One-Night Stands with American History

by Richard Shenkman

  “Ain’t it perfectly honest to charge a good price and make a profit on my investment and foresight? Of course, it is. Well, that’s honest graft.”

  Source: William Riordan, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall (McClure Phillips & Co., 1905), pp. 3–4.

  A PRAYER FOR THE COUNTRY

  “When Edward Everett Hale was Chaplain of the Senate, someone asked him, ‘Do you pray for the Senators, Dr. Hale?’ ‘No, I look at the Senators and pray for the country,’ he replied.”

  Mark Twain once remarked, “I think I can say, and say with pride, that we have legislatures that bring higher prices than anywhere in the world.”

  A cartoon from Harper’s Weekly, 1869. (Harper’s Weekly, July 3, 1869, p. 129.)

  CARTOON ACCUSING BUSINESSMEN OF HYPOCRISY

  THE IMAGE-CONSCIOUS VICTORIANS

  The chief characteristic of Victorianism was not moral virtuousness, but the appearance of moral virtuousness. The world did not have to be perfect, it only had to seem so. The necessity of maintaining a good image put quite a strain on people, especially those connected with morally dubious businesses. But people made do, as did the anonymous author of a guide to whorehouses in New York City, who resorted to an ingenious contrivance to give his book respectability.

  Beginning his volume with a quotation from Shakespeare, he went on to explain that his little book was written to give the reader “an insight into the character and doings of people whose deeds are carefully screened from public view; when we describe their houses, and give their location, we supply the stranger with information of which he stands in need, we supply a void that otherwise must remain unfilled. Not that we imagine the reader will ever desire to visit these houses. Certainly not; he is, we do not doubt, a member of the Bible Society, a bright and shining light, like Newful Gardner or John Allen. But we point out the location of these places in order that the reader may know how to avoid them. . . . Our book will, therefore, be like a warning voice to the unwary—like a buoy attached to a sunken rock, which warns the unexperienced Mariner to sheer off, lest he should be wrecked on a dangerous and unknown coast.” This explains why the book describes the houses in vivid detail and even reports on the beauty of the women and advises whether a letter of introduction is needed at any parlor.

  SOURCE: The Gentleman’s Directory (New York: privately published, 1870), passim.

  OF SEVEN DEMOCRATS, NOW ONLY TWO

  The news that Alferd E. Packer had murdered and eaten five hunting companions during a Colorado blizzard in 1873 was horrifying. Hardly anyone could think of a crime that was worse. But some people seemed concerned only because all of the victims happened to have been Democrats. One of these people was M. B. Gerry, judge at Packer’s trial. When sentencing Packer, the judge flew into a rage. “Stand up, you man-eating son-of-a-bitch, and receive your sentence!” he began. “There were seven Democrats in Hinsdale County, but you, you voracious, man-eating son-of-a-bitch, you ate five of them. I sentence you to be hanged by the neck until you’re dead, dead, dead, as a warning against reducing the Democratic population of the state.”

  SOURCE: American Heritage, October 1977, p. 112.

  CUSTER AND THE INDIANS

  General George Custer, commander of the ill-fated U.S. Seventh Cavalry at Little Big Horn, had great respect for the Plains Indians. He once confessed that he even enjoyed the heroic escapes of the Indians he pursued. Two years before Little Big Horn, Custer wrote: “If I were an Indian, I often think I would greatly prefer to cast my lot among those of my people [who] adhered to the free open plains, rather than submit to the confined limits of a reservation, there to be the recipient of the blessed benefits of civilization.”

  Custer’s dead body was not mutilated on the Little Big Horn battlefield, an honor in Sioux warfare.

  SOURCE: George Custer, My Life on the Plains (Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1976), p. 22.

  GENERAL BUTLER’S COURTROOM TACTICS

  A reminiscence of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes about Benjamin F. Butler, the Massachusetts lawyer, politician, and controversial Union general who declared escaped slaves to be contraband of war. Butler was a widely hated man and had a reputation for ruthlessness.

  “General Butler was on his way to Boston to try a case before Judge Shaw. I met him on the train and asked him if I might look at the notes on the case. Butler acquiesced. To my astonishment I saw written on the top of the page, ‘Insult the judge.’ ‘You see,’ said Butler in answer to my question [about the line], ‘I first get Judge Shaw’s ill will by insulting him. Later in the case he will have decisions to make for or against me. As he is an exceedingly just man, and as I have insulted him, he will lean to my side, for fear of letting his personal feeling against me sway his decisions the opposite way.’”

  SOURCE: Charles Shriner, ed., Wit, Wisdom, and Foibles of the Great (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1918), p. 93.

  BUTLER’S LOSS, REPUBLICANS’ GAIN

  When Butler, a Republican, failed to win reelection to Congress in 1874, many members of his own party were elated. Concerning the results of the election, in which Democrats swept to office, one Republican wired: “Butler defeated, everything else lost.”

  SOURCE: John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage (1956; rpt. New York: Perennial Library, 1964), p. 116.

  (Leslie’s Illustrated, January 8, 1876, p. 296.)

  UNCLE SAM AT 100

  STANDING UP FOR WOMEN’S RIGHTS

  Reverend Henry Ward Beecher was chairing a meeting once when a woman stood up and began chanting a hymn of praise for women’s rights. The woman went on and on, for more than a half hour. The audience grew visibly annoyed, but Beecher sat quietly and let her finish. When she finally sat down, the minister commented, “Nevertheless, brethren, I believe in women speaking in meeting.”

  SOURCE: Joseph B. Bishop, Notes and Anecdotes of Many Years (New York: Scribner’s, 1925), p. 40.

  BEECHER SELLS SOAP

  Whenever he could, Beecher exploited his name to make money. The brother of moralist Harriet Beecher Stowe, he endorsed lingerie, Jay Gould’s nefarious schemes, and even soap. One of his most profitable endorsements, which appeared in magazines throughout the country, was for Pears’ Soap.

  SOURCE: Burton Bledstein, The Culture of Professionalism (New York: Norton, 1976), p. 52.

  (Life, April 18, 1888, p. 238.)

  PRESIDENT TILDEN?

  When the residents of New York City awoke on the morning of November 8, 1876, they eagerly turned to their newspapers to discover who had won the presidential election held the previous day: Republican Rutherford Hayes or Democrat Samuel Tilden. Unfortunately, the contest was undecided, except so far as the New York Tribune was concerned, which announced in an unqualified headline that Tilden had been elected. The Tribune’s mistake may not have been as egregious as it seems. Three days after the election Hayes himself confided: “I think we are defeated in spite of recent good news. I am of the opinion that the Democrats have carried the country and elected Tilden.”

  SOURCE: Dee Brown, The Year of the Century (New York: Scribner’s, 1966), p. 318.

  RUTHERFORD B. HAYES HAS THE LAST LAUGH

  When Rutherford B. Hayes became president in 1877, he immediately banished wine and liquor from the White House. Hayes was not a temperance fanatic, and until he became president had had no scruples about occasionally taking a drink. But when he moved into the White House, he decided to set a good example for the country and stop drinking.

  Unfortunately, not everyone in America appreciated the President’s action. Particularly perturbed were guests at White House dinners who wanted to drink but were not allowed to. They ridiculed Hayes and took to calling his wife “Lemonade Lucy,” since the first lady refused to serve anything stronger than lemonade. A joke made the rounds in Washington that at Lucy’s house the water flowed like wine.

  Eventually guests at the White House found a way to get around Hayes’s obnoxious prohibition. With the connivance of the
stewards, they received punch made from oranges spiked with St. Croix rum. Somehow the stewards were able to smuggle the forbidden elixir into the White House without the knowledge of the President or his wife.

  Or so all Washington thought. In his diary Hayes revealed that “the joke of the Roman punch oranges was not on us, but on the drinking people. My orders were to flavor them rather strongly with the same flavor that is found in Jamaica rum. This took! There was not a drop of spirits in them!”

  SOURCE: Charles R. Williams, ed., The Life of Rutherford B. Hayes (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1914), II, 312–13n.

  A WELCOMED DEATH

  A story about an encounter between Senator George Hoar and William Evarts, secretary of state under Rutherford B. Hayes, as told by Henry Cabot Lodge:

  “When he was in the Senate, my colleague in after years, Senator Hoar, had a bill about which he was very anxious, and which had been referred to Evarts for report. Months passed and no bill appeared. Meeting Mr. Evarts one day in the corridor, Mr. Hoar, who was his first cousin, said, ‘By the way, Evarts, when you report that bill of mine, just notify my executors.’ ‘They will be gentlemen whom I shall be delighted to meet,’ was the reply.”

  SOURCE: Henry Cabot Lodge, Early Memories (New York: Scribner’s, 1913), p. 258.

  EDISON FATHERS THE PHONOGRAPH

  Thomas Alva Edison did not invent the phonograph to bring music to the masses. The great scientist was partially deaf and never cared for music. His reason for inventing the device had something to do with the telephone. Edison had helped Alexander Graham Bell develop the telephone by inventing the transmitter. But in early 1877 he began to worry that the telephone would be too expensive for the average American family. He immediately set to work to solve the problem.

  Edison decided that if the telephone could not be brought to the people, the people would have to be brought to the telephone. The invention would then be used in much the same manner as the old telegraph, with people bringing their messages to a central location. The only problem was that people could not leave their messages with the telephone as they had left them with the telegraph operator. With the telephone they were their own operators, communicating directly with the person they wanted to contact.

  Edison thought he could easily solve this problem by inventing what he called a “telephone repeater.” Within the year he had invented the phonograph. When he tested it, by shouting the verses of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” into the machine, it worked perfectly. “I was never so taken aback in all my life,” he recalled later. “Everybody was astonished. I was always afraid of things that worked the first time.” He received a patent for his invention in only two months because there was no evidence that anyone else had ever applied for a patent on a machine like Edison’s. The creator of the light bulb had invented a device that no one else had ever even considered inventing.

  The phonograph, as it turned out, was not used to help the telephone, which sometime afterward proved less expensive than Edison had feared. But the machine met with instant enthusiastic approval by the public. When it was exhibited in Boston, people came in droves to see it, paying more than $1,800 for tickets in one week alone.

  Oddly, Edison did not foresee that his machine would be the basis of a major new industry—home entertainment. In 1878 he wrote in the North American Review that he believed the number-one use for the phonograph would be for “letter writing, and all kinds of dictation without the aid of a stenographer.” He continued believing this for fifteen years. Finally, in 1894, he decided that the phonograph could be marketed widely as a music machine if it was sold for a low price. He managed to tag it at twenty dollars, but most people considered it too expensive—they preferred going to a public place where they could play a record for just a nickel. The time for the home phonograph had not yet arrived; Americans were still in the jukebox stage.

  SOURCE: Daniel Boorstin, The Americans: The Democratic Experience (New York: Random House, 1973), pp. 379–80.

  J. S. HARRISON GOES TO MEDICAL SCHOOL

  John Scott Harrison is the only man in American history to be the son of one president and the father of another. So one would think that his corpse would have been well cared for. And it was, for a while. After dying peacefully in 1878, J. S. Harrison, who served two terms in Congress, received a proper funeral. A short time later, however, his body was discovered missing.

  Throughout history medical colleges have rarely received enough cadavers for student experiments. By 1878 stealing recently deceased bodies from graveyards and selling them to medical schools had grown into a lucrative business. The nation was appalled, however, when a frantic search uncovered J. S. Harrison’s body in the dissecting room of an Ohio medical college, patiently waiting its turn to help some medical student with his education. National shock soon turned to national wrath, forcing legislatures to enact stringent penalties against grave robbing. Harrison’s body was returned to the morgue.

  SOURCE: Sid Frank, The Presidents (Maplewood, N.J.: Hammond, 1975), p. 82.

  MAXIMS OF MARK TWAIN

  • “Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.”

  • “You can straighten a worm, but the crook is in him and only waiting.”

  • “Well enough for old folks to rise early, because they have done so many mean things all their lives they can’t sleep anyhow.”

  • “My books are water: those of the great geniuses are wine. Everybody drinks water.”

  MARK TWAIN’S SUPPRESSED MASTERPIECE

  In 1879, Mark Twain delivered the following speech, “Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism,” before a Paris group called the Stomach Club. Until 1952 the speech remained in private hands, at which time a Chicago advertising executive came into possession of a copy and had it printed:

  “My gifted predecessor has warned you against the ‘social evil—adultery.’ In his able paper he exhausted that subject; he left absolutely nothing to be said on it. But I will continue his good work in the cause of morality by cautioning you against that species of recreation called self-abuse, to which I perceive you are too much addicted.

  “All great writers upon health and morals, both ancient and modern, have struggled with this stately subject; this shows its dignity and importance. Some of these writers have taken one side, some the other.

  “Homer, in the second book of the Iliad, says with fine enthusiasm, ‘Give me masturbation or give me death.’ Caesar, in his Commentaries, says, ‘To the lonely it is company; to the forsaken it is a friend; to the aged and to the impotent it is a benefactor; they that are penniless are yet rich, in that they still have this majestic diversion.’ In another place this experienced observer has said, ‘There are times when I prefer it to sodomy.’

  “Robinson Crusoe says, ‘I cannot describe what I owe to this gentle art.’ Queen Elizabeth said, ‘It is the bulwark of virginity.’ Cetewayo, the Zulu hero, remarked, ‘A jerk in the hand is worth two in the bush.’ The immortal Franklin has said, ‘Masturbation is the mother of invention.’ He also said, ‘Masturbation is the best policy.’

  “Michelangelo and all the other old masters—Old Masters, I will remark, is an abbreviation, a contraction—have used similar language. Michelangelo said to Pope Julius II, ‘Self-negation is noble, self-culture is beneficent, self-possession is manly, but to the truly grand and inspiring soul they are poor and tame compared to self-abuse.’ Mr. Brown, here in one of his latest and most graceful poems, refers to it in an eloquent line which is destined to live to the end of time—‘None know it but to love it. None name it but to praise.’

  “Such as the utterances of the most illustrious of the masters of this renowned science, and apologists for it. The name of those who decry it and oppose it is legion; they have made strong arguments and uttered bitter speeches against it—but there is not room to repeat them here in much detail.

  “Brigham Young, an expert of incontestable authority, said, ‘As compared with the other thing, it is the difference
between the lightning bug and lightning.’ Solomon said, ‘There is nothing to recommend it but its cheapness.’ Galen said, ‘It is shameful to degrade to such bestial uses that grand limb, that formidable member, which we votaries of science dub the “Major Maxillary”—when we dub it at all—when is seldom. It would be better to decapitate the Major than to use him so. It would be better to amputate the os frontis than to put it to such a use.’ The great statistician Smith, in his report to Parliament, says, ‘In my opinion, more children have been wasted in this way than in any other.’

  “It cannot be denied that the high antiquity of this art entitles it to our respect; but at the same time I think that its harmlessness demands our condemnation.

  “Mr. Darwin has grieved to feel obliged to give up his theory that the monkey was the connecting link between man and the lower animals. I think he was too hasty. The monkey is the only animal, except man, that practices this science; hence he is our brother; there is a bond of sympathy and relationship between us. Give this ingenious animal an audience of the proper kind, and he will straightway put aside his other affairs and take a whet; and you will see by his contortions and his ecstatic expression that he takes an intelligent and human interest in his performance.

  “The signs of excessive indulgence in this destructive pastime are easily detectable. They are these: A disposition to eat, to drink, to smoke, to meet together convivially, to laugh, to joke, and to tell indelicate stories—and, mainly a yearning to paint pictures. The results of the habit are: loss of memory, loss of virility, loss of cheerfulness, loss of hopefulness, loss of character, and loss of progeny.

  “Of all the various kinds of sexual intercourse, this has the least to recommend it. As an amusement it is too fleeting; as an occupation it is too wearing; as a public exhibition, there is no money in it. It is unsuited to the drawing room, and in the most cultured society it has long since been banished from the social board. It has at last, in our day of progress and improvement, been degraded to brotherhood with flatulence. Among the best-bred, these two arts are now indulged in only in private—though by consent of the whole company, when only males are present, it is still permissible, in good society, to remove the embargo upon the fundamental sigh.