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A Secret Language That Helped End World War II

Navajo Code Talker Peter MacDonald Sr. at his ranch, located outside Tuba City, Arizona. (Tom Brownold for American Essence)

In war, information can be more valuable than tanks, planes, ships, or soldiers. Information sent and received without detection can mean the difference between victory and defeat, even between life and death.

Protecting information means developing elaborate codes. One code, which Native Americans developed and used, played a pivotal role in helping the United States win the Pacific front during World War II and bring the conflict to an end.

In the process, it became the only spoken code in military history never to have been deciphered.

Members of the Navajo tribe combined with the Marine Corps to create a code using the Navajo language. The Navajo Marines who employed that code became known as “Navajo Code Talkers” and participated in every Marine assault in the Pacific, including Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa.

The code “saved hundreds of thousands of lives and helped win the war in the Pacific,” said Peter MacDonald Sr., a 93-year-old Marine veteran and one of only four Code Talkers still living.

At Iwo Jima, six Code Talkers sent and received more than 800 messages without making a mistake.

“Were it not for the Navajos,” 5th Marine Division signals officer Major Howard Connor once said, “the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima.”

A Spark of Genius

The idea to use Navajo came to a civil engineer in Los Angeles. Philip Johnston, the son of a missionary, grew up on a Navajo reservation in Arizona and maintained contacts with Navajo friends. Johnston, who fought in World War I, had learned that the U.S. Army used the language spoken by the Comanche tribe for military communications during field maneuvers.

After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, Johnston contacted the Marines and presented his idea in 1942. The Marines asked him to organize a demonstration, so Johnston chose four Navajos who were working in Los Angeles’ shipyards at the time.

The demonstration succeeded. The Navajos decoded and transmitted three lines within 20 seconds.

MacDonald Sr. with his veteran insignia. (Tom Brownold for American Essence)

So the Marines approved Johnston’s plan and recruited 29 Navajos to write a code book. But since Navajo was only spoken, not written, the authors devised an alphabet for written communication and colorful descriptions for military terms.

For example, the Code Talkers used the Navajo word for chickenhawk to describe a dive bomber.

“We had a lot of chickenhawks on the reservation,” MacDonald said. “They fly high, but when they see a raven down below, they dive real fast, and they have a nice lunch. So by using the action of the bird and the action of the airplane, we can help us memorize what those code words are.

“Code words were not very difficult to remember because they were all based on something that we’re all familiar with. All the names of different airplanes took the names of different birds that we are very familiar with on the reservation.”

Breaking New Ground

The armed forces used other Native American languages as codes during World War II, but Navajo provided several advantages. First, it remained an unwritten language. Second, only about 30 non-Navajo Americans understood the language when the program began. Third, Navajo’s grammar and syntax differ dramatically from other languages.

Though the program began in 1942, MacDonald had no idea it existed when he joined the Marines in 1944.

“It was top secret to begin with,” he said. “None of us knew that there was such a program until after we passed boot camp, combat training, and communication school. Only after that were we then introduced to a very private, top secret, confidential, Navajo code school.”

At that school, instructors who served overseas taught the students how to use and pronounce code words, how to use the new alphabet, how to write legibly on a special tablet for the code, and how to practice their new skills.

Working Under Fire

The Code Talkers who graduated became as indispensable as rifles or mess kits.

“Every ship used in the landing—battleships, cruisers, destroyers, submarines, aircraft carriers—all had Navajo Code Talkers along with the English [language] network guys,” MacDonald said. “Every Marine air wing, Marine tank unit, and Marine artillery unit also had Navajo Code Talkers assigned to them.”

So how did the whole system work under fire?

“There are two tables [where Marines worked], one for the Navajo communication network, a second table for the English communication network,” MacDonald said. “As soon as the first shot is fired, messages are coming in Navajo as well as in English. All Navajo messages are received by Navajo Code Talkers.

“The message comes in, you write it down in English, and hand it over your shoulder to the runner standing behind us. He takes it up to the bridge and gives it to the general or the admiral. He reads it, he answers, and the runner brings it back down to us.”

The runner had his own special way to determine a communication’s importance.

“If he says ‘Nevada,’ ‘New Mexico,’ or ‘Arizona,’ we send a message back out in Navajo code,” indicating the message was important, MacDonald said. “If there is a top secret or confidential message that needs to be sent to another unit or another location, it’s given to a Navajo Code Talker.”

By the time World War II ended, more than 400 Marines served as Navajo Code Talkers. Their secret vocabulary grew from 260 code words used during Guadalcanal, the Code Talkers’ first battle, to more than 600, MacDonald said.

Preserving a Legacy

Yet not until 1968, when the government declassified the program, did Americans know about the Navajo Code Talkers. Now, 80 years after serving, the surviving Code Talkers are trying to preserve their legacy for future generations.

“We have been going across the country, via invitations, to tell our story,” MacDonald said, “and we are making headway to get American people to know this legacy.”

MacDonald Sr. with his grandchildren. (Tom Brownold for American Essence)

Part of that campaign involves plans for building a museum dedicated to that legacy.

“We found that many Americans and foreign nations didn’t know anything about this unique World War II legacy,” said MacDonald, who is spearheading the project. “The museum will tell the story of who we are, our heritage, our culture, our language, and the sacrifices we’ve made like so many other peoples.”

Those sacrifices enabled the United States to help protect the world from tyrants, he added.

Joseph D’Hippolito is a freelance writer based in Fullerton, California. His work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Federalist, The Guardian, The New York Times, and the Jerusalem Post, among other outlets.

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Features History

Service in the Time of JFK’s Camelot

Cadet Tom Fryer shakes hands with President John F. Kennedy at the U.S. Air Force Academy graduation in 1963. (Courtesy of Wes Fryer)

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the start of President John F. Kennedy’s administration. When he took office in January 1961, he ushered in a new sentiment for the country. That sentiment was all about youth.

At 43, JFK was the nation’s second-youngest president, and he was good-looking to boot. The First Lady was also young and good-looking, and their two young children were adorable. It was all about youth.

JFK succeeded President Dwight D. Eisenhower. While both had served in the military during World War II, they were from opposite ends of the age spectrum. Eisenhower, known as Ike, was a career soldier, and had reached the rank of five-star general in the U.S. Army by the end of his military career. JFK, while an officer in the Navy, was far younger, and only rose to lieutenant during the war.

“What had happened in 1960 was that the junior ranks of the military in World War II replaced the generals,” said James Piereson, a historian and fellow at the Manhattan Institute. “That was part of the generational change that happened. Kennedy was, of course, quite pro-military,” he said. “JFK gave luster to military service,” he added, having “very much campaigned on his war record” in 1960.

So, what was it like being young and in the service during the Kennedy administration?

Bob Hogan was a gunnery officer and lieutenant junior grade on active duty in the Navy from 1960 to 1963, essentially the entire duration of JFK’s time in office. He was commissioned at age 22. “I was blown away by JFK’s Navy war record, his charisma, style, and wit,” he said. “I was immensely energized by his call to service, and really believed in it. His seeming idealism, his patriotic values—I was completely taken in.”

Tom Fryer had the thrill of a lifetime when JFK handed him his diploma and commission. They shook hands at Fryer’s graduation ceremony from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1963. “I felt so honored, so humbled,” said Fryer, who was also 22 at the time.

The American president is also commander-in-chief of the nation’s military. In October 1962, JFK had to make some difficult decisions in that role. The United States and the USSR were fighting the Cold War. Nikita Khrushchev was JFK’s counterpart in communist Russia. A U-2 reconnaissance photo of Cuba confirmed that Khrushchev had placed nuclear missiles on the island, just 90 miles off the coast of Florida.

JFK responded by ordering a naval blockade around Cuba, and essentially told Khrushchev that the missiles had to go. If they didn’t, there would be war. A nuclear war.

This period, known as the Cuban Missile Crisis, was essentially a naval operation. But the entire military, worldwide, was ready for deployment, including a possible invasion of Cuba.

Harry Moritz was at Morse Intercept School at Fort Devens, Massachusetts, at the time. “One day, we marched back to our barracks and were held for an announcement. We were asked if anyone spoke Spanish. Several guys raised their hands. They were pulled to one side, told to pack their gear, and they were sent on a ‘special assignment’ TDY (temporary duty station). They disappeared and were never seen again,” he said. “We non-Spanish folks stayed in Morse school, and in the dark, like the rest of the USA, crapping our pants.”

Gary Mahone was a Morse interceptor, stationed in Hakata, Japan. “During that time, we were on red alert and worked 12-hour shifts, 24/7,” he said. “All leaves and terminations were canceled. Very tense times.”

The Air Force Academy that Fryer attended was in Colorado, not far from the North American Aerospace Defense Command (called NORAD), which conducts aerospace warning and control for the United States. “If the Russians would have come after us, that was a prime target,” said Fryer.

However, according to Fryer, Soviet missiles weren’t all that accurate at the time, so if they fell 15 miles short of their target, the academy could easily be hit. “In preparation for that, we held some drills,” he said. The academy was built with underground tunnels that distributed its utilities. Top brass decided the safest place for the cadets was in these tunnels, which no one really knew about.

Hogan was on a destroyer, which was part of the task force that was going to invade Cuba. His ship was the submarine screen and would provide shore bombardment should the invasion happen.

Hogan spotted a Russian submarine tailing them. “I heard his torpedo doors open,” he said. That meant the Soviets were preparing to attack. Hogan had his hand on the trigger, let his captain know he had positive identification, and requested permission to fire.

Had permission been granted, this very action would have kicked off a nuclear war. However, he was “in a system” and “the system has its rules; you follow the rules.” He would have obeyed the order to fire if it had been given.

“I was (expletive) my pants,” Hogan recalled. “There was a long pause, and the captain said, ‘Classify your contact as a whale,’” instead of an enemy submarine. “I was really glad when the captain chickened out.”

With a nuclear war between the two superpowers looming, Khrushchev eventually gave in and agreed to remove the missiles.

Veteran Joe Schmidt of N.Y. (Dave Paone)

Joe Schmidt was a 21-year-old signalman on a destroyer in the blockade. His job was to directly communicate with the Russian merchant ships as they removed the missiles from Cuba. “With a flashing light, we would send a message to them, and we had to ask them, ‘What is your cargo?’” he said. The expected reply was, “Missiles.” Schmidt would relay that message to the captain, who would relay it to the naval air station in Key West, Florida.

It was understood by everyone involved that the Soviet merchant ships were carrying the missiles and nothing else. “Anything coming out of Cuba at that point was only coming out with missiles on it. They weren’t bringing cigars,” said Schmidt with a laugh.

Key West would then dispatch a P2V Neptune anti-submarine aircraft to fly over the Russian ship to photograph its cargo. The only time Schmidt was in contact with a Soviet ship, it was after midnight and completely dark.

“They had these huge searchlights on the wingtips,” he said. “And they lit that ship up—that plane lit it up—it looked like it was 12 o’clock in the afternoon with those lights.” Even though the two sides spoke entirely different languages—ones that don’t even share the same alphabet—there was a code that both understood, which made communication possible.

JFK’s presidency is fondly referred to as “Camelot,” and the consensus among those who served in the military during his administration is that, for different reasons, it was an exciting time. As Hogan put it, “Best and worst experience of my life.”

Dave Paone is a Long Island-based reporter and photographer who has won journalism awards for articles, photographs, and headlines. When he’s not writing and photographing, he’s catering to every demand of his cat, Gigi.

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Features History

Photographing President Eisenhower

Al Freni, with his iconic photo of President Dwight D. Eisenhower and grandson David, and the Speed Graphic camera he used to shoot the picture. (Dave Paone)

On a summer’s day in 1955, the stars aligned for an airman second class at the Lowry Air Force Base in Denver, Colorado. This was just before the days when Camp David became the official presidential retreat, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower used a property near the base known as the “Summer White House.”

Twenty-one-year-old Al Freni was assigned to the president as his official photographer. On August 16, he and several other photographers were shooting Eisenhower (known as Ike) and his grandson, David, as they were recreating on a nearby ranch, owned by one of Ike’s friends, Aksel Neilsen.

Freni took the picture that would kick-start his career. It’s of the pair fishing at a pier, bonding as grandfathers and grandsons do. This picture would be republished in books and magazines and exhibited for decades thereafter.

Freni’s story begins in 1933, when he was the second son born to Italian immigrant parents in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens, New York. His birth name was Alfredo Giuseppe Freni, but several years later, an editor felt it would take up too much space in his publication and, in an Ellis Island-style move, insisted he simply go by Al Freni.

At 10 years old, Freni purchased his first camera, a Clix Deluxe, for $1.79. Soon after, his older cousin purchased a basic darkroom kit for Freni, and he started developing and printing his own pictures in the bathroom and what was the coal bin in his family’s house.

Completely by chance, famed Life magazine photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt lived in an apartment building two blocks from the Freni household. Upon learning this, Freni scraped up a dime to purchase the latest issue, never having heard of Eisenstaedt before.

Freni attended the School of Industrial Art (now the High School of Art and Design) in Manhattan for high school, where he took four photography classes per day and was named “most probable to succeed” upon graduation in 1951.

At this point, the Korean War was on, and Freni was of draftable age. For the next two years, he worked two different jobs but decided to enlist before he was to be drafted. He joined the Air Force in 1953 with the plan of working as a photographer.

The Air Force had a different plan. They trained him as a turret mechanic for B-47 bombers. After nine months of it, Freni had had enough and was seriously considering going AWOL. “I couldn’t stand what I was doing,” Freni said. A fellow airman suggested he speak with the base chaplain. Freni took that advice, and the chaplain, a colonel, pulled some strings. He offered Freni a position working for the weekly Air Force newspaper, called Airmen. Freni jumped at the offer.

As airman first class, Al Freni is pictured after his promotion in 1955. (Courtesy of Al Freni)

The good news was Freni was the No. 2 photographer of a two-man photo department. The bad news was that meant he had to shoot the less-glamorous and more difficult assignments, including climbing up a ladder to the roof of a hangar to photograph the president’s plane upon arrival.

“Then the magical thing happened,” said Freni. “The photographer that was assigned to cover the president in 1954 got his orders. They shipped him out. I graduated to base photographer.”

That meant whenever Eisenhower vacationed at the Summer White House, Freni was the official photographer. “Here I am, not even 22 years old,” said Freni, “and I was assigned to be the presidential photographer.”

The day of golfing, horseback riding, and fishing was a photo-op manufactured by the presidential press secretary at the time, James Hagerty. It was so manufactured that, according to Freni, the White House had live trout trucked in and released into the water to ensure the younger Eisenhower would catch a fish.

While the entire day was manufactured, the moment Freni captured was real. David had walked away from his grandfather, and the other half-dozen photographers there, and stood on the pier alone. Ike walked over and joined him. Freni saw this unfolding but was the only photographer to act. “I saw a picture,” Freni said. He then shot the photo that would bring him his most recognition.

All of Freni’s photographs taken while in the Air Force were shot on a Speed Graphic camera, which he purchased in 1949. It was the camera photojournalists had used for decades. It was big, heavy, cumbersome, and took one sheet of film at a time, so photographers spent a lot of time inserting and removing the frames that held the film. If a flash was needed, individual flashbulbs were inserted before and ejected after each use.

The fishing photo ran on the front page of Airmen, as well as the Rocky Mountain News, a Denver daily newspaper. Eisenhower loved it so much that he requested 40 prints. It took Freni three days, but he made 43 11-by-14-inch prints in the darkroom by hand.

An appointment was set up for Freni and the public information officer, a major, to meet in the president’s office, where Eisenhower would sign one of the prints for Freni to keep. Freni got a haircut, shined his shoes, and put on clean fatigues. When they walked into the room, Eisenhower said, “Come in, Sergeant,” and the major’s face turned white.

Freni believes this was the commander-in-chief’s subtle way of saying to the major, “Promote this guy.” Whether it was intentional or not, the major did, indeed, promote Freni soon afterward.

Ike wrote, “For Alfred Freni, with best wishes, Dwight Eisenhower.”

Thirty-nine years later, the grandson, David, signed the photo, writing, “For Al Freni, who took my favorite picture.”

Freni’s photograph is at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum, and Boyhood Home in Abilene, Kansas, and at the Eisenhower Historical Site in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It’s been published in one of the titles in the Time-Life series, “The Fabulous Century,” as well as many other books and magazines.

Freni has had a long career as a professional photographer in New York. For many years, he had a combination studio-office-darkroom in the Time-Life Building, seeing Eisenstaedt regularly. As a true New Yorker, he never left his Queens neighborhood and now lives in the building where Eisenstaedt lived. But it’s the fishing picture that Freni remembers most fondly.

He often states how “one two-hundredth of a second” can change a person’s life. That one two-hundredth of a second certainly changed his.

Dave Paone is a Long Island-based reporter and photographer who has won journalism awards for articles, photographs, and headlines. When he’s not writing and photographing, he’s catering to every demand of his cat, Gigi.

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Features History

The Maverick Engineer

The 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air, which debuted with an innovative V-8 engine. (Courtesy of GM)

The hourlong flight across lower Michigan was nearing completion when Ed Cole found himself in fog on his approach to Kalamazoo. It was May 2, 1977—an otherwise routine Monday morning. Before takeoff from Pontiac, the suburban airfield north of Detroit, Cole had chatted in a “jolly” mood with a hangar employee and mentioned seeing purple martins at home. After nursing a cup of coffee, he defied the weather warnings, choosing to rely on the instruments in his twin-engine Beagle S.206.

Lee Huff and her dog witnessed Cole’s last moments.

“The plane circled my house three or four times, and the dog put up such a racket that I ran outside in the backyard to see what was going on,” she told a correspondent. Cole’s plane crashed, causing a “terrible boom.” He was 67 years old.

Shock prevailed among the 400 mourners leaving the funeral service that week. The faces of Henry Ford II, Lee Iacocca, George Romney, and Roger Smith reflected incomprehension, as if the premature death of such a towering figure was impossible.

Weeks before his death, Cole had signed up to run Checker Motors Corp. in Kalamazoo, located about 60 miles from his own native village of Marne (formerly Berlin), Michigan. Founded in 1922, Checker made about 5,000 cars per year of the Marathon. This sturdy, dowdy sedan, introduced two decades earlier, was popular with taxicab services. In other words, after General Motors (GM), Ford, Chrysler, and American Motors, Checker was the fifth-largest automaker. “I’m number one at number five,” joked Cole, who liked to gab with reporters.

Edward Cole, GM’s pioneering engineer. (Courtesy of GM)

He had retired as GM president 3 1/2 years earlier. His career started in 1930 with a 45-cent-per-hour job in the corporation’s Cadillac Division. Until the 1950s, the divisions within GM were self-governing; Cadillac had its own suppliers and plants for cars, but also manufactured battle tanks for the military. Besides working on GM’s first automatic transmission, Cole straightened out issues in tank performance. He became chief of tank design in 1943. When World War II ended, he worked on Cadillac’s new V-8 engine. Then, as the Korean conflict broke out, he was put in charge of the Walker Bulldog tank.

Flying his own Beechcraft Bonanza, he searched around for a factory and found a building in Cleveland, but had to remove 39 million pounds of beans. A staff of 7,000 people was hired to assemble the tanks. Cole told a newspaper that his team of 14 managers and he worked so hard to get the operation up and running that they were “eating four meals a day and getting skinny.”

The late automotive editor David E. Davis Jr. knew Cole. “There was nothing he couldn’t accomplish, no problem that couldn’t be solved,” Davis once said.

Cole would have been happy to stay put, but the Chevrolet Division called in 1952. “I was doing my own thing and designing engines in my department,” he said. His talents were needed elsewhere. “At that time, Chevrolet was making a little six, a grandmother-type car. Nobody had ever built an enthusiast-type of car around Chevrolet.” Ford had featured its V-8 engine since 1932. Chrysler had just introduced its Hemi V-8, which would become legendary. Cole and the boys got together in a room at Cleveland’s Lakeshore Hotel and drew up plans for the new Chevy V-8 “as a form of entertainment.”

Being appointed as Chevy’s chief engineer and returning to Detroit, Cole led the development of the compact lightweight power plant with four cylinders banked to one side, four more to the other, and a 90-degree “V” angle between them. It incorporated all of the latest internal design features and some breakthrough manufacturing techniques. The V-8 would make its debut in the 1955 Chevy. GM’s top boss, Harlow “Red” Curtice,” stepped into the picture and said he wanted the car to have a “hound dog” look. Cole stopped by the design studio almost every day to see it take shape.

Designer Clare MacKichan was used to old-style, bullying managers, but Cole was different. Besides having good taste, he could handle people. “If he didn’t know what he wanted, he would wait until you produced something he did want,” MacKichan told interviewer Michael Lamm. “And if he didn’t like something, he was pretty nice about it. He wouldn’t get all excited and make a big fuss.”

The ’55 Chevy was a smash, selling 1.7 million cars. The Chevy V-8 went into the Corvette next and suited it like honey on a biscuit. Cole rose to division manager and had a free hand to create another car, the 1960 Chevrolet Corvair. And that car would put him on the cover of Time magazine. “If I felt any better about our Chevy Corvair, I think I’d blow up,” he said. It was an unintentionally portentous remark. The compact had an unusual layout, with the small engine placed in the rear—like the Volkswagen. Although initial sales were strong, problems crept in. Micromanaging and cost-cutting by GM’s executive committee had contributed to the Corvair’s tendency to spin out.

An advertisement for the 1960 Chevrolet Corvair four-door sedan. (Courtesy of GM)

As Cole became GM president in 1967, he faced even more controversy and scandals. An engine-mounting problem in other Chevy models resulted in the unprecedented recall of 6.7 million cars. Beyond this, safety, fuel economy, and emissions controls were emerging as top priorities. Some fun went out of the business, and Cole was concerned about the effect on engineers and innovation: “They will be afraid to death to do anything out of fear it might be wrong.”

A month after retiring from GM, Cole appeared on The Phil Donahue Show to debate Ralph Nader, whose exposé, “Unsafe at Any Speed,” was the Corvair’s undoing. When the two-hour broadcast wrapped, Cole shook Nader’s hand, saying, “Give me a little credit from now on. I showed up.”

Nader taunted back, “You got the lead out of gasoline. Now how about getting the lead out of GM?” It was a little rude, but Cole was out of the game by then anyway. Decades later, we remember him for his 18 patents, dynamic leadership, gregarious personality, and the motto: “Kick the hell out of the status quo.”

Ronald Ahrens’s first magazine article was 40 years ago for Soap Opera Digest. His contributions to the much-lamented Automobile Magazine spanned a 32-year period. Nowadays, he’s on a 15-year run with DBusiness (“Detroit’s Premier Business Journal”). Ronald lives near Palm Springs, Calif., where he struggles to understand desert gardening.

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Founding Fathers History

Washington’s Resounding Prayer at Valley Forge

George Washington praying at Valley Forge. Engraving by John C. McRae, 1866, based on a painting by Henry Brueckner. (Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)

It was December 1777, one of the bleakest times during the Revolutionary War. The Continental Army had won a few battles; however, morale suffered as they had also lost a few crucial battles, such as the Battle of Long Island, the Battle for New York, the Battle of White Plains, and the Battle of Bennington. As it was common for armies to take up quarters during the winter, General George Washington chose his army’s quarters to be constructed 25 miles north of Philadelphia, near Valley Forge. The location was strategic—the British Army had captured Philadelphia that fall and the land area had small creeks that would impede attacks due to its uphill location.

The prospects looked dire for the 12,000 men encamped at Valley Forge. The roads were impassable due to snow. The Continental Army was undersupplied and underfed. The men were neglected, with tattered clothing, worn-out shoes, and disheveled hair. Their constructed shelters were dark, cold log huts with dirt floors, a pit, and a sheet for the door, and there were 12 men per hut, leading to rampant disease.

Historians estimate somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 men died in that bitter cold winter. In Philadelphia, the Red Coats were well taken care of, quartering themselves in American homes and availing themselves of their supplies while guarding the city to prevent supplies from being directed to the Valley Forge camp.

As the story is told by Reverend Snowden in his “Diary and Remembrances,” Isaac Potts, a Quaker, a Tory, and a pacifist, was strolling through the woods in Valley Forge during the winter.

“I heard a plaintive sound as, of a man at prayer,” Potts said. “I tied my horse to a sapling and went quietly into the woods and to my astonishment I saw the great George Washington on his knees alone, with his sword on one side and his cocked hat on the other. He was at Prayer to the God of the Armies, beseeching to interpose with his Divine aid, as it was His crisis, and the cause of the country, of humanity, and of the world. Such a prayer I never heard from the lips of man. I left him alone praying. I went home and told my wife, ‘I saw a sight and heard today what I never saw or heard before,’ and just related to her what I had seen and heard and observed. We never thought a man could be a soldier and a Christian, but if there is one in the world, it is Washington. She also was astonished. We thought it was the cause of God, and America could prevail.”

A Pivotal Moment

Not only was this a pivotal moment for Isaac Potts—he switched to the Whig party and was now a supporter of the war—it also appeared to be a pivotal moment for the Continental Army. Baron von Steuben took command; utilizing his manual “Regulation for the Order of Discipline of the Troops of the United States.” He created a schedule, conducted drills, and instructed on the use of bayonets and battlefield formations and maneuvers. The spring of 1778 brought the French to the side of the Americans. France and America replenished food and supplies and built new roads and bridges. In June 1778, the British abandoned Philadelphia and retreated to New York. At the end of that same month, the British withdrew at the Battle of Monmouth in New Jersey. As more dominoes fell, eventually the British surrendered in Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781.

The prayer of Washington is seen by many as the pivotal moment that changed the trajectory of the Revolutionary War. This one pivotal moment is depicted in various works of art, including Arnold Friberg’s painting, “The Prayer at Valley Forge.” George Washington was a deeply religious man. He held a deep and abiding faith that God had put him in his position and that victory would come for the Americans. He encouraged days of prayer and fasting to seek God’s divine assistance in times of peril. Washington’s belief in freedom of religion and conscience was exemplified in his support of the Bill of Rights, his respect for the conscientious scruples of the Quakers, and his assurance to the Hebrew Congregations of Newport, Rhode Island, that they would be able to enjoy “the exercise of their inherent natural rights” and that the government would protect their religious freedoms.

This country has had other archetypal leaders who answered their calling and displayed their devotion to God and the higher law principles that it was founded upon. And their prayers seem to have been answered, as time and again the trajectory of this nation has changed. Think of Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., and John F. Kennedy. These leaders emerged with spoken and written words humbly acknowledging that our rights come from God, not the state, and that there are self-evident, objective truths. Their leadership changed the trajectory of this country, adversity was overcome, and this nation eventually healed.

In 1982, President Ronald Reagan, another iconic leader, stated: “I said before that the most sublime picture in American history is of George Washington on his knees in the snow at Valley Forge. That image personifies a people who know that it’s not enough to depend on our own courage and goodness. We must also seek help from God our father and preserver.” Reagan had Arnold Friberg’s painting on display in the White House all eight years of his presidency.

Historically as a nation, during disunity, Americans have grasped the gravity of the moment and, like their preceding iconic leaders and contemporary Americans, have returned to God and the founding principles that were embedded in the founding documents. Over the past year, it appears as though the earth has once again shifted. Not unexpectedly, Bible sales are soaring and there is an increased interest in understanding our country’s heritage. The American spirit is yet again awakening and renewing its religious and cultural allegiances.

Deborah Hommer is a history and philosophy enthusiast who gravitates toward natural law and natural rights. She founded the nonprofit ConstitutionalReflections (website under construction) with the purpose of educating others in the rich history of Western Civilization.

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History

William Becknell and the Santa Fe Trail

A wagon train forms a defensive circle at Camp Comanche, a traders' camp on the Santa Fe Trail, between the North Fork River and the Canadian River. A line of soldiers guards the encampment from attack. (An 1839 engraving by Lossing from Josiah Gregg's "Commerce of the Prairies: or the Journal of a Santa Fe Trader"/Getty Images)

When a young U.S. Army lieutenant named Zebulon Pike set out to explore the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains in 1806, he was unceremoniously arrested by Spanish troops in modern-day Colorado. The Spaniards marched him at gunpoint through northern Mexico (including today’s New Mexico and Texas) before deporting him to Louisiana. Isolationist Spanish authorities thus jealously guarded their frontiers against perceived American incursions.

Only a few years after Pike’s journey, however, Mexico erupted into revolution. What this development might mean for American traders, no one could say. Regardless, a vast, largely uncharted buffer territory yet separated Mexico proper from the United States. From the Missouri border, hundreds of miles of plains—inhabited by bands of highly mobile and often hostile American Indians—ran up against hundreds of miles of desert and mountains. All of this must be traversed before one could ever catch a glimpse of Santa Fe.

Enter William Becknell. Becknell had lived in Missouri for around a decade, making his way further and further west until finally setting himself up on the Missouri River—the state’s western border. A veteran of the War of 1812, Becknell worked a farm, traded horses, and operated a ferry across the Missouri at Arrow Rock. Later, he tried his hand at salt mining, and he speculated in land, too. To carry out his various enterprises, Becknell borrowed a sizable amount of money.

Spurred by Debts

Then came the Panic of 1819. Monetary inflation, much of it in the form of unredeemable paper money, drove gold and silver coin into the hoarder’s cache. Businesses shuttered. Banks collapsed. Loans were called in and credit contracted—and Becknell’s creditors demanded payment in gold or silver. How would he come up with the money?

The standard hard-money unit circulating in the United States at the time was the Spanish dollar. Due to the Panic, these were now in very short supply. Becknell determined, then, to head west, deep into Spanish-controlled territory, to see if he could trade for silver coin. In August 1821, he placed an advertisement in the local newspaper. “W. BECKNELL” was captaining “[a] Company of 17 men … destined to the westward,” the notice read. The party hoped to increase its ranks to 30. “On the first day of September the company will cross the Missouri at the Arrow Rock,” the notice informed its readers. Any who wished to join were instructed on where and when to meet.

But when the prearranged day arrived, only a handful of men—perhaps five—showed up prepared for the journey. Including Becknell himself, then, the company may have numbered a mere six.

The Santa Fe Trail with its branches and present-day state boundaries. (National Park Service)

Moving in a southwesterly direction, Becknell’s company crossed the plains of Kansas—meeting virtually no natives along the way—to the Arkansas River. Continuing west along the Arkansas, Becknell turned southwest again at the much smaller Purgatoire River (thereby missing Pike’s Peak by about 160 miles). The stream led them to an offshoot of the Rockies. The journey through these mountains was difficult, but on the other side, Becknell and his company were greeted by a fantastical landscape of desert mesas, buttes, and canyons.

Reception by the Mexicans

Continuing southwest about 100 miles, the men suddenly encountered a contingent of 400 Mexican soldiers traveling in formation. They were led by a captain named Pedro Ignacio Gallego.

This was the moment of truth. Would this agent of the state, with a veritable army at his back, confiscate the Americans’ goods, deport them, or imprison them—as had been done to explorers and would-be American traders in the past?

As it turns out, Gallego had been sent on patrol not to seek out trespassing Americans, but rather to counter a recent wave of violent raids by the Navajo and the Comanche against Mexican settlements in the area. Indeed, Gallego at that very moment had been tracking a marauding band of Comanches when he’d spotted Becknell and his company. In his diary (translated here from the original Spanish), Gallego later described the meeting with Becknell:

“About 3:30 p.m. encountered six Americans at the Puertocito de la Piedra Lumbre. They parleyed with me and at about 4 p.m. we halted at the stream at Piedra Lumbre. Not understanding their words nor any of the signs they made, I decided to return to El Vado.”

Becknell’s own account of the meeting adds more detail:

“On Tuesday morning the 13th, we had the satisfaction of meeting with a party of Spanish troops. Although the difference of our language would not admit of conversation, yet the circumstances attending their reception of us, fully convinced us of their hospitable disposition and friendly feelings.”

The meeting was thus an amicable one, despite the language barrier, and Becknell came away convinced of the Mexicans’ “manifestations of kindness.” The two groups camped together that night, and the next day traveled together, too. Entering a town, a “grateful” Becknell noted that its inhabitants exhibited “civility and welcome.” It is likely that Becknell then learned of Mexican victory over the Spanish in their revolution. Mexico was independent. From here, the Americans were allowed to continue their journey on their own.

Trading in Santa Fe

In the middle of November, some 77 days after departing Missouri, Becknell and his men finally entered the town of Santa Fe. The new governor of New Mexico, Facundo Melgares, who had also been the old governor of Spanish New Mexico, was the same man who had arrested Pike 15 years earlier! Melgares personally welcomed Becknell and his men, informing them that Mexico was open for business.

Becknell spent several weeks trading with the highly receptive inhabitants of Santa Fe, offering calico cloth and other items from the States for Spanish dollars. On the way home to the United States, he traveled in a direct northeasterly direction (rather than following east-west or north-south river trails), which avoided mountains altogether in favor of a mostly flat, level path: the imposingly dry Cimarron Desert. Fortunately, the Cimarron River provided something of a watery path through this otherwise sand-sage country, though the river sometimes dried up completely.

Five months after his initial departure from “the Arrow Rock,” Becknell crossed back into Missouri, his saddlebags filled with Spanish silver. A few hundred dollars’ worth of trade goods had been swapped for around 6,000 dollars in hard coin. His debts could now surely be paid—indeed, several times over!—with money to spare.

But Becknell wasn’t finished. The next year, he returned to Santa Fe—this time, of course, opting for the Cimarron route. Crucially, he brought with him several covered wagons, the first ever to cross this territory. The trip took just 48 days, and apart from an ordeal involving the Osage Indians—who kidnapped three of Becknell’s party and tortured them before the Missourian managed to get them back—it appears to have been uneventful. Later accounts that Becknell and his men at one point almost died of thirst, only surviving by sucking the liquid contents out of crudely removed animal stomachs, are of questionable authenticity. In any case, Becknell and company returned home from this second trip having earned 3,000 percent profits.

Becknell had blazed the Santa Fe Trail. Later, he would help map it as a surveyor and guide. And for the next 60 years, it was some variation of Becknell’s wagon trail upon which countless travelers and traders moved goods between New Mexico and the East.

Dr. Jackson, who teaches Western, Islamic, American, Asian, and world histories at the university level, is also known on YouTube as “The Nomadic Professor.” You can follow his work, including entire online history courses featuring his signature on-location videos filmed the world over, at NomadicProfessor.com.

Categories
Founding Fathers History

Founding Father George Clymer: A Founder Twice Over

American politician George Clymer (1739-1813), circa 1780. Signed Declaration of Independence in 1776, Constitutional Convention member in 1787. Engraved by J.B. Longacre from a miniature by Trott. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

By the time George Clymer was 1 year old, both his mother and his father were dead. Orphaned, George was placed in the care of his Philadelphia uncle, William Coleman. Coleman was an extraordinary man—a lawyer and merchant of Quaker stock, a friend of Benjamin Franklin (and member of the latter’s Junto), a founder with Franklin of the American Philosophical Society and the University of Pennsylvania, and a leading philanthropist. In his “Autobiography,” Franklin described Coleman as possessed of the “coolest, clearest head, the best heart, and the exactest morals of almost any man I ever met.” And fortunately for young Clymer, uncle William loved him like a son.

Clymer was educated primarily in the extensive personal library of his new benefactor, where Coleman often found the lad poring over some tome or another. Clymer’s favorite author was Jonathan Swift. He thus developed a predilection for learning at a young age, and before long, he had adopted “republicanism” as a political philosophy. He thus cherished liberty as defined by Thomas Gordon and John Trenchard who, writing anonymously as “Cato” in the 1720s, characterized it as:

“The power which every man has over his own actions, and his right to enjoy the fruit of his labour, art, industry, as far as by it he hurts not the society, or any members of it, by taking from any member, or by hindering him from enjoying what he himself enjoys.”

George’s education continued in his uncle’s counting-house, where he was trained in numbers—and the ins and outs of running a mercantile enterprise.

An Influential Merchant in Tempestuous Times

Clymer inherited some wealth from his grandfather in 175o. Then, with the death of William Coleman in 1769, he inherited the lion’s share of his uncle’s sizable estate as well. This was a great material blessing, of course, but these were tempestuous times. The French and Indian War had effectively removed the French from North America—but British authorities decided to leave ten thousand troops on the continent. To raise revenue in support of these troops, the various Navigation Acts—heretofore somewhat ignored—would finally be enforced, including a new set of regulations: the Sugar Act (1764). Colonists from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania had protested loudly at this, questioning Parliament’s very right to levy such a tax in the first place. Many colonials boycotted British goods.

The real uproar, however, came with Parliament’s passage of the Stamp Act (1765), which applied an internal tax on the colonies for the first time. In response, the Sons of Liberty rioted in the streets, colonial legislatures passed anti-Stamp Act resolutions, and an inter-colonial Stamp Act Congress issued a joint protest to Parliament and to the king. Clymer, now 26 years old and recently married, was among the protesting colonials. Indeed, among the Philadelphia elite, he was one of the most militant advocates of resistance to Britain.

Even though the Stamp Act was eventually repealed, Parliament immediately passed the Declaratory Act, reminding the colonists that Parliament hadn’t given up the principle that it could legislate for the colonies “in all cases whatsoever.” The subsequent Townshend Acts demonstrated this, and once again the non-importation movement roared to life, crippling British exports. Clymer himself led boycott efforts in Philadelphia, at the same time authoring political pamphlets and broadsides in support of separation from Britain—a very radical view at the time. Despite the barrage of colonial opposition, Charles Townshend, the British politician who proposed the Townshend Acts, stringently enforced the acts. When the Massachusetts assembly issued an anti-Townshend circular letter, the governor dissolved the assembly, sparking mob violence, in turn precipitating the arrival of four regiments of British troops to Boston.

It was in this atmosphere that Clymer inherited his uncle’s significant mercantile business. He now had much more to lose, even as the military occupation up north produced ever-worsening relations between British authorities and the people of Massachusetts—and, by extension, those of other colonies as well. The killing of a twelve-year-old named Christopher Snider by a customs informer in Boston was the last straw, leading within a couple of weeks to the “Boston Massacre.” Troops were subsequently pulled out of Boston proper.

The Tea Act and Tea Parties

Though things seemed to quiet down after 1770, the Gaspee Affair of 1772—when a British customs schooner was attacked off the coast of Rhode Island—sparked both British and colonial outrage once more. The next year, the Tea Act was passed, favoring the British East India Company at the expense of countless American smugglers.

At 34 years of age, Clymer took charge of local resistance to the Tea Act. When the Boston rebels established a committee of correspondence with fellow rebels in Philadelphia, they particularly sought out Clymer. Clymer also played a leading role in Philadelphia’s Oct. 16, 1773 “tea meeting,” when, according to an early biographer, citizens of the city were impressed by Clymer’s “reasoning, sincerity, zeal, and enthusiastic patriotism.” The gathering produced a series of resolutions, one of which declared that:

“The resolution lately entered into by the East India Company, to send out their tea to America subject to the payment of duties on its being landed here, is an open attempt to enforce the ministerial plan, and a violent attack upon the liberties of America.”

The resolutions of the Philadelphia “tea meeting” inspired Bostonians to similar resolves. Indeed, Massachusetts man John Adams would later write that:

“The flame kindled on that day [Oct. 16, 1773] soon extended to Boston and gradually spread throughout the whole continent. It was the first throe of that convulsion which delivered Great Britain of the United States.”

That December, just days after Boston’s more famous “Tea Party,” Philadelphia held one of her own, intercepting a British tea ship. Clymer himself convinced the captain to turn around and return to Britain.

George Clymer thus helped set in motion the chain of events that would ultimately explode into armed revolution.

Signing the Founding Documents

After the “shot heard round the world” was fired at Lexington, initiating the American Revolutionary War, Clymer answered the call for “Patriot” volunteers, engaging the British in company with other Pennsylvanians in support of George Washington and the Continental Army. He also established a militia and helped fortify Philadelphia. Around the same time, and in a show of support for “the cause,” he poured much of his gold and silver into the Congress’s paper money, or “continentals,” eventually losing a fortune when the “continentals” were inflated into worthlessness. But when part of the Pennsylvania delegation to the Second Continental Congress rejected the proposed joint Declaration of Independence and abandoned that body, Clymer was elected to help fill their vacant positions.

This he did—and as such, he was present to inscribe his signature onto the new confederation’s founding document, along with 55 other men. “For the support of this Declaration,” Clymer and his fellows thereby announced, “with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”

Clymer went on to act as a liaison between George Washington and the Continental Congress, a risky business, since it often involved covert travel across enemy territory to the front; served in the Congress for most of the war years; helped formulate Pennsylvania’s constitution; secured an alliance with the Shawnee and the Delaware; and raised vital funds for the Continental Army. After the war, he continued to work as a merchant while serving in the Pennsylvania legislature, then represented that state in the Philadelphia Convention of 1787. It was there that the Constitution was written. Clymer was a signatory.

Thus it was that Clymer became one of only half a dozen men to have signed both the Declaration of Independence and, 11 years later, the federal Constitution. In his honor, a borough and a township in Pennsylvania and a town in New York are all named after him.

Dr. W. Kesler Jackson is a university professor of history. Known on YouTube as “The Nomadic Professor,” he offers online history courses featuring his signature on-location videos, filmed the world over, at NomadicProfessor.com

Categories
History

The Education of Inventor Michael Owens

Ten Arm Owens Automatic Bottle Machine. Courtesy of Owen's Automatic Bottle Machine Co., Toledo, Ohio. (Library of Congress)

Michael Owens came from Irish stock. His family had escaped a potato famine and an oppressive British regime by immigrating to America, eventually settling in Wheeling, West Virginia. Here, there was mining work to be had. Being poor and one of seven children, it was important for 9-year-old Michael to contribute to the family income. Into the mines he went. The year was 1868.

One day, Michael was struck in the eye by a piece of coal, accidentally let loose by the overzealous swing of a fellow miner’s pick. The blow knocked the boy to the ground, and out cold. Mrs. Owens immediately decided that young Michael’s coal mining days were over. At age 10, then, he went to work as a “blower’s dog” in a local glass factory.

Ironically, coal remained a major part of the boy’s job. As a blower’s dog, Michael assisted the (adult) glassblower by keeping the furnace filled with the sooty stuff. The constant heat—not infrequently burning the boy—ensured that the soda ash, sand, and other ingredients mixed inside large pots and placed in the furnace could melt into blowable molten glass. The crew with whom Michael worked (perhaps half a dozen men and boys) produced roughly one glass bottle per minute.

Young Michael Owens worked 60-hour weeks. He was paid 30 cents a day. He went home each night covered in ash and coal dust. It’s a fair bet that his lungs were full of ash and dust, too.

Throughout his teens, Michael rarely if ever had the opportunity to benefit from a traditional school setting—but as the years passed, the lad gained a reputation as a diligent worker. He came to be meticulously trained in every aspect of the glass-making process. “Young or old,” Owens told an American Magazine reporter years later, “work doesn’t hurt anybody.”

At 20, Michael was still in the glass business, but now he was an employee of Edward Libbey’s Toledo Glass Factory. And Edward Libbey had money to invest in Michael Owens’s big idea.

Inventing a Bottle-Making Machine

It took Owens five years to produce it, then a few more to perfect it, but in the end (and after burning through half a million of Libbey’s investment dollars), he’d done it. Michael Owens had invented a working automated bottle-making machine.

With six rotating arms (later more were added), each outfitted with a pump and a plunger that could suck up the molten glass and then push air into the mix, bottles were “blown” without a single human touch. The machine even cut the bottles and set them on a conveyor belt, which guided them into a furnace for final heating and cooling.

Even the first version of Owens’s machine was unquestionably more efficient than the most skilled human team of bottle makers. Thanks to his invention, one bottle per minute was now six bottles per minute. After making improvements, six turned to twelve. And not only could bottles be (many times more) efficiently produced, but they also could be more cheaply produced, since expensive, skilled blowers were no longer required. In addition, all bottles were now identical—sharing the same dimensions, the same weight, the same everything. Costs per bottle plummeted 94 percent.

Libbey and Owens quickly co-formed a new company in 1903, the Owens Bottle Machine Company, stocked with the new machines, which the two now licensed out to other companies. Within just a few years, Owens’s automated bottle-making machines could crank out almost 250 bottles per minute!

Founding Big Companies

Owens and Libbey went on to establish the Owens Bottle Company (1919) and, despite frequent criticism from doubters, collaborated over the years with another inventor, Irving Colburn, to perfect the production of distortion-free plate glass. The trio succeeded, and the Libbey-Owens Sheet Glass Company (1916) went on to make millions, too.

Now in his 60s, some wondered if the indefatigable Owens was considering retirement. “The real reason I keep on is because I like to [work], I want to work,” he is reported to have said. “It is the most interesting thing in the world, and it is the most constructive thing. I’ve enjoyed 52 years of it, and I hope to enjoy a good many more.” Owens went on to develop laminated glass for automobiles—he called it “safety glass”—which was much more crack- and shatter-proof than earlier varieties.

Michael Joseph Owens (Courtesy of The Herald-Dispatch, Huntington, W. Va.)

Toledo came to be known as “The Glass City,” Libbey was hailed as the father of the modern glass industry, and Mike Owens died a rich man at age 64 in 1923. In a tribute to the inventor published in The Toledo Times, Libbey described Owens as “self-educated,” possessed of “an unusual logical ability,” and “endowed with a keen sense of farsightedness and vision.” Libbey hailed him as “one of the greatest inventors this country has ever known”—one whose name “will stand out as a pronounced example of what can be accomplished by vision, faith, persistence, and confidence in one’s creative efforts.”

The Owens Bottle Company merged with the Illinois Glass Company to become the Owens-Illinois Glass Company—a Fortune 500 company to this day.

And 60 years after Owens’s passing, the bottle-making machine invented by an erstwhile West Virginia child laborer was hailed by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers as “the most significant advance in glass production in over 2,000 years.”

Dr. Jackson, who teaches Western, Islamic, American, Asian, and world histories at the university level, is also known on YouTube as “The Nomadic Professor.” You can follow his work, including entire online history courses featuring his signature on-location videos filmed the world over, at NomadicProfessor.com

Categories
History

New York’s Liberty Pole

Raising the Liberty Pole
"Raising the Liberty Pole." Painted by F.A. Chapman; engraved by John C. McRae, N.Y. (Library of Congress)

In the decade leading up to the American Revolutionary War, Boston wasn’t the only scene of intense friction between British soldiers and American colonials. Imperial troops had likewise been stationed in New York.

It’s a truism in history that occupying armies, whatever their original intentions, eventually breed resentment from the locals. While Boston had its Liberty Tree, here the Sons of Liberty had been erecting liberty poles—wooden poles mounted by a cap—since at least 1766, when the first was raised during celebrations of the repeal of the Stamp Act. That original pole, hoisted in “the Fields”—today’s City Hall Park in Manhattan, at the time located just outside the city but, not coincidentally, right in front of a British barracks—stood as a reminder to all of colonial rights.

Liberty poles invoked a well-known classical motif: the spear mounted by the cap of a freed slave, symbolizing the freedom of the Romans from the tyrant Julius Caesar. The same symbol had been used after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 on a commemorative medal struck for William III.

Joseph Allicocke—an influential merchant and one of the instigators of the raising of New York’s original Liberty Pole—described his motivations without mincing words: “to scourge the base Enemies of our Country and our greatest Darling LIBERTY.” Every day, a group of New Yorkers gathered at the Liberty Pole and performed drills, certainly meant to egg on watching British soldiers.

And it worked. As an object of protest and resistance, New York’s first Liberty Pole was torn down by those same British soldiers.

The colonists responded by raising it up again.

The soldiers once more tore it down, enraging many of New York’s inhabitants. Up it went again. Down, then up, then down.

During one demolition, a soldier fired into the disapproving crowd and wounded one of its members. Another Redcoat bayoneted a leading citizen of the colony. Though one of these soldiers was later punished with five hundred lashes for the crime of assaulting a civilian, tension between soldiery and citizenry remained high. Liberty poles kept going up, only to be torn down by ever-less-patient troops.

In response, New Yorkers raised a new sort of pole, its lower portions armored with iron plates, the pole itself driven so deep into the ground that it was nigh impossible to tear down the way previous poles had been. The British general on the scene, Thomas Gage, described the circumstances:

People seem distracted everywhere. It is now as common here to assemble on all occasions of public concern at the Liberty Pole and Coffee House as for the ancient Romans to repair to the Forum. And orators harangue on all sides.

Meanwhile, the New York assembly had been temporarily dissolved for failing to appropriate funds for the local garrison. When the assembly finally gave in to British demands for the appropriation in December 1769, the Sons of Liberty were furious, posting a broadside addressed “To the Betrayed Inhabitants of the City and Colony of New York.”

British soldiers, meanwhile, did what they had always done: they set out to chop down the Liberty Pole, though in this case, they used a charge of black powder to blow it up (when that didn’t work, they managed to chop it down the old-fashioned way). Then, to pour salt in the wound, they sawed the pole into pieces and dumped them in front of the above-mentioned, Sons-of-Liberty-frequented “Coffee House” before publishing their own broadside attacking the Sons of Liberty as “the real enemies of society.”

On Jan. 19, 1770—about a week after the (armored) Liberty Pole’s destruction—the deterioration of relations between soldiers and New Yorkers erupted into out-and-out fighting at the Fields. Three thousand New Yorkers, some armed with clubs or cutlasses, gathered at what was left of the pole (now a mere stump) and began to harass the soldiers.

Those soldiers now came pouring out of the barracks. The order to the troops: “Draw your bayonets and cut your way through them.”

The “battle” that resulted was actually more of a huge street brawl. From the Fields, it spilled into New York City’s streets, including one called Golden Hill (now Eden’s Alley in Manhattan). For two whole days, the city’s government collapsed, armed gangs of locals roaming the streets along with armed gangs of soldiers, all looking for a fight. Several Redcoats were injured (one seriously), and a few New Yorkers, too. The so-called Battle of Golden Hill ended when additional military forces finally managed to escort the roving soldiers back to their barracks.

Had things continued to spiral out of control, the situation might have devolved into a “Boston Massacre”-style event weeks before the actual Boston Massacre.

The regiment was eventually exiled by an appalled Gage to service in Florida. New York magistrates, similarly appalled at their own citizens’ behavior, refused to allow another Liberty Pole to be erected at the Fields.

But a leading Son of Liberty named Isaac Sears purchased the plot of land adjacent to the previous site—and proceeded to build a private liberty pole taller than any structure in New York. Fitted with metal plating, the pole was capped with the word “LIBERTY.”

It would stand until the outbreak of the Revolutionary War five years later.

W. Kesler Jackson, who teaches Western, Islamic, American, Asian, and World histories at the university level, is also known on YouTube as “The Nomadic Professor.” You can follow his work, including entire online history courses featuring his signature on-location videos filmed the world over, at his website (NomadicProfessor.com).