed blacks to be brought into the colony as slaves.

  GERALD FORD WAS SWORN IN AS PRESIDENT A SHORT

  TWENTY-EIGHT MINUTES AFTER THE SECRETARY OF STATE

  RECEIVED RICHARD NIXON’S LETTER OF RESIGNATION.

  A WING AND A PRAYER

  Here’s another George Washington myth that has burrowed its way into our national consciousness: the image of General Washington kneeling in the snow at Valley Forge deep in prayer. The story came from Mason Locke Weems [generally referred to as Parson Weems], the same man who created the “Washington chopped down the cherry tree” myth. In 1918, the Valley Forge Park Commission issued a report stating, “In none of these [documents] were found a single paragraph that will substantiate the tradition of the ‘Prayer at Valley Forge.’” But still the image lives on.

  PHOTOS DON’T LIE

  Another endearing American image [and one used in dozens of history books] is Thomas Hill’s rendition of the golden spike ceremony. The ceremony was in celebration of the First Transcontinental Railroad, connecting the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads, on May 10, 1869, at Promontory Summit, Utah. Hill’s painting shows women in formal, elegant dresses, and men in fancy frock coats standing in front of several beautiful fluttering American flags. The actual photograph of the event shows something entirely different: Most of the men were wearing work clothes, several holding liquor bottles and looking intoxicated, and there were also a few sleazy-looking camp prostitutes.

  NO PLACE LIKE HOME

  The myths surrounding the Pilgrims are so numerous that one even involves what type of housing they lived in. Many Americans believe, usually because of artists’ paintings, that the Pilgrims lived in log cabins. They didn’t. The Pilgrims were English so they brought with them traditional English building construction methods, and that certainly wouldn’t have been log cabins. The Germans and the Swedes introduced log cabins nearly a century later, and there’s no record of the term “log cabin” being used before the 1770s. Although we have no definitive proof of what a Pilgrim house looked like, it would probably have been a simple frame structure [due to the plentiful amount of wood]. We do know that by late 1621 they had constructed seven dwellings for communal living, including four storehouses, and two years later they had twenty houses standing.

  THE REAL CASEY JONES

  Casey Jones is the legendary railroad folk hero—the man who sacrificed his life to save the lives of the passengers on his train. He is legendary, and he is a hero—because he was a real person and not a myth. John Luther “Casey” Jones [1863–1900] was an American railroad engineer from Jackson, Tennessee, who worked for the Illinois Central Railroad. On April 30, 1900, his fireman Sim Webb was shoveling coal when he saw the
signal flags and red lights of a stopped freight train on the same track ahead of them. Jones told Webb to jump, which he did, and by staying at the controls and bringing the speed of his train down from seventy-five to thirty-five miles an hour, he saved the lives of the passengers on his train. Jones was the only person to die in the wreck, and he was immortalized for his courage in a popular ballad sung by his friend Wallace Saunders.