From the myriad of rude maps and recollections of geographic features and locations amid the tales of the mountain men, the next group would advance. They would sort, collate and correct the mistakes in location with scientific precision while naming many of the features of the land; enter “The Map Makers”.
The surprise purchase of Louisiana in 1803 that doubled the land mass of the United States created the need to know what that purchased entailed; President Jefferson would put five expeditions to that task.
The Louisiana Purchase and its promise of a water route to the west coast would spur the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804-1806.
In an effort to learn more of the huge purchase Jefferson dispatched astronomer and naturalist John Dunbar to follow the Red River of Texas to its source in 1804; the expedition would not complete its mission.
Lieutenant Zebulon Pike headed an expedition to locate the source of the Mississippi (August 9, 1805- April 20, 1806). The Red River Expedition of 1806 under the command of Captain Richard Sparks and astronomer Thomas Freeman would be halted by Spanish troops in late July 1806. Lieutenant Pike would head another expedition to find the head waters of the Arkansas and Red Rivers July 15, 1806; Pike would be arrested by Spanish officials detained and released to US officials at Natchitoches, Louisiana July 1, 1807.
Zebulon Pike
President James Monroe would continue this pattern of exploration:
Major Stephen Harriman Long explored parts of the upper Mississippi; selecting sites for Fort Smith on the Arkansas River and Fort St. Anthony at the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers in 1817.
Colonel Henry Atkinson and Major Stephen H. Long began the operation termed the Yellowstone Expedition August 13, 1819 tasked with mapping the uncharted lands between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains. Financial difficulties doomed the expedition; it was abandoned by June 1820.
Atkinson, L, and Long
General Henry Atkinson led a second expedition to the Yellowstone country in 1825.
July 4, 1832 marked the beginning of the United States Army Corps of Topographical Engineers. In the years before the Civil War the Corps’ officers using the latest technology mapped the west, inventoried its assets and laid out the nation’s borders. Of the Corps William Goetzmann wrote: …”the Corps of Topographical Engineers was a central institution of Manifest Destiny”.
Many were graduates of West Point with a degree in engineering who would rub shoulders with other learned men. Men of many and varied disciplines, botany, geology and astronomy; as such they were advocates of scientific journals and staunch supporters of the Smithsonian Institute.
It is estimated that there were only about 3,000 mountain men and trappers at the peak of the fur trade. Some would become legends in their own time, others would be recognized later. That some were anti-social outcasts from society only added to the myths, tall tales and downright prevarications that are part and parcel of “The Mountain Men”.
Here are a few of these intrepid souls, some of their adventures and their contributions to the knowledge of what was an unexplored wilderness.
James Felix Bridger was born March 17, 1804 in Richmond, Virginia, his family moved to the St. Louis area in 1812. Five years later and Jim was orphaned, unable to read or write he was apprenticed to a blacksmith. At age 18 he joined William Ashley’s fur trapping expedition in the upper Missouri River March 20, 1822. He was present at the June 2, 1823 attack by Arikara Indians. It has been rumored that Bridger was involved in the Hugh Glass Affair; subsequent investigations have discredited the story. His involvement in the Fur Trade would dictate much of his travel up and down the Rocky Mountains from present day southern Colorado to the Canadian border and as far west as Utah and Idaho. He is credited with being the first white man to see the geysers and mud pots of what would become “Yellowstone National Park”. His travels took him to the Great Salt Lake; he believed he had reached an arm of the Pacific Ocean. In 1830, he bought out Jed Smith’s fur company and established the “Rocky Mountain Fur Company” and competed openly with Astor’s American Fur Company as well as the Hudson’s Bay Company. His partner Louis Vasquez and he opened a trading post on the Oregon Trail to service the wagon trains in 1843. As the fur trade died, the resourceful Bridger in addition to his lucrative trading post turned to being a guide. In 1850 as part of the Stansbury Expedition, he would scout a new pass over the Rocky Mountains (Bridger Pass) some 60 miles south of South Pass that would become the route of the Trans-Continental Rail Road. In the 1859 Raynolds Expedition Bridger would guide this mapping expedition over Union Pass to explore the towering Teton Range. In 1864 he opened the Bridger Trail into Montana thereby skirting the Bozeman Trail. In 1865 he would scout for the US Army in “Red Cloud’s War”. Suffering several health issues, he returned to Missouri in 1868. He would succumb to his having lived July 17, 1881 at the age of 77.
Christopher Houston Carson (aka Kit) was born December 24, 1809 near Richmond, Kentucky. The Carson family moved to Missouri when he was about a year old. Kit’s father was killed by a falling tree limb when he was 8. That may be the reason he was never learned to read or write; he was illiterate throughout his life. When his mother remarried 4 years later, the headstrong young Kit was apprenticed to a saddle maker in Franklin, Missouri, the eastern terminus of the Santa Fe Trail. Lured by tales of the west, young Kit abandoned his apprenticeship and joined a band of traders and trappers going to Santa Fe in August and arriving in Santa Fe in November of 1826. Carson would settle in with Mathew Kinkead in Taos who would teach young Kit the rudiments of trapping. Kit would learn Spanish and several Indian languages plus the universal sign language of the plains Indians. Kit worked as a wagon driver, a translator and a cook between 1827 and 1829. He was cooking for Ewing Young during the winter of 1828-29. He would join Young’s trapping expedition of 1829. In August of that year the party ventured into Apache country and was attacked. This was Carson’s first combative encounter with the Apache. There would be many more. They would trap and trade their way into Alta California, making their way from Sacramento to Los Angeles returning to Taos in April 1830. Carson would join an expedition led by Thomas Fitzpatrick in 1831 into the central Rocky Mountains. He would spend the next ten years as a trapper and hunter. He was hired as a hunter at Bent’s Fort in 1841. A chance meeting with Charles Fremont turned fortuitous for Carson when Fremont hired him to guide his 1st Expedition in 1842; the mapping of the Oregon Trail from the Missouri River to South Pass. He would lead Fremont’s 2nd Expedition to map the Oregon Trail from South Pass to The Dalles on the Columbia River (1843-44). A near disaster in the Sierras was averted due to Carson’s good sense and skills. Carson would lead Fremont’s 3rd Expedition into California and Oregon of 1845 and be present during the Bear Flag Revolt of June 1846. He would lead a futile rescue effort for Mrs. Ann White, her child and her Negro servant in 1849 that would haunt him the rest of his life. Carson would lead a group to northern California and southern Oregon with seven thousand sheep in 1853. Kit would dictate his memoirs in 1856; the manuscript would be lost, only to surface in a trunk in Paris in 1905. DeWitt Peters would write Carson’s first biography in 1859, Carson would remark,”Peter’s laid it on a leetle too thick”. When the Civil War broke out Carson enlisted as a Lieutenant in Union Army April 1861; he was advanced to Colonel in August 1861. His unit would be involved in the “Battle of Valverde” in February 1862. Carson’s commanding officer Major General James H. Carelton ordered Carson to capture and drive the Mescalero Apache to a reservation on the Pecos River in eastern New Mexico. By March 1863 some 400 Mescalero Apache had arrived at Bosque Redondo. Carleton ordered Carson to initiate actions against the Navajo; by the fall of 1863 Carson began a scorched earth campaign against the Navajo, directed to continue his campaign, Carson entered Canyon De Chelly, burning hogans, crops and slaughtering livestock. The starving Navajo surrendered and began “The Long Walk” that saw stragglers shot and killed. November 25, 1864 Carson led his forces against a coalition of southwestern Indian tribes in a four hour engagement at the “First Battle of Adobe Walls”. General Carleton’s hatred for the Indian drove his treatment of the Indians quartered at Basque Redondo and reports reaching Washington forced a hearing resulting in the decision to close the reservation at Basque Redondo. The experiment known as Bosque Redondo was a complete failure, General Carleton was fired, and as a result the Navajo were allowed to return to their homeland. With the end of the Civil War Carson was appointed commandant at Ft. Garand, Colorado as a Brevet Brigadier General March 13, 1865. He began ranching after leaving the Army; when his wife unexpectedly died it was if his spirit died with her; he died one month later May 23, 1868 at the age of 58.
Richard Lemon Owings (aka Dick Owens) was born October 14, 1812 in Owings Mills, Maryland. He grew up near Zanesville, Ohio, in 1834 he left the family farm and went west with Caleb Wilkins. Little is known of his movements until he meets Kit Carson in 1839. The two would often work together over the next ten years; both had established homes near Taos. In March 1845 they started a farming enterprise but closed the operation to join Fremont’s 3rd Expedition to the Great Basin and California. He would accompany Fremont and Carson over the Sierra Nevada eventually reaching Sutter’s Fort near present day Sacramento. He would leave California in 1850 and return to his family near Marion Indiana, he would marry Emily Miller in 1854. During the Civil War he moved to Iowa, moving again in 1872 to Circleville, Kansas where he lived quietly till his death June 11, 1902 at the age of 89.
Editors note: this wraps up the Mountain Men, next week we start on the Map Makers.
This post summarizes Operation Watchtower, the invasion of Guadalcanal. The invasion kicked off on 7 August 1942. Rather than rehashing this well known and oft written about battle I thought I might do an overview and a photo essay instead. Let me know what you think.
On 7 August 1942, Allied forces, predominantly United States Marines, landed on the islands of Guadalcanal, Tulagi, and Florida in the southern Solomon Islands, with the objective of denying their use by the Japanese to threaten Allied supply and communication routes between the US, Australia, and New Zealand. The Allies also intended to use Guadalcanal and Tulagi as bases to support a campaign to eventually capture or neutralize the major Japanese base at Rabaul on New Britain. The Allies overwhelmed the outnumbered Japanese defenders, who had occupied the islands since May 1942, and captured Tulagi and Florida, as well as an airfield (later named Henderson Field) that was under construction on Guadalcanal. Powerful American and Australian naval forces supported the landings.
Surprised by the Allied offensive, the Japanese made several attempts between August and November to retake Henderson Field. Three major land battles, seven large naval battles (five nighttime surface actions and two carrier battles), and continual (almost daily) aerial battles, culminated in the decisive Naval Battle of Guadalcanal in early November, in which the last Japanese attempt to bombard Henderson Field from the sea and land with enough troops to retake it was defeated. In December, the Japanese abandoned their efforts to retake Guadalcanal and evacuated their remaining forces by 7 February 1943, in the face of an offensive by the US Army’s XIV Corps.
The Guadalcanal campaign was a significant strategic combined arms Allied victory in the Pacific theater. Along with the Battle of Midway, it has been called a turning point in the war against Japan. The Japanese had reached the peak of their conquests in the Pacific. The victories at Milne Bay, Buna-Gona, and Guadalcanal marked the Allied transition from defensive operations to the strategic initiative in the theater, leading to offensive operations such as the Solomon Islands, New Guinea, and Central Pacific campaigns, that eventually resulted in Japan’s surrender and the end of World War II.
MajGen AA Vandegrift
In preparation for the offensive in the Pacific in May 1942, U.S. Marine Major General Alexander Vandegrift was ordered to move his 1st Marine Division from the United States to New Zealand. Other Allied land, naval and air force units were sent to establish or reinforce bases in Fiji, Samoa, New Hebrides and New Caledonia.
Guadalcanal is no longer merely a name of an island in Japanese military history. It is the name of the graveyard of the Japanese army
—Major General Kiyotake Kawaguchi, IJA Commander, 35th Infantry Brigade at Guadalcanal
Thirteen members of the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps were awarded the Medal of Honor for valor during the Guadalcanal campaign. (+ indicates a posthumous award.)
+Signalman First Class Douglas Albert Munro USCG (the only member of the United States Coast Guard to receive the Medal of Honor)
America’s Youth, its past and its future and its answer of the call to freedom
America’s youth has not always been paid its due. And it is to you that this missive is directed. A number of charges have been leveled at young people, some deserved, some not. Insincere, lazy, uneducated, spoiled, just to name a few, but I am here to defend you, not denigrate you.
The current education system does not stress history and its importance; it fails you with its revisionist version, in other words its untruths and abbreviated version of many events. It fails to give you a version of global geography to see where events take place and how they can affect the nations around them; sadly, the current system does not even stress US geography.
It’s not your fault you do not know the story of young people in the struggle for Independence “cause it AIN’T taught in high school history”. For instance, a number of boys between the ages of 16 to 19 were drafted into the Continental Army. You could join even much younger than 16, as did 10 year old Israel Trask, kitchen help and drummer.
Who were the fifers and drummers? They were often young boys, whose fathers were soldiers, or older men, who were no longer of fighting age.
Here’s but a few of the many young people that risked the wrath of the British in the struggle for independence. Punishments were harsh; they ranged from lashes to hanging.
13 year old Henry Yeager, very nearly hanged by the British as a spy
Andrew Jackson, yeah that one that was later President, captured and imprisoned by the British at age 14 (represented in the featured image)
15 year old Abigail Foote, repaired and made clothing for the Continental army, she was forced to hide her work from British spies
Miss Dicey Langston, a 16 year old spy for the rebels, listened to the plans of her Loyalist neighbors
16 year old Sybil Ludington made a desperate 40 mile night ride in the rain to gather the local militia
Not to forget the 19 year old aide de camp to General George Washington, the Marquis de Lafayette
Young Spies (Universal History Archive/UIG/Getty images
Historians tend to forget the contribution of so many of these young people, to you I say, they are your reason to take pride in YOUR country. It is time for you to take the banner of freedom and tell the world of the young PATRIOTS that brought about this great nation.
The American Revolution was not won by a bunch of old dead guys. Quite the contrary it was the young people that made it happen. Lest we forget, half of the population of the colonies was 16 years of age and younger. The American Revolution was a young person’s cause and many who participated were under the age of 20.
This is the message I want to send to you young people. Just as the young people of Colonial America were the “Beginning of our Nation,” the igniters of the Torch of Liberty, ”YOU are the future” of our nation. It is to YOU the torch of Freedom will be passed. The task before you is monumental. The light of liberty is in danger of being extinguished by the dark forces of tyranny. Are you strong enough to overcome such a Herculean obstacle?
To this I say Yes, America’s young has always answered the call of liberty. Funny thing about Americans, we will put up with a lot, but when we are through with being taken for fools, we come out fighting and then it’s Katy bar the door. John Ligota said ”the most ferocious fighting machine in the world is a pissed off 19 year old Marine”. A fitting statement for a young generation of dedicated freedom fighters.
“Youth is the season of hope, enterprise and energy, to a nation as well as an individual”.
Gitche Manito, the mighty, Mitchy Manito, the bad: In the breast of every Redman, in the dust of every dead man, There is a tiny heap of Gitche And a mighty mound of Mitche- There’s the good and there’s the bad.
Long ago, when the world was young, an old Lakota spiritual leader was on a high mountain. On the mountain, he had a vision. In his vision, Iktomi – the great trickster and teacher of wisdom – appeared in the form of a spider.
Iktomi spoke to him in a sacred language. Only spiritual leaders of the Ojibwe could understand. As Iktomi spoke, he took the elder’s willow hoop – which had feathers, horse hair, beads and offerings on it – and began to spin a web.
He spoke to the elder about the cycles of life and how we begin our lives as infants. We then move on to childhood and in to adulthood. Finally, we go to old age where we must be taken care of as infants, thus, completing the cycle.
“But,” Iktomi said as he continued to spin his web, “in each time of life there are many forces – some good and some bad. If you listen to the good forces, they will steer you in the right direction. But, if you listen to the bad forces, they will hurt you and steer you in the wrong direction.”
He continued, “There are many forces and different directions that can help or interfere with the harmony of nature and also with the Great Spirit and all of his wonderful teachings.”
All the while the spider spoke, he continued to weave his web … starting from the outside and working toward the center. When Iktomi finished speaking, he gave the Ojibwe elder the web and said, “See, the web is a perfect circle, but there is a hole in the center of the circle.”
Use the web to help yourself and your people … to reach your goals and make use of your people’s ideas, dreams and visions. If you believe in the Great Spirit, the web will catch your good ideas, and the bad ones will go through the hole.
the word is asabikeshiinh for dream catcher
it actually means spider
So “Spider Woman” served as the spiritual protector for the tribe, especially for young children, kids and babies. As the Ojibwe people continued to grow and spread out across the land, The Spider Woman found it difficult to continue to protect and watch over all the members of the tribe as they migrated farther and farther away. This is why she created the first dreamcatcher. Following her example, mothers and grandmothers would recreate the maternal keepsake as a means of mystically protecting their children and families from afar.
75 years ago today, the United States dropped the first atomic bomb ever used in warfare. The target, the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
In this Aug. 6, 1945, photo, smoke rises 20,000 feet above Hiroshima, western Japan, after the first atomic bomb was dropped during warfare.
Hiroshima was a major Japanese military hub with factories, military bases and ammunition facilities. The United States picked it as a target because of its size and landscape, and carefully avoided fire bombing the city ahead of time so American officials could accurately assess the impact of the atomic attack. The bombings hastened Japan’s surrender and prevented the need for a U.S. invasion of Japan, which planners suggested would cost a million lives.
Aug. 6, 1945 the “Enola Gay” Boeing B-29 Superfortress lands at Tinian, Northern Mariana Islands, after the U.S. atomic bombing mission against the Japanese city of Hiroshima
At 8:15 a.m., the U.S. B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped a 4-ton “Little Boy” uranium bomb from a height of 31,500 feet targeting the Aioi Bridge. The bomb exploded 43 seconds later, at 2,000 feet above the ground. Seconds after the detonation, the estimated temperature was 5400-7,200 degrees Fahrenheit at ground zero. Almost everything within 1.2 miles of ground zero was destroyed by the blast. Within one hour, a “black rain” of highly radioactive particles started falling on the city, causing additional radiation exposure.
an unidentified man stands next to a tiled fireplace where a house once stood in Hiroshima, western Japan.
An estimated 140,000 people, including those with radiation-related injuries and illnesses, died through Dec. 31, 1945. Everyone within a radius of 500 meters (1,600 feet) from ground zero died that day.
It is estimated that there were only about 3,000 mountain men and trappers at the peak of the fur trade. Some would become legends in their own time, others would be recognized later. That some were anti-social outcasts from society only added to the myths, tall tales and downright prevarications that are part and parcel of “The Mountain Men”.
Here are a few of these intrepid souls, some of their adventures and their contributions to the knowledge of what was an unexplored wilderness.
Jedediah Strong Smith was born January 6, 1799 in upstate New York. Sometime in 1822, 23 year old Smith joined “Ashley’s Hundred” and entered Fort Henry at the Mouth of the Yellowstone River October 1st, leaving supplies and continuing up river to the mouth of the Musselshell. The following spring Smith was involved in a fight with Arikara warriors that made his reputation as a fighter and leader. An encounter with a grizzly left Smith with scars that he covered by long hair. Ashley would dispatch Smith and Thomas (Broken Hand) Fitzpatrick to search out a viable route through the Rocky Mountains. Smith would learn of South Pass from friendly Crow Indians, at the Green River the party split in order to trap both upstream and downstream on the Green. The two parties reunited on the Sweetwater River in July; Fitzpatrick was chosen to report to Mr. Ashley in St. Louis. Smith went back over South Pass and may have begun “poaching” trappers from other fur companies for Ashley and Henry’s “Rocky Mountain Fur Company”. The “First Rendezvous” of 1825 Smith was offered a partnership, by the Second Rendezvous” of 1825 both Henry and Ashley had sold their shares of the company to the consortium of Jedediah Smith, David Jackson and William Sublette. Ashley agreed to broker the furs forwarded to St. Louis and send supplies to any future “Rendezvous”. On August 7, 1826 Smith began his first trip into California, first by traveling south to the Colorado River and being guided by Mojave Indians across the Mojave Desert via the western end of the Old Spanish Trail. Arrested as a suspected spy on or about December 8th, Smith would be detained by the Spanish Governor for two weeks and then ordered to leave California by the route by which he entered. Smith and his men would leave in February 1827 but turned north looking for the mythical “Buenaventura River’ the supposedly cut through the Sierra Nevada Range. Time restraints would force him to leave his men in a camp on the Stanislaus River. They would traverse the Great Basin Desert in a summer crossing Smith arrived at the Rendezvous of 1827 on July 3rd. Smith’s return to California with 18 men and two women became a fight for survival against hostile Indians with 10 men killed and the women abducted. Smith and the eight survivors finally reunited with his men September 19, 1827. Arrested again, and released again this time with a bond and ordered to leave California and not return, Smith and his men would take several months to reach the Oregon Country. A squabble over an ax turned deadly July 14, 1828, the result being 15 men massacred by Umpqua Indians. Smith would winter at Fort Vancouver returning to meet with his partners in 1829. After another successful trapping and trading expedition into Blackfeet country in 1829-30, Jedediah Smith, David Jackson and William Sublette sold their firm to Tom Fitzpatrick, Milton Sublette, Jim Bridger, Henry Fraeb and John Baptist Gervais at the rendezvous of 1830. Upon his return to St. Louis, Smith informed the Secretary of War John Eaton of his appraisal of British intentions in the Oregon Country. He then joined his partners in making some basic maps of the known west. While scouting for a trading venture to Santa Fe he would encounter a band of Comanche only to be killed in the encounter May 27, 1831 at 32 years of age.
Thomas Fitzpatrick was born in 1799, a firearms accident would leave him with a damaged left hand, he became known as “Broken Hand”. Little is known of Fitzpatrick’s early life but it is speculated that he was an Irish immigrant. He would join William Ashley’s fur enterprise in 1823; survive an Indian fight, journey into the Wind River Country and winter with Jed Smith. Spring of 1824 the trapping party crosses South Pass and begin trapping the Green River Country. Fitzpatrick would become involved in transporting goods to the trappers “Rendezvous” and returning to St. Louis with the furs. He would led a wagon trail to Oregon in 1841 and later employed as official guide to Fremont’s 2nd expedition of 1843-44. He would lead Col. Kearney to Santa Fe in 1845 then forward dispatches for Col. Fremont to Washington DC. He would be appointed Indian Agent in 1846 and work out of Bent’s Fort on the Arkansas River. At Fort Laramie in 1851 he brokered a treaty conference with many of the plains tribes. In his capacity as Indian Agent, he was in Washington the winter of 1853-54 to confer with congressional members where he contracted pneumonia and died February 7, 1854 at age 55.
looking at all the crap the democrats have to offer
—-> do notice you cannot spell democrats without RATS <—
They constantly attack everything good, all the time in every way possible
think about it for a moment, do you have anything in common with those people… anything?
I don’t
their contrived, twisted Social constructs I want no part of
They hate everything I like. The difference between them and US, is we have something called
MOTIVATION
yes, they can an are doing great damage to the 3 pillars of America
the Mind the Spirit the Body. the AINOs out in street are proof
American in name only = AINOs
have a coffee, sit an learn what MOTIVATION can accomplish
do not forget to smile
the Left may see our smile as a weakness, & that’s their first mistake
they don’t know who they be fuckin with
“For the honor of the fallen, for the glory of the dead”, Edgar Guest wrote of Belleau Wood, “The living line of courage kept the faith and moved ahead.” They are all gone now, those Marines who made a French farmer’s little wheat field into one of the most enduring of Marine Corps legends. Many of them did not survive the day. But their action has made them immortal. The Corps remembers them and honors what they did, and so they live forever. Dan Daly’s shouted challenge takes on its true meaning – if you hide in the trenches you may survive for now, but someday you will die and no one will care. If you charge the guns you may die in the next two minutes, but you will be one of the immortals. All Marines die, in the red flash of battle or the white cold of a nursing home. In the vigor of youth or the infirmity of age all will eventually die, but the Marine Corps lives on. Every Marine who ever lived is living still, in the Marines who claim the title today. It is that sense of belonging to something that will outlive your own mortality that gives people a light to live by and a flame to mark their passing.
This nation began a virtuous path as one with high ideals. It was a nation that promised opportunity and the liberty to achieve it to its citizens. It was a nation founded upon the rule of law and the ethos necessary to govern across its vast territorial expanse. It was a nation that drew much of its strength from the qualities of many rather than the few. Newly arrived citizens raced to learn the common language, melding into the society to join its national focus. As a result, science, technology and the arts flourished and were advanced to a level of sophistication that no other society had ever before achieved.
At its height, this nation had the finest, most well trained and professional military in the world. Several great wars were fought and won. But even as the victor, this great nation helped rebuild its enemies’ infrastructure in its own image, while providing them protection from others. This nation prospered for many years, gaining great wealth and empire status as the last remaining superpower with the defeat of its long time rival, but the golden age did not last.
This nation began to suffer gradual atrophy of its morality and national will beginning with the loss of an unpopular protracted conflict in a land far away, that was clearly the result of political meddling in battlefield matters. Political scandals continued to rock the very seat of its once proud Capitol. Justice suffered too. Corrupt judges and courts aligned with political agenda subverted the lawmakers, and social injustice ensued.
Towards the end, this nation’s legal system had become so corrupted by agenda, greed and political influence that perpetrators were touted as the victims, while citizens were discounted and disgraced. Special interest groups and ethnic polarization began to dominate political direction and national goals. The majority was left under attack and unrepresented. Taxes became so exorbitantly high that for many, fifty-percent or more of their income was taken by the government to provide for the numerous and expensive government-mandated social programs. Prostitution, drug use, lawlessness, corruption, and social discord were rapidly over taking this once proud nation, eroding the very core values that made it great.
The nation’s once invincible professional military now suffered many disheartening losses during piecemeal campaigns involving policing actions, nation building and peacekeeping missions which sacrificed unit cohesion, training and sense of purpose. The citizens no longer trusted their government. Civil unrest mounted as political corruption grew, finally bringing this nation to its knees. This once grand republic was permanently divided between east and west. And, in the Fifth Century, 476 A.D., Rome fell.
In 1787, around the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution, Alexander Fraser Tytler, a Scottish history professor and expert in social studies at the University of Edinburgh, wrote about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier. At the time, his scholarly perspective was classified as quixotic. “A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government,” he wrote. “A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.”
Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee FRSE (15 October 1747 – 5 January 1813)
He went on to explain, “The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years [before showing decline]. Those nations always progressed through the following sequence:
1. Bondage to spiritual faith; 2. Spiritual faith to great courage; 3. Courage to liberty; 4. Liberty to abundance; 5. Abundance to complacency; 6. Complacency to apathy; 7. Apathy to dependence; 8. Dependence back into bondage”
Many Americans believe that we are invulnerable to such a prognosis. After all, from a national security perspective, we have technical superiority, energy sufficiency, good surpluses, and most of all, military superiority. But what about national cohesiveness?
When World Wars I and II were fought, the national leaders and especially the Commander-in-Chief, had relatively few political constraints on their war making abilities and strategies. Average citizens simply did not expect to carry on a national debate about how to fight the war — only that it ought to be won and won decisively.
Today conflicts are one part military strategy and nine parts public relations, precisely because an open society demands its daily information infuse and special interest groups require adoration. Courageous political and military leadership is at a great disadvantage in such a polity, and today’s agenda-driven media takes full advantage of their power to drive the narrative.
Long hard wars, especially against stubborn and ideologically committed enemies such as Marxists and the Shari’a touting Islamic faithful, even conflicts prosecuted with a total war strategy, have become decidedly more difficult. Especially when the political leadership and – by implication the military as well – are subject to the nightly talking heads, polling data, the loudest in the crowd and a show of agenda-driven hands. While contemporary wisdom is that the greater the reach of egalitarianism – the better it becomes; this has never been established as fact or even as good theory.
In World War II the Vichy French, Hungarians, Romanians, Croatians, Iraqis, et.al, never attacked the U.S., but they were our enemies nevertheless because they were allied with the Nazis. Today Iranians, Syrians, Palestinians, et.al, are likewise our enemies because they are allied to the extent that they want a U.S. defeat at the hands of an Islam bounded by the Shari’a. So long as we continue to define the Middle East as the only enemy enclave, we are again headed for defeat because of our failure to deal with the fact neither terrorism, nor the fight against it, does not necessarily stop at national borders.
Secondly, we must recognize and fight an emboldened enemy within. The problem we face is that this enemy looks exactly like us. In fact, he is us and that takes many forms. But if this enemy is not stopped we will face the same end Rome faced. If nothing changes, nothing changes and change takes courage.
To win we must be courageous, not bold. The bold seek recognition for their acts. Boldness is a selfish, self-centered path, while courage is unselfish action that is offered from the depth of a person’s heart and soul. Boldness is non-directional, while courage has a rightful and virtuous resolve. Bold armies lose battles while courageous armies win them.
You may wonder – must one need to have a degree of boldness to achieve a courageous act? Perhaps…but boldness is more often a defense while courage always plays into a determined offense. If there are any words that you should remember as veterans and patriots, it is simply this: Be not bold, be courageous. Allow your opponent to be bold and see your opponent’s boldness for what it is… a means to beat him.
Our veterans have unselfishly demonstrated the courage of their convictions by their many sacrifices in the never-ending fight to defeat all enemies who seek to destroy our way of life. They do this amidst constant and vicious, personal and political attacks against them and their families and against the nation they protect. A veteran is someone who, at one point in his life, wrote a blank check made payable to “The United States of America,” for an amount of “up to and including [his] life.”
In the next 10 years, maybe sooner, veterans will be crucial in a global-military, political and economic context. As this country and the planet reach their violence-carrying capacity there will be a significant potential for global-scale disorder. As a result, we may expect our military to be involved in maintaining order. Veterans may become an important asset in preserving the peace. Especially in the areas of education, training, logistics and support, they can help relieve manning and deployment stress on active duty and active reserve forces. Veterans will in essence become a force multiplier for the military. Think about that for a moment – have you ever talked to a single veteran who left the service honorably and was still not committed in one way or another – who would refuse to answer our country’s call?
The professional military we enjoy today is the most highly educated, most well trained and best equipped of any military in recorded history. They are us: our brothers, our sisters, our sons and our daughters. They are our finest and smartest, our best and most courageous, but most of all, they are us. They carry with them our most sacred expectations, our hopes and our dreams, and they insure our future. They have written a check to the United States of America with a pay line that says, “for an amount up to and including my life.” They are us.
Editor’s Note: Paul Evancoe is a retired, career Navy SEAL. His significant military service awards include the Joint Meritorious Service Medal, Bronze Star with “V” for valor, Purple Heart, Meritorious Service Medal (3 awards), Cross of Gallantry with gold star for heroism, Navy Commendation Medal with “V” for valor, Navy Combat Action Ribbon (3 awards), Navy Achievement Medal (4 awards), along with 12 other lesser medals and campaign ribbons. Paul holds a BS in Industrial Technology from Millersville Pennsylvania State University and an MA in Human Resource Development from the George Washington University. He is the author of three novels; Own the Night, Violent Peace and Poison Promise (available from Amazonbooks.com), as well as many articles in various professional journals. His full bio is available here.
Editors note: this is a continuing series. There are 5 installments remaining. Look for them every Tuesday.
It is estimated that there were only about 3,000 mountain men and trappers at the peak of the fur trade. Some would become legends in their own time, others would be recognized later. That some were anti-social outcasts from society only added to the myths, tall tales and downright prevarications that are part and parcel of “The Mountain Men”.
Here are a few more these intrepid souls, some of their adventures and their contributions to the knowledge of what was an unexplored wilderness.
James Pierson Beckwourth c. 1856
James Pierson Beckwourth was born a slave April 26, 1798 in Virginia. His mother was a slave owned by Sir Jennings Beckwith and young James was held as a slave. Jennings Beckwith moved his mixed race family to Missouri in 1809, placing James in school in St. Louis. Some time in this time period James changed his last name to Beckwourth. A deed of emancipation allowed James to be his own man and worked as a wrangler for Ashley’s Rocky Mountain Fur Company starting in 1824. Sometime in 1825 he went to live among the Crow Nation and over a period of time became a respected leader among the Crow. Continuing to trap, but due to a misunderstanding, Beckwourth started selling all the furs trapped by the Crow to John Astor’s “American Fur Company”. He left the American Fur Company in 1837 and by 1838 was trading with the Cheyenne along the South Platte River in Colorado. As an independent trader in 1840, he began trading on the “Old Spanish Trail” and by 1844 was trading as far as California. 1846 and Beckwourth is back in the United States working for the US Army; 1848 and it was back to California, in 1850 he would discover a low-elevation pass through the Sierra Nevada Mountains that would bear his name. He improved the trail, making it passable for wagons eliminating 150 miles of travel and avoiding the steep passes in the Central Sierra’s. Beckwourth would take up ranching in Sierra’s in1851, returning to Missouri and Colorado in 1859. He would become involved in the Sand Creek Massacre in1864; this prompted deep distrust of Beckwourth, he would die of an unstoppable nose bleed October 29, 1866 at age 68. (It is rumored that he was poisoned by the Crow as they felt they could no longer trust him.)
William Lewis Sublette was born September 21, 1798 in present day Lincoln County Kentucky. An adventurer and trapper, he and his brothers entered the fur trade. Sublette journeyed to the Rocky Mountains and openly competed with Hudson’s Bay Company, North West Company and the American fur Company. A new law passed in 1822 outlawed the sale or trade in liquor to the Native Americans. William Ashley took the decision in stride and started what later became called, the “Rendezvous” in which the trappers were re-supplied in the field by pack train. The gathered furs were packed and carried out by the returning packers thereby negating a need to return to St. Louis for the trappers. Sublette and his partners acquired Ashley’s fur company in 1826, and then sold to his brother and his partners at the Rendezvous of 1830. Wounded in the “Battle of Pierre’s Hole” in 1832, Sublette slowly sold off some assets to the American Fur Company and retired from the fur trade to St. Louis where he died in 1845 at the age of 47.
Joseph R. Walker was born December 13, 1798 in Roane County Tennessee and migrated with his family to Missouri in 1819. Detained for a short time by Spanish authorities in Santa Fe in 1820, he would work with “Old Bill” Williams on the Santa Fe Trail. Returning to Missouri in 1827, he was appointed sheriff of Jackson County, Missouri. While delivering horses to Oklahoma, he met Benjamin Bonneville in 1830. Bonneville offered him a position with his expeditions. Walker would join Bonneville’s 1832 expedition over South Pass to construct a fort on the Green River in present day Wyoming. Walker was appointed command of a group to explore the Great Salt Lake and find a route across or through the Sierra Nevada range to California. Leaving on July 27, 1833 they scouted, discovered and then followed an un-named river they called the “Barren River” across present day northern Nevada. (This river was thoroughly mapped by John Fremont and named for the German botanist Humboldt) They then followed a stream south along the base of the Sierras that eventually turned west into the Sierras. (This stream Fremont named for his scout “Kit Carson”) They probably crossed the Sierras via “Sonora Pass” and traveled down the Stanislaus River into Central California. Beginning their return trip February 14, 1834, Walker’s party crossed one of the lower passes in the southern Sierras; skirting the Sierras as they traveled north to the Humboldt River Sinks finally reversing their route to the Rocky Mountains the previous summer. Walker was hired to lead a wagon train to California late spring/early summer 1843. Leaving Ft. Hall on September 16 with scanty provisions, the train started for the Humboldt Sink while a small group was dispatched to find more rations and meet the train at the area of the sinks. When no relief party arrived, the train started south skirting the east slopes of the Sierras. The draft animals became so weakened due poor forage that the party was forced to abandon their wagons and walk across one of the lower passes, possibly Walker Pass in the southern Sierras. 1845 and Walker joins John Fremont’s 3rd expedition as head guide. Walker would lead the majority of the party and cross the Sierras near the Kern River while Fremont lead a small party over the Sierra Nevada range following the Truckee River. Walker began ranching in California but was persuaded to lead miners into the mountains of central Arizona. He would return to ranching in 1867, he would live there quietly until his death October 27, 1876 at age 77.
