Military Veterans and Patriots

Tag: History

  • “The 14th Continental” or, The Marblehead Militia by Walter Mow

    “The 14th Continental” or, The Marblehead Militia by Walter Mow

    As a group, few have contributed more to the realization of this Republic than the Marblehead Militia.  Militia groups have a long history in Massachusetts with the first recorded militia organized in 1638.  It is the Marblehead Militia and their story that is as improbable as it is true; in the case of these brave men, fact is more improbable than fiction.

    The entire Massachusetts Militia was reorganized in January, 1775, driving out Tory commanders and appointing Jeremiah Lee as commander of the Marblehead Militia with Lt. Col. John Glover as second in command.  Not much is known of Jeremiah Lee, but we know Glover joined the militia in 1759 as an Ensign in the 3rd Military Foot Company.  Glover was a short, red-headed man, noted as a stern disciplinarian, known to carry a brace of silver pistols and a sword.

    The Marblehead Militia, composed as it was of sailors and fishermen, were hardened by the severe winters of New England’s notoriously dangerous waters and used to the rigors and discipline necessary to navigate these coastal waters.  

    Trade and fishing was the lifeblood of New England, enforcement of “The Intolerable Acts”, (The Trade and Navigation Act, 1651; The Molasses Act, 1733; The Quartering Act,1763; The Sugar Act 1764; The Stamp Act 1765); impressments; seizures of vessels and cargoes; all contributed to a stymied economy and Colonial unrest.

    Having already endured these offenses, the volunteers to The Marblehead Militia were hard, determined men.  Considered to be smugglers, brigands and pirates by the British, this intrepid band, led by Samuel Trevett partially armed themselves by attacking HMS Lively, capturing powder and arms in a night time raid in early February, 1775.  

    Although the Regiment was not to be involved in the action at Lexington and Concord, the commanders of the Marbleheaders attended a meeting April, 18, 1775, with Sons of Liberty notables, Samuel Adams, John Hancock and Elbridge Gerry at Weatherby’s Black Horse Tavern in Menotomy.  A British patrol rousted Lee and Glover April 19, in an early morning raid.  Escaping in their bed clothes, Lee died of exposure from hiding in a wet field a few days later.  As a result, John Glover was promoted to Colonel and assumed command of the Regiment.

    The Marblehead Militia, nicknamed “Glover’s Regiment” was formally inducted into the Continental Army, June 22, 1775 as the 23rd Massachusetts Regiment with a complement of 505 officers and men.  Ongoing enlistments were to expand the total of officers and men to 728.

    Washington quickly realized the need for a naval force to disrupt as much as possible the supply line of the British.   Washington accepted without hesitation Colonel Glover’s offer of his family’s ship the Hannah and a wharf in Beverly Harbor.  In December 1775, Washington, while retaining a Marblehead company for his headquarters guard,  dispatched a large portion of Glover’s Regiment to Beverly to man the vessels being recruited and out fitted for service and to protect Beverly Harbor. 

    When the Continental Army was reorganized January 1, 1776, Glover’s Regiment was reorganized as the 14th Continental Regiment, the designation it was to carry till they were disbanded on December 31, 1776.

     Glover’s Regiment became the backbone of General Washington’s “Secret Navy”.  They were to man the converted fishing and trading schooners; USS Hannah, USS Franklin, USS Hancock, USS Lee, USS Warren, USS Harrison, USS Washington and the USS Lynch.  This small force was to capture 38 vessels carrying arms and supplies destined for the besieged British in Boston.  The Regiment was to remain in Beverly until July 11, 1776, when they were ordered to rejoin the main Army in New York. The Regiment arrived at the Army’s Manhattan encampment on August 3rd   where they were to remain till summoned to Long Island August 28. 

    Placed on the line, they were to skirmish with the British; but as the British started digging trenches to place the Army under siege, Washington ordered the 14th Continental to ferry the Army to Manhattan across the mile wide East River.  Beginning in a rain storm on the evening of August 29 at 11:00 PM and through the night, ending in a dawn fog, the 14th ferried 9,000 men, the Army’s horses and artillery and other sundry supplies to safety without a single loss of life.  The ever watchful General Washing was the last man to board the last boat on that fateful day, arriving in Manhattan at 7:00 AM, August 30, 1776.

    Fear of being trapped in New York, Washington started his troops north out of lower Manhattan Island.  A British landing at Kip’s Bay quickly routed the militia sent to guard the area.  General Washington was unable to stop the hasty retreat; the militia units stopped when they met the 6 brigades moving to their new positions under the command of Colonel Glover who quickly aligned his troops at the breast of a small hill facing the British advance.  General Washington ordered a pull-back before the British troops arrived.

    Pell’s Point was a different matter altogether; Washington dispatched a brigade under the command of Colonel Glover to challenge a British advance from Pell’s Point, Oct. 18. 1776.  In a battle that lasted most of the day, utilizing a series of attack and strategic leapfrog withdrawals, Glover’s 750 men delayed the advance of 4,000 British and Hessian troops.  American casualties were 8 men killed and 13 wounded, British casualties were estimated to be 200 British and Hessian soldiers.  

    The time this engagement consumed allowed General Washington to move his army to White Plains, out of immediate danger.  At the Battle of White Plains, the 14th was to man artillery emplacements and later be part of a rear guard as the Continental Army was ferried by elements of the 14th across the Hudson River into New Jersey.  

    Pursued by the British Army, Washington’s Continentals retreated across New Jersey, the 14th was to again ferry the Army to safety across the Delaware River into Pennsylvania.  Washington’s directive to destroy all boats and ferry craft on the north bank of the river was to bring the British advance to a halt.   With winter weather making campaigning difficult, General Howe decided to go into winter quarters.  Leaving a string of posts across New Jersey, General Howe, accompanied by General Cornwallis was to return to his headquarters in New York.  At Trenton, Howe left 1,500 Hessians under the command of Colonel Johann Gottlieb Rall with an additional number further down river at Bordentown under Colonel Carl von Donop.

    Washington was assailed by a number of far reaching concerns; a lack of military intelligence in New Jersey, General Lee’s capture by the British and most troubling of all was the coming end of enlistments at the end of 1776.  In a letter to Lund Washington, he was to note that without a surge of enlistments, “the game may well be up”.  When he received hard intelligence that the British had retired to winter quarters, he determined that the time to strike was at hand.

    Planned in secret as a three pronged assault, weather was to intervene and the only successful crossing was to be Washington’s.  About noon December 25th 1776, Washington began to march his troops up river to McKonkey’s Ferry arriving at dusk in a rising storm.   General Washington, concerned about crossing a major river in severe weather, asked Col. Glover his opinion, Glover replied, “Not to be bothered with that, my boys can handle it.”  Buoyed by Glover’s confident reply, or as a sign of leadership, Washington was among the first to board for the crossing. 

    Under the watchful eye of General Greene and Colonel Knox and supervised by Colonel Glover’s Marbleheaders the slow business of ferrying an army, supplies, horses and cannon across the river began.   Horses, cannon and assorted supplies were ferried using McKonkey’s ferry craft, while the troops were ferried across in large flat bottom work scows called Durham boats.  These craft were handled by the hardy members of the Marblehead Regiment in what turned out to be a blizzard with high winds, serious icing conditions and all in darkness and stealth.

    Durham Boat

    It was a grim General Washington that watched the last of the ferry operation that was to have ended at midnight but hampered by the storm, the time had slipped to near Four AM before the Army was to begin the nine mile march to Trenton.  Dividing his forces by sending General Sullivan and Glover’s Regiment by the River Road, he was to accompany General Greene on the Pennington Road into Trenton.

    There were a number of factors at work in Washington’s favor; the string of posts Howe had established across New Jersey were under manned, too far apart and left to forage for supplies to feed the men.  The Hessians were harsh in their treatment of rebels and loyalists alike, this led to retaliation by rebel groups, ambushing then dispersing against the foraging Hessians.  

    Fearing an attack in the week preceding Christmas, Rall’s command had been on high alert; his troops were tired from the long hours, were sleeping off a Christmas celebration and secure in a storm to stop enemy movements.  By Happenstance or Providence, both columns reached Trenton at near the same time only adding to the confusion of the Hessians.  Colonel Rall was mortally wounded near the beginning of the American attack, the resulting confusion and the rapid American advance quickly overcame the leaderless Hessians. 

    General Washington was stunned by his own success, expecting a heavy casualty list, he asked first for the Hessian casualties; 22 dead, 83 wounded and 900-1000 prisoners; dreading the answer he asked for the American list; 2 dead, frozen on the march to Trenton and 5 wounded. 

    Note: future president, Lt. James Monroe was among the more seriously wounded when he led an assault on the Hessian positions. 

    Washington was understandably concerned that he return his Army to the safety of Pennsylvania which of course meant another river crossing with the captured arms and supplies plus the Hessian prisoners.  Some confusion still exists as to how long the return crossing actually took, as there was a near constant flow of intelligence reports and correspondence with partisans in New Jersey.

    An intelligence briefing on Dec. 27, 1776 notified General Washington that the British and Hessians had retreated north to Princeton.  Accordingly Washington planned an attack on the British forces for December 29, but due to weather and other incidents, this third crossing of the Delaware was not completed till December 31, 1776.  This was to be the last of the valiant 14th’s contribution to the Revolution as enlistments ended and many of the men returned home to New England, many to be smugglers and privateers. 

    The contribution by local ferry and river men cannot be overlooked but without the dedicated efforts of the 14th Continental,  perhaps the battles of Trenton and Princeton may never have happened. 

  • Iwo Jima

    Iwo Jima

    American equipment on the beach at Iwo Jima

    On this day in 1945 Operation Detachment kicked off. Detachment was the amphibious assault on the Japanese held island of Iwo Jima. It was to become one of the bloodiest battles of World War Two.

    The island was home to a pair of Japanese airfields. Capture of those two airfields were part of the primary objectives for the invasion. The other objectives were to remove the Japanese garrison that was providing early earning of B-29 Superfortress raids en route to Japan and to establish the island as an emergency landing place for the U.S. Army Air Corps.

    Capturing Iwo Jima would also protect the right flank for a future American invasion of Okinawa and provide air fields to support long-range fighter escorts for bombing missions over the Japanese home islands.

     At 08:59, one minute ahead of schedule, the first wave of Marines landed on the beaches of the southeastern coast of Iwo Jima. For nearly an hour the Marines seemed to be landing unopposed. It wasn’t until just after 10:00 that the Japanese defenders opened fire.

     After crossing the beach, the Marines were faced with 15 ft-high slopes of soft black volcanic ash. The ash made for tough going. Marine AMTRACs struggled to move and it wasn’t until the SeaBees of of Naval Construction Battalions 31 and 133 landed with a couple of bulldozers and cut roads through the ash that the Marines started to make progress.

    In the left-most sector of the landings, the Americans did manage to achieve one of their objectives for the battle that day. Led by Colonel Harry B. “Harry the Horse” Liversedge, the 28th Marines drove across the island at its narrowest width, around 870 yd, thereby isolating the Japanese dug in on Mount Suribachi.

    By the evening of 19 February, 30,000 Marines had landed. About 40,000 more would follow. The intense combat would continue for more than a month. The famous photo of the Flag raising on Mt. Suribachi was taken on 23 February 1945. It depicts 6 Marines from  E Company, 2nd Battalion, 28th Marines, raising a U.S. flag.

    By the end of the Battle on 26 March 1945, the Marines would suffer 6,821 dead and another 19,217 wounded. The Japanese would suffer between 17,845–18,375 killed and wounded out of a pre-battle strength of about 21,000.

  • The Battle of New Orleans 

    The Battle of New Orleans 

    Andrew Jackson leading US forces at the Battle of New Orleans

    The Battle of New Orleans encompassed a number of actions beginning in 1814 culminating in January 1815.  We will examine these actions and some of the individuals involved.

    The War of 1812 began as a result of British interference with US trade and the impressment of US citizens.  A declaration of war would pit the fledgling US against the world’s premier military.   The British fielded a Navy that dominated the seas and an Army that could contend with Napoleon.  The declaration set in motion a series of events that would forever change history.  It is the culmination of this war and the events that preceded it that we will examine.

    A series of devastating defeats plagued the Americans in the early months of the war but a naval victory on Lake Erie September 10, 1813 by Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry followed by a bloodied but victorious Army at Lundy’s Lane July 25, 1814 temporarily stunned the British.  Admiral Cochrane began his Chesapeake campaign that resulted in the disaster ever known as the Bladensburg Races and the burning of the capitol including the White House by Admiral Cockburn and General Ross August 24; the failure of Cochrane’s naval bombardment to defeat the forces at Ft. McHenry under the command of Major George Armistead and the death of General Robert Ross ended the Battle of Baltimore (September 12-15, 1814) and the end of Admiral Cochrane’s Chesapeake campaign.

    On September 3, 1814 a British Naval envoy, Capt. Nicholas Lockyer visited Jean Lafitte at Barataria and offered emoluments to Lafitte and his men should they join his forces in capturing the city of New Orleans.  Lafitte to his honor sent the message to American authorities, making it known that the city was the target of invasion.  Lafitte offered to help in the defense of the city for the release of his brother Pierre, Dominique You, Renato Beluche and others of his associates being held on piracy charges.

    September 3rd was also the date of Lt. General Sir George Prevost’s advance down the west coast of Lake Champlain in an attempt to gain as much American territory as possible before any treaty was ratified to end the war.  Control of Lake Champlain was vital as a supply line, but a plucky US Navy Lt. by the name of Thomas Macdonough defeated the British naval force under the command of Captain George Downey at Plattsburg on September 11, 1814 forcing the British to return to their bases in Canada.

    The British secret campaign (that turned out to not be so secret) to wrest New Orleans from the Americans, to close the Mississippi, drive all settlers back across the Appalachian chain and return the lands from the crest of the Appalachians to the Mississippi to the Indian tribes was about to unravel.  The brainchild of Lord Robert Castlereagh, it would include an end to fishing rights on the Grand Banks, allow no US Naval forces on the Great Lakes and a surrender of much of the Louisiana Purchase; to be conducted under an “Uti Possidentis” claim to retain all lands and territories under their command at the end of hostilities.

    Andrew Jackson and Red Eagle after the Battle of Horseshoe bend.

    The massacre at Fort Mims August 30, 1813, would bring “Andy” Jackson and his Army into the fray and with the defeat of the Creek Nation at Horse Shoe Bend March 27, 1814 would thwart the British effort to bring several Native American Tribes to an alliance with British forces.  Further restricting the aims of the British would be Jackson’s capture of Mobile September 13, 1814 and Pensacola November 7, 1814 barring an overland route to New Orleans.  These three actions severely reduced Jackson’s supply of powder and flints for rifles as well as ammunition for his artillery.

    Major General Andrew Jackson arrived in the city of New Orleans December 1, 1814 to find a city in near panic and disarray.  He was met By Edward Livingston, an old friend from Jackson’s days in the congress.  As head of the committee for the defense of New Orleans, Livingston was indispensable as an unofficial aide de camp to Jackson, was his channel to Governor Claiborne and was instrumental in arranging a meeting between Jackson and Jean Lafitte.  Initially Jackson bristled at the suggestion that he deal with Lafitte whom he called a pirate.

    Included in Jackson’s staff was Major Arsene Lacarriere Latour, a former French military engineer with extensive experience and superb map-making skills. Together they toured the possible avenues of attack, made troop assignments and decided where to build fortifications. When Major Howell Tatum queried about a water table that precluded the digging of trenches and the construction of defenses, the doughty little major replied, “with engineering ingenuity my dear major”.

    L-R: Edward Livingston, Arsene Lacarriere Latour, Commodore Daniel Patterson

    The sea lakes that border New Orleans were the obvious choice to facilitate an attack on the city.  Commodore Daniel Patterson ordered a small armada of gun boats to defend the lakes.  Jackson placed the Mississippi Dragoons (a cavalry troop that fought as infantrymen) under Major Thomas Hinds and a contingent of Choctaw warriors under Pierre Juzan to be the eyes and ears on the Plain of Gentilly, a route that could afford the British a level field with little to no obstructions.  This was in Jackson’s words “the front door” and asked Latour if there was a “back door”.

    The ‘back door’ as Major Latour defined it was a narrow stretch of land approximately 800 yards wide with the Mississippi River on one side and cypress swamps on the east side.  The land was cut with drainage canals that allowed flood water to be drained from the fields into the bayous.  It was these bayous with their connection to Lake Borgne that concerned Jackson and he ordered that they be closed by falling cypress trees into the bayous.

    Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane arrived off the Louisiana coast December 9, 1814 with 60 British ships and nearly 14,500 sailors and soldiers.  The invasion plans called for the forces to be landed on an island in Lake Borgne.  Blocking entry into Lake Borgne was a small flotilla of gun boats under the command of Lt. Thomas Jones, US Navy. 

    Admiral Cochrane

    The British pitted over 40 long boats outfitted with small cannon, the attendant crew and 40 sailors or marines per boat as oarsmen and boarders against Lt. Jones and his becalmed boats.  Unable to maneuver, outnumbered, outgunned and wounded in the battle that ensued, Lt. Jones’ small American force surrendered on December 14 to the British leaving open the entry to Lake Borgne and Jackson with no eyes on the British fleet.

    Loss of eyes on the Lakes forced Jackson to reconsider Lafitte’s offer of ammunition and flints in exchange for pardons for his men.  In the ensuing agreement Jean Lafitte would return to Barataria to be Jackson’s eyes on the Gulf; Pierre, Jean’s older brother was released and became Jackson’s aide because of his extensive knowledge of the area and possibly as a guarantee against treachery.  Recognized for their gunnery skills and appointed captains, Dominique You and Renato Beluche commanded and organized artillery units manned by the released Baratarians.

    General Keane established a garrison on Pea Island and began to explore the cypress swamps for any avenue to advance closer to the city.  British scouts discovered that Bayou Bienvenu was not blocked as the other bayous had been.  

    Near the bayous entry into Lake Borgne was a small village of Spanish fisherman.   Bribed by the British, one of the fishermen guided the British to the camp of a small detachment of Louisiana militia.  Without firing a shot the British captured the small detachment including Major Gabriel Villere.   The canal that drained the Villere Plantation drained first into Bayou Mazant then connected with Bayou Bienvenu. 

    The British led by the fisherman arrived on the east bank of the Mississippi taking command of the Villere Plantation.  General Keane established a camp only 9 miles south of the city with some 1,800 British troops on the morning of December 23rd.  Later that day an escaped and embarrassed Major Villere reported to General Jackson; informed of the British encroachment, an angry Jackson is said to have exclaimed, “By the Eternal, they shall not sleep on our soil” and promptly gathered forces to attack the British Camp.

    In a surprise attack that evening (called the Fight in the Dark) the Americans would forestall any further advance by the British.  General Keane, somewhat unnerved by the ferocity of the attack made the fateful decision to await reinforcements before advancing.  It can be argued that Jackson’s decision to attack Keane’s forces and the resulting delays may have saved the city and doomed the British.

    USS Carolina by Keith Wilkie

    As the British settled in on that first evening, the USS Carolina began shelling the camp just as General Jack Coffee’s Tennesseans attacked the opposite side of the camp.  “The Battle in the Dark” was under way.  After the initial shock the British were able to recover, the battle became a bitter hand to hand affair.   Unable to rout and drive his enemy away; Jackson pulled his troops back behind the Rodriguez Canal to await the eventual British advance.  

    Ongoing harassment by Jackson’s sharpshooters and stealthy raids by the Choctaw warriors would keep the British Camp in turmoil.  General Pakenham would complain in a letter to Jackson that killing his sentries in the dark was ungentlemanly to which Jackson replied that they would use all means necessary against the invaders.  The British would be harassed and hampered until they vacated all troops from Louisiana on January 18, 1815. 

    Part of the attack on the British camp was carried out by the USS Carolina and for three days and nights continued to harass and bombard the British camp.  Unbeknownst to the Captain of the Carolina, heavy guns from the fleet arrived in General Keane’s camp December 26, the next morning, the 27th; British gunners repeatedly hit the schooner with heated shot.  The big guns out ranged the smaller guns of the Carolina.  The heated shot started numerous small fires that quickly spread.   Unable to subdue the fires the ship was ordered abandoned; when the fires reached the magazine, the USS Carolina blew up.

    The “engineering ingenuity” of Major Latour oversaw the transformation of the Rodriguez Canal from a simple drainage canal to a fortified position known as “The Jackson Line” while the British sought to bolster its forces. Composed of soil and mud with a log facing, the line gave protection to Jackson’s troops while presenting an obstacle of the drainage canal of up to 8 feet deep and 15 feet wide showcased Major Latour’s sample of “engineering ingenuity”.  Artillery was spaced along the line, tasked with silencing the British guns and to ravage the British infantry with shot, shell and grape shot.

    Sir Edward Pakenham

    On December 28, Major General Sir Edward Pakenham ordered a ”Grand Reconnaissance”,  The indecision when confronted with the canal and its unknown depth would bring the British to pause.  The withering fire from the line and the cannon began to take a toll.  Pakenham called off the affair and the British withdrew.  Had they persevered in the advance in the cypress swamp, they would have turned Jackson’s flank when the militia withdrew from their positions. An angry General Jackson would replace the militia with General William Carroll’s Kentucky and General Jack Coffee’s Tennessee troops, and place more cannon on the line.

    Pakenham was not satisfied with the position his army had been placed in and wanted to change the plan of attack.  As a result he would clash with Admiral Cochrane but an outranked Pakenham would have to fight on the ground they now held.  Cochrane knew of the efforts to produce a treaty with its “Uti Possidentis” clause and felt that time was of the essence.  The die was cast, Pakenham would play the hand he was dealt.

    General Pakenham and his staff planned a three prong attack utilizing nearly 5,500 men and a reserve of about 4,500.   A force of 1,400 under Colonel Thornton would cross the river and attack the gun emplacements of Commodore Patterson across from Jackson’s main position.   Meanwhile General Keane would strike the end of the line next to the river and General Gibbs would skirt the cypress swamp and attack what appeared to be a lower, thus vulnerable part of the line.  A Creole deserter by the name of Galvez told the British that particular segment of the line was manned by militia.  Convinced that the American militia could be routed and then flank the guns, the British were confident of success. 

    A series of blunders plagued the British on that fateful day, January 8, 1815.   General Jackson was awakened at 1:00 AM with a request for additional manpower from the militia commander General Morgan across the river.  Convinced that the attack was coming on his side of the river, he refused the request, roused his staff and awaited the British.  General Morgan began to align his 800 men to help defend Commodore Patterson’s guns.  By 4:00 AM General Adair moved his Kentucky militia to within 50 yards of the line as reinforcement.

    For starters the canal was too shallow to float the heavily laden boats, dragged through the mud and way behind schedule, plus a lack of boats forced Thornton to go with just 500 men; a strong current carried his force 1,000 yards further downstream than planned.  Although successful in routing the militia defending the guns with 300 men but lacking the manpower necessary to carry out the main objective of turning the guns on the “Jackson Line”; Thornton pulled his men back to a position of safety to await  the rest of his men.  They attacked the Commodore’s sailors and marines manning the batteries.  Seeing they were to be over-run, General Morgan and Commodore Patterson spiked their guns and pulled back.

    Thornton had accomplished his mission but it had little effect on the outcome as the battle on Jackson’s side of the river was ending.

    In a predawn fog, the British General Pakenham began to marshal his forces.  Hearing no sounds of engagement from Thornton’s force across the river and Patterson’s guns raking General Keane’s troops; Pakenham ordered a change. Instead of General Keane following up Colonel Robert Rennie’s attack on the line, he was to move his force to join that of General Gibbs.  As a consequence, Colonel Rennie’s initial success went unsupported and was thrown back.

    Map of the New Orleans Battleground

    Visibility improved as the fog lifted, the American guns began to thunder when the British were at 600 yards.  Disaster strikes when Lt, Colonel Thomas Mullins, charged with bringing the ladders and fascines to facilitate crossing the canal and climbing the parapet, forgets the location and marches his man past where they were stored.  He sent 300 of his men back to retrieve the needed articles, only a few actually made it back to the canal in the ensuing confusion.  As the British push forward, at 400 yards some of the marksmen from Kentucky and Tennessee militia units begin to take down officers and sergeants.  At 300 yards many more began to shoot, relays of men on the firing line; fire, fall back and reload, 4 men in each relay taking careful aim at the advancing British.  

    The cannon charged with grape shot tore huge swaths through the columns of British infantry and the aimed rifle fire began to take its toll as the leaderless and confused troops faltered at the canal. Unable to advance, they were at the mercy of the rifles and the cannon.  General Keane was wounded in the move to support General Gibbs.  

    The troops bringing up the fascines and ladders faltered and many never made it to the front.  Gibbs and Pakenham were both killed by grapeshot.  The aimed rifle fire and the anti-personnel loads of grape shot from the cannon decimated the British troops.   At that point General Lambert assumed command and ordered his reserve troops to support a withdrawal of the Army from the field.

    When the firing stopped the carnage became visible, the ground carpeted in the red of British uniforms.  In a time span of 25 minutes, the British dream of “Uti Possidentis” and control of the American continent came crashing down in a sea of red.  General Jackson’s initial report put the British losses at 700 killed, 1400 wounded and 500 captured for a total of 2600 men; these numbers would be corrected later.

    The British side of the ledger looked bad and would only get worse.  The Creole deserter Galvez would be hung by the British, they thought him a spy.

    An angry Admiral Cochrane, still determined to take the city of New Orleans began to assault Ft. St. Philip guarding the mouth of the Mississippi January 9; ten days of bombardment convinced Cochrane that his efforts were futile and withdrew January 18.

    General Lambert held a council of war with his officers and decided that the cost of capturing New Orleans was too costly with the chance of total defeat should they try.  By January 19 the British camp on the Villere Plantation was evacuated and the fleet set sail for Mobile Bay February 4, 1815.

    February 12th the British attacked and captured Fort Bowyer at the mouth of Mobile Bay. News of the Treaty of Ghent arrived the next day; the treaty called for the return of military gains to each other.  Shortly thereafter the British abandoned Fort Bowyer and set sail for their base in Jamaica.  

    British casualties for the campaign, 386 killed, 1,521 wounded and 552 missing or captured for a total of 2,459.

    Lt. Col. Mullins would face excoriation and reprimand for his failure to fulfill his task by having the fascines and ladders to the front in a timely manner.  

    General Pakenham had secret orders that he was not to stop military actions against the American’s until he received verification that the American President had signed the treaty.   Had Pakenham been successful in capturing New Orleans the British government was willing to refute the terms of the Treaty of Ghent and impose the harsh conditions advocated by Lord Castlereagh under a claim of “Uti Possidentis”.

    The American ledger by contrast looked bright; General Jackson would recognize the meritorious action of several, including Major Latour, Colonel Hinds and his “Troop of Horse”, the Lafitte brothers, Captains You and Beluche among others.  Major Villere faced severe charges for his failure to follow orders, but his action in the battle made up for his shortcomings.  In February of 1815, President James Madison signed pardons for the Baratarians.

    The war would force the US government to the realization that the need for a standing army was just as necessary as a strong navy.  James Monroe would continue these policies. 

  • What Is the Shroud of Turin and Why Is It Controversial?

    What Is the Shroud of Turin and Why Is It Controversial?

    What Is the Shroud of Turin and Why Is It Controversial?

    The centuries-old cloth has a long history of stoking both faith and skepticism.

    The Shroud of Turin, currently housed in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, was first shown publicly in the 14th century.

    The Shroud of Turin, currently housed in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, was first shown publicly in the 14th century. Philippe Lissac/Getty Images

    This story was originally published on The Conversation. It appears here under a Creative Commons license. atlasobscura.com

    The Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Turin, Italy, houses a fascinating artifact: a massive cloth shroud that bears the shadowy image of a man who appears to have been crucified. Millions of Christians around the world believe that this shroud—commonly called the Shroud of Turin—is the cloth that was used to bury Jesus after his crucifixion and that the image on the shroud was produced miraculously when he was resurrected.

    The evidence, however, tells a different story.

    Scientists have questioned the validity of the claims about the shroud being a first-century object. Evidence from carbon-14 dating points to the shroud being a creation from the Middle Ages. Skeptics, however, dismissthese tests as flawed. The shroud remains an object of faith, intrigue, and controversy that reappears periodically in the public sphere, as it has in recent weeks.

    As a scholar of early Christianity, I have long been interested in why people are motivated to create objects like the shroud and also why people are drawn to revere them as authentic.

    The first public appearance of the shroud was in 1354, when it was displayed publicly in Lirey, a small commune in central France. Christian pilgrims traveled from all over to gaze upon the image of the crucified Jesus.

    Pilgrimages like this were common during the Middle Ages, when relics of holy people began to appear throughout Europe. The relic trade was big business at the time; relics were bought and sold, and pilgrims often paid a fee to visit them. Many believed that these relics were genuine. In addition to the shroud, pilgrims visited Jesus’ crib, splinters from the cross, and Jesus’s foreskin, just to name a few.

    But even in the 14th century, when the relic trade in Europe was flourishing, some were suspicious.

    Even in the 14th century, some were suspicious.

    In 1390, only a few decades after the shroud was displayed in Lirey, a French bishop named Pierre d’Arcis claimed in a letter to Pope Clement VII not only that the shroud was a fake but that the artist responsible for its creation had already confessed to creating it. Clement VII agreed with the assessment of the shroud, although he permitted its continued display as a piece of religious art.

    The shroud has been the subject of much scientific investigation in the past several decades. Data from scientific tests matches what scholars know about the shroud from historical records.

    In 1988, a team of scientists used carbon-14 dating to determine when the fabric of the shroud was manufactured. The tests were performed at three labs, all working independently. Based on data from these labs, scientists said there was “conclusive evidence” that the shroud originated between the years 1260 and 1390.

    Results from another scientific study over 30 years later appeared to debunk these findings. Using an advanced X-ray technique to study the structure of materials, the scientists concluded that the fabric of the shroud was much older and could likely be from the first century. They also noted, however, that their results could be considered conclusiveonly if the shroud had been stored at a relatively constant temperature and humidity—between 68-72.5 degrees Fahrenheit and 55 percent to 75 percent—for the entirety of two millennia.

    This would be highly unlikely for any artifact from that period. And when it comes to the shroud, the conditions under which it has survived have been less than ideal. In 1532, while the shroud was being kept in Chambéry in southern France, the building it was housed in caught fire. The silver case that held the shroud melted; despite intricate repair attempts, the burn marks in the fabric remain visible to this day. It was saved from another fire in Turin as recently as 1997.

    The Shroud of Turin—including replicas of it, such as this one on display in Lithuania in 2021—continues to inspire both curiosity and controversy.
    The Shroud of Turin—including replicas of it, such as this one on display in Lithuania in 2021—continues to inspire both curiosity and controversy. Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images

    Despite the ongoing debate, the carbon-14 dating results have continued to provide the most compelling scientific evidence that the shroud is a product of the Middle Ages and not an ancient relic.

    The shroud is undeniably a masterful work of art, crafted with remarkable skill and using methods that were complicated and ahead of their time. For centuries, many experts struggled to understand how the image was imprinted onto the fabric, and it wasn’t until 2009 that scientists were successfully able to reproduce the technique using medieval methods and materials.

    Pope Francis once referred to the shroud as an “icon,” a type of religious art that can be used for a variety of purposes, including teaching, theological expression, and even worship. Without addressing the authenticity of the shroud, the pope suggested that by prompting reflection on the face and body of the crucified Jesus, the shroud encouraged people to also consider those around them who may be suffering.

    It is at least possible that the shroud was created as a tool that would encourage viewers to meditate on the death of Jesus in a tangible way.

    Ultimately, the shroud of Turin will continue to intrigue and draw both believers and skeptics into a debate that has spanned centuries. But I believe that the shroud encourages viewers to think about how history, art, and belief come together and influence how we see the past.

    Eric Vanden Eykel is an associate professor of religious studies at Ferrum College in Virginia.

  • The Voice in the Box

    The Voice in the Box

    The Voice in the Box

    From Reader’s Digest.

    When I was quite young, my family had one of the first telephones in the neighborhood. I remember well the polished oak case fastened to the wall on the lower stair landing. The shiny receiver hung on the side of the box. I even remember the number: 105. I was too little to reach the telephone, but I used to listen with fascination when my mother talked to it. Once she lifted me up to speak to my father, who was away on business. Magic!

    Then I discovered that somewhere inside that wonderful device lived an amazing person—her name was “Information Please,” and there was nothing that she did not know. My mother could ask her for anybody’s number; when our clock ran down, Information Please immediately supplied the correct time.

    My first personal experience with this genie-in-the-receiver came one day while my mother was visiting a neighbor. Amusing myself at the tool bench in the basement, I whacked my finger with a hammer. The pain was terrible, but there didn’t seem to be much use crying, because there was no one home to offer sympathy. I walked around the house sucking my throbbing finger, finally arriving at the stairway. The telephone! Quickly I ran for the footstool in the parlor and dragged it to the landing. Climbing up, I unhooked the receiver and held it to my ear. “Information Please,” I said into the mouthpiece just above my head.

    A click or two, and a small, clear voice spoke into my ear. “Information.”

    “I hurt my fingerrrr—” I wailed into the phone. The tears came readily enough, now that I had an audience.

    “Isn’t your mother home?” came the question.

    “Nobody’s home but me,” I blubbered.

    “Are you bleeding?”

    “No,” I replied. “I hit it with the hammer, and it hurts.”

    “Can you open your icebox?” she asked. I said I could. “Then chip off a little piece of ice, and hold it on your finger. That will stop the hurt. Be careful when you use the ice pick,” she admonished. “And don’t cry. You’ll be all right.”

    After that, I called Information Please for everything. I asked her for help with my geography, and she told me where Philadelphia was, and the Orinoco, the romantic river that I was going to explore when I grew up. She helped me with my arithmetic, and she told me that my pet chipmunk—I had caught him in the park just the day before—would eat fruit and nuts.

    And there was the time that my pet canary passed away. I called Information Please and told her the sad story. She listened, then said the usual things that grown-ups say to soothe a child. But I was unconsoled: Why was it that birds should sing so beautifully and bring joy to whole families, only to end as a heap of feathers, feet up, on the bottom of a cage?

    She must have sensed my deep concern, for she said quietly, “Paul, always remember that there are other worlds to sing in.”

    Somehow, I felt better.

    Another day I was at the telephone. “Information,” said the now familiar voice.

    “How do you spell fix?” I asked.

    “Fix something? F-i-x.”

    At that instant, my sister, who took unholy joy in scaring me, jumped off the stairs at me with a banshee shriek—”Yaaaaaaaaa!” I fell off the stool, pulling the receiver out of the box by its roots. We were both terrified—Information Please was no longer there, and I was not at all sure that I hadn’t hurt her when I pulled the receiver out.

    Minutes later, there was a man on the porch. “I’m a telephone repairman,” he said. “I was working down the street, and the operator said there might be some trouble at this number.” He reached for the receiver in my hand. “What happened?”

    I told him.

    “Well, we can fix that in a minute or two.” He opened the telephone box, exposing a maze of wires, and coiled and fiddled for a while with the end of the receiver cord, tightening things with a small screwdriver. He jiggled the hook up and down a few times, then spoke into the phone. “Hi, this is Pete. Everything’s under control at 105. The kid’s sister scared him, and he pulled the cord out of the box.”

    He hung up, smiled, gave me a pat on the head, and walked out the door.

    All this took place in a small town in the Pacific Northwest. Then, when I was nine years old, we moved across the country to Boston—and I missed my mentor acutely. Information Please belonged in that old wooden box back home, and I somehow never thought of trying the tall, skinny new phone that sat on a small table in the hall.

    Yet, as I grew into my teens, the memories of those childhood conversations never really left me; often in moments of doubt and perplexity, I would recall the serene sense of security I had when I knew that I could call Information Please and get the right answer I appreciated how very patient, understanding, and kind she was to have wasted her time on a little boy.

    A few years later, on my way west to college, my plane put down at Seattle. I had about half an hour between plane connections, and I spent 15 minutes or so on the phone with my sister, who lived there now, happily mellowed by marriage and motherhood. Then, really without thinking what I was doing, I dialed my hometown operator and said, “Information Please.”

    Miraculously, I heard again the small, clear voice I knew so well: “Information.”

    I hadn’t planned this, but I heard myself saying, “Could you tell me, please, how to spell the word fix?”

    There was a long pause. Then came the softly spoken answer. “I guess,” said Information Please, “that your finger must have healed by now.”

    I laughed. “So it’s really still you,” I said. “I wonder if you have any idea how much you meant to me during all that time … ”

    “I wonder,” she replied, “if you know how much you meant to me? I never had any children, and I used to look forward to your calls. Silly, wasn’t it?”

    It didn’t seem silly, but I didn’t say so. Instead, I told her how often I had thought of her over the years, and I asked if I could call her again when I came back to visit my sister after the first semester was over.

    “Please do. Just ask for Sally.”

    “Goodbye, Sally.” It sounded strange for Information Please to have a name. “If I run into any chipmunks, I’ll tell them to eat fruit and nuts.”

    “Do that,” she said. “And I expect one of these days, you’ll be off for the Orinoco. Well, goodbye.”

    Just three months later, I was back again at the Seattle airport. A different voice answered, “Information,” and I asked for Sally.

    “Are you a friend?”

    “Yes,” I said. “An old friend.”

    “Then I’m sorry to have to tell you. Sally had been working only part-time in the last few years because she was ill. She died five weeks ago.” But before I could hang up, she said, “Wait a minute. Did you say your name was Villiard?”

    “Yes.”

    “Well, Sally left a message for you. She wrote it down.”

    “What was it?” I asked, almost knowing in advance what it would be.

    “Here it is; I’ll read it—’Tell him I still say there are other worlds to sing in. He’ll know what I mean.’”

    I thanked her and hung up. I did know what Sally meant.

  • The Stranger

    The Stranger

    The Stranger

    A few years after I was born, my Dad met a stranger who was new to our small town. From the beginning, Dad was fascinated with this enchanting newcomer 
    and soon invited him to live with our family. The stranger was quickly accepted and was around from then on. 

    As I grew up, I never questioned his place in my family. In my young mind, he had a special niche. My parents were complementary instructors: Mom taught me good from evil, and Dad taught me to obey. But the stranger… he was our storyteller. He would keep us spellbound for hours on end with adventures, mysteries and comedies.

    If I wanted to know anything about politics, history or science, he always knew the answers about the past, understood the present and even seemed able to predict the future! He took my family to the first major league ball game. He made me laugh, and he made me cry. The stranger never stopped talking, but Dad didn’t seem to mind. 

    Sometimes, Mom would get up quietly while the rest of us were shushing each other to listen to what he had to say, and she would go to the kitchen for peace and quiet.

    (I wonder now if she ever prayed for the stranger to leave.) 
    Dad ruled our household with certain moral convictions, but the stranger never felt obligated to honor them. 

    Profanity, for example, was not allowed in our home – not from us, our friends or any visitors. Our long time visitor, however, got away with four-letter words that burned my ears and made my dad squirm and my mother blush.

    My Dad didn’t permit the liberal use of alcohol but the stranger encouraged us to try it on a regular basis. He made cigarettes look cool, cigars manly, and pipes distinguished. 

    He talked freely (much too freely!) about sex. His comments were sometimes blatant, sometimes suggestive, and generally embarrassing.. 

    I now know that my early concepts about relationships were influenced strongly by the stranger. Time after time, he opposed the values of my parents, yet he was seldom rebuked… And NEVER asked to leave. 

    More than fifty years have passed since the stranger moved in with our family. He has blended right in and is not nearly as fascinating as he was at first.     Still     over in his corner, waiting for someone to listen to him talk and watch him draw his pictures.

    His name?….

    We just call him ‘TV.’


    He has a wife now….we call her ‘Computer.’ 

    Their first child is “Cell Phone”.

     
    Second child “IPod”

     
    And a Grandchild: 

    “IPAD”

  • Solzhenitsyn Warned Us

    Solzhenitsyn Warned Us

    Solzhenitsyn Warned Us

    Gary Saul MorsonJuly/August 2024 for Commentary.org.

    Western intellectuals expected that novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, once safely in the West after his expulsion from the Soviet Union in 1974, would enthusiastically endorse its way of life and intellectual consensus. Nothing of the sort happened. Instead of recognizing how much he had missed when cut off from New York, Washington, and Cambridge, Massachusetts, this ex-Soviet dissident not only refused to accept superior American ideas but even presumed to instruct us. Harvard was shocked at the speech he gave there in 1978, while the New York Times cautioned: “We fear that Mr. Solzhenitsyn does the world no favor by calling for a holy war.”

    For his part, Solzhenitsyn could hardly believe that Westerners would not want to hear all he had learned journeying through the depths of totalitarian hell. “Even in soporific Canada, which always lagged behind, a leading television commentator lectured me that I presumed to judge the experience of the world from the viewpoint of my limited Soviet and prison camp experience,” Solzhenitsyn recalled. “Indeed, how true! Life and death, imprisonment and hunger, the cultivation of the soul despite the captivity of the body: how very limited this is compared to the bright world of political parties, yesterday’s numbers on the stock exchange, amusements without end, and exotic foreign travel!”

    The West “turned out to be not what we [dissidents] had hoped and expected; it was not living by the ‘right’ values nor was it headed in the ‘right’ direction.” America was no longer the land of the free but of the licentious. The totalitarianism from which Solzhenitsyn had escaped loomed as the West’s likely future. Having written a series of novels about how Russia succumbed to Communism, Solzhenitsyn smelled the same social and intellectual rot among us. He thought it his duty to warn us, but nobody listened. Today, his warnings seem prescient. We have continued to follow the path to disaster he mapped.

    We Have Ceased to See the Purpose collects the most important speeches Solzhenitsyn delivered between 1972 and 1997.1 Inspired by various occasions—Solzhenitsyn’s winning the Nobel Prize, arriving in the West, and delivering that Harvard University commencement address, among others—these speeches convey a single message: Western civilization has lost its bearings because it has embraced a false and shallow understanding of life. The result is the accelerating decay of the West’s spiritual foundations. The very fact that the word “spiritual” sounded suspiciously outdated to so many intellectuals at the time shows how far the decay had already progressed. Sooner or later, Solzhenitsyn warned, Western civilization as we know it would collapse.

    Solzhenitsyn would not have been surprised that, three decades after the collapse of the USSR, American intellectuals again find Marxist and quasi-Marxist doctrines attractive. Young people embrace “democratic socialism,” a phrase that Solzhenitsyn calls “about as meaningful as talking about ‘ice-cold heat.’”

    Today we can ask: Why do so many cheer, or at least not object, when they witness mobs embracing the bloodthirsty and sadistic Hamas? Perhaps for the same reasons that young, pre-revolutionary Russians once celebrated terrorists who murdered innocent citizens? Having studied his country’s history, Solzhenitsyn foresaw the process that would lead to today’s chants of “globalize the intifada” and “any means necessary.” He repeatedly cautioned that Russia’s past may be America’s future.

    How can it be, Solzhenitsyn asked, that so many Russians found the strength to “rise up and free themselves…while those [in the West] who soar unhindered over the peaks of freedom suddenly lose the taste for it, lose the will to defend it, and fatefully, almost [seem] to crave slavery?” Why do crudeness of thought and the repetition of ill-understood slogans pass for sophistication? “I couldn’t have imagined to what extreme degree the West desires to blind itself,” Solzhenitsyn told a London audience in 1976.

    Those who have reflected on Soviet experience, Solzhenitsyn advised, readily discern “telltale signs by which history gives warning to a threatened or perishing society.” Referring to the electrical blackout that struck New York in 1977, he identified one such warning: “The center of your democracy and your culture is left without electrical power for a few hours only, and all of a sudden American citizens start looting and creating havoc. The smooth surface film must be very thin, then, the social system quite unstable and unhealthy.” What would he say if he had seen the Antifa riots following the murder of George Floyd or the cowardly responses to today’s university encampments?

    Solzhenitsyn discovered the root cause of the West’s decline in its assumption, shared by almost everyone with any influence, that life’s purpose is individual happiness, from which it follows that freedom and democratic political institutions exist to make that goal easier to attain. And so elections usually turn on the growth of an already abundant economy. Could there be a view of life less worthy of human dignity? America’s Founders acknowledged a higher power, but now the most “advanced” people have succumbed to “the calamity of an autonomous, irreligious, humanistic consciousness. It has made man the measure of all things on earth—imperfect man, who is never free of pride, self-interest, envy, vanity, and dozens of other defects.”

    Acknowledging nothing higher than themselves, people overlook the evil in human nature. Original sin, what’s that? Sophisticates laugh at phrases such as “the Evil Empire” or “the Axis of Evil” because “it has become embarrassing to appeal to age-old values.” And so “the concepts of Good and Evil have been ridiculed for several centuries…. They’ve been replaced by political or class categorizations.” Crime and other ills supposedly result from readily amendable social arrangements and will inevitably give way to progress.

    Like the Soviets, Westerners speak of being “on the right side of history,” as if progress were guaranteed and what comes later will be necessarily better. How readily such thinking seduced early-20th-century Russian (and Weimar German) intellectuals! And how vulnerable it leaves us to underestimating the evil that human beings can commit! “We have placed too much hope in politics and social reforms only to find out that we are being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life” and our moral sense. People cannot even understand evil unless they recognize that it “resides in each individual heart before it enters a political system.”

    “As for Progress,” Solzhenitsyn replied to self-styled progressives, “there can only be one true kind: the sum total of the spiritual progresses of individual persons, the degree of self-perfection in the course of their lives.” For the hedonist, death looms as the terrible cessation of pleasures, but for spiritual people it is proof that, as Pierre, the hero of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, enthuses as he points to the sky: “We must live, we must love, and we must believe not only that we live today on the scrap of earth, but that we have lived and shall live forever, there, in the Whole.” Or as Solzhenitsyn argued in his Harvard commencement address: “If as claimed by humanism, man were born only to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to death, his task on earth evidently must be more spiritual: not a total engrossment in everyday life, not a search for the best way to obtain material goods. . . . It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one’s life’s journey may become above all an experience of moral growth: to leave life a better human being than one started it.”

    People can accomplish such moral growth not by self-indulgence but by its opposite, self-restraint or, as Solzhenitsyn also called it, “self-limitation.” Without that, they remain mired in the world of things and unable to see beyond the present moment. Après moi le déluge. 

    “If we don’t learn to limit firmly our desires and demands, to subordinate our interests to moral criteria,” Solzhenitsyn insisted, “we, mankind, will simply be torn apart as the worst aspects of human nature bare their teeth.” Voicing the overriding lesson of the Russian literary tradition, Solzhenitsyn told Westerners: “if personality is not directed at values higher than the self, then it becomes inevitably invested with corruption and decay…. We can only experience true spiritual satisfaction not in seizing but in refusing to seize: in other words, in self-limitation.”

    The spiritual malaise of hedonism fatally weakens a society by leaving it unable to defend itself. “The most striking feature that an outside observer discerns in the West today,” Solzhenitsyn asserted in the Harvard address, is “a decline in courage,” which “is particularly noticeable in the ruling and intellectual elites,” presumably including his Harvard audience. Amid an abundance of material goods, “why and for the sake of what should one risk one’s precious life in defense of the common good, and particularly in the nebulous case when the security of one’s nation must be defended in an as-yet distant land?” People naturally say, “Let someone else risk his life.” European powers “bargain to see who can spend least on defense so that more remains for a prosperous life.” (Thirty years later, few European countries not on the Russian border meet the agreed-upon defense expenditure of 2 percent of GDP.) America bases its security primarily on its formidable arsenal, Solzhenitsyn noted, but weapons are never enough without “stout hearts and steadfast men.”

    One step beyond unwillingness to defend one’s country is actual hatred of it. I thought of Solzhenitsyn’s warnings when I learned of campus mobs this year shouting “Death to America!” For Solzhenitsyn, that is where the cult of individual happiness, sooner or later, is bound to lead. Facing the slightest frustration, forced to endure a modicum of adversity, or exposed to a world of contingency and misfortune, those educated to regard individual good fortune as their due seek someone to blame. They readily embrace any fashionable ideology that divides the world into oppressed and oppressors, the innocent good people and the implacably evil. But as Solzhenitsyn famously observed in The Gulag Archipelago, the line between good and evil runs not between groups but “through every human heart.”

    Why worry about external enemies when the real threat supposedly comes from another group or party at home? “Or why restrain oneself from burning hatred,” Solzhenitsyn asked, “whatever its basis—race, class, or manic ideology?” As in the French and Russian Revolutions, such anger feeds on itself. “Atheist teachers are rearing a younger generation in a spirit of hatred toward their own society.” From the perspective of 2024, it is easy to verify Solzhenitsyn’s prediction that “the flames of hatred” against one another are bound to intensify.

    Society tears itself apart. Turning all questions into a matter of absolute rights makes amicable com-promise impossible, and it is the most privileged peo-ple, shielded from life’s inevitable disappointments, who are the most inclined to such thinking. Those raised in gated communities and preparing for lucrative professions are the first to express resentment and complain they feel “unsafe.” As Solzhenitsyn anticipated, “the broader the personal freedoms, the higher the level of social well-being or even affluence—the more vehement, paradoxically, this blind hatred” of America.

    The specter—or rather, the zombie—of Marxism has returned because it divides the world into the damned and the saved. They need not be “the bourgeoisie” and “the proletariat” but can be any pair that conveniently presents itself. To the amazement of those who only recently escaped such thinking, “what one people has already endured, appraised, and rejected suddenly emerges among another people as the very latest word.”

    Solzhenitsyn asked: Why does one country blindly embrace another’s catastrophic mistakes? Why can’t those mistakes become a cautionary lesson? “This inability to understand someone else’s faraway grief,” he pleads, “threatens to bring on imminent and violent extinction.”

    Surely there must be some way “to overcome man’s perverse habit of learning only from his own experience, so that the experience of others often passes him by without profit”! And in fact, there is: art, and especially literature.

    Great literature has the power, he explained in his Nobel Prize lecture, to “impress upon an obstinate human being someone else’s far-off sorrows or joys” and to “give him an insight into magnitudes of events and into delusions that he’s never himself experienced.” He went on: “Making up for man’s scant time on earth, art transmits from one person to another the entire accumulated burden of another’s life experience … and allows us to assimilate it as our own.” Nothing else possesses literature’s “miraculous power” to overcome the barriers of language, custom, and social structure and thereby communicate “the experience of an entire nation to another nation that hasn’t undergone such a difficult, decades-long collective experience.” Literature “could save an entire nation from a redundant” and self-destructive course.

    Solzhenitsyn’s audience must have wondered: But surely novelists can err, mislead, or even lie like everyone else! Isn’t that what Soviet socialist realist, “Party-minded” writers actually did? Here it is helpful to remember that in the Russian tradition not everything called a novel or poem qualifies as “literature.” Writing that lies or lacks compassion for those who suffer cannot belong to the canon. As Dmitri Likhachev, the foremost scholar of medieval Russian literature, explained:

    Literature is the conscience of a society, its soul. The honor and merit of a writer consists in defending truth and the right to that truth under the most unfavorable circumstances…. Can you really consider literature literature, or a writer a writer if they side-step the truth, if they silence or try to falsify it? Literature which does not evoke a pang of conscience is already a lie. And to lie in literature, you will agree, is the worst kind of lying.

    When the novelist Mikhail Sholokhov, also a Nobel Prize winner, praised the Soviet government’s imprisonment of dissident writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel, the editor and poet Aleksandr Tvardovsky, joined by novelist Lydia Chukovskaia and others, expelled him from “Russian literature.” “Sholokhov is now a former writer,” Tvardovsky asserted.

    The most that ordinary people can do when a totalitarian regime blankets them with lies, Solzhenitsyn explained, is not to participate: “Let thatcome into the world—only not through me.” But writers can do more: “It is within their power … to defeat the lie! …The lie can prevail against much in the world, but never against art.”

    Why exactly can a genuine novel not lie? What prompts Solzhenitsyn to deem “the persuasiveness of a true work of art irrefutable” and declare that “it prevails even over a resisting heart”? The answer is that a novel tests ideas as political speeches, journalistic articles, and philosophical systems do not.

    If an author implausibly makes a character assert or do something just because a political position requires it, readers will sense the falsity. They will recognize that the assertion comes from the author’s prefabricated ideology and does not arise from the character’s experience. It seems fake, forced, out of character. Analogous tests pertain to other artistic forms, which display their own kinds of proof and disproof. That is why “a true work of art carries its verification within itself: artificial or forced concepts do not survive their trial by image; both concept and image crumble, and turn out feeble, pale, convincing no one.”

    Genuine works of art based on truth “attract us to themselves powerfully, and no one ever—even centuries later—will step forth to refute them.” They become classics. When Dostoevsky’s famously stated that “beauty will save the world,” he meant that even if regimes crush truth and goodness, “the intricate, unpredictable, and unlooked-for shoots of Beauty will force their way through… therefore fulfilling the task of all three.”

    This view of art as something sacred made Solzhenitsyn highly impatient with the “falsely understood avant-gardism” of certain kinds of modernism and postmodernism. As he explains in his speech “Playing Upon the Strings of Emptiness,” delivered in New York in 1993, cleverness alone ultimately proves trivial and, at times, destructive. “Before erupting on the streets of Petrograd, this cataclysmic [Russian] revolution had erupted on the pages of the artistic and literary journals of Bohemian circles. It is there we first heard…[of] the sweeping away of all ethical codes and religions.” Even the most talented “futurists,” ensnared by a false revolutionism, demanded the destruction of “the Racines, Murillos, and Raphaels, ‘so that bullets would bounce off museum walls’” while calling for the Russian literary classics to be “‘thrown overboard from the ship of modernity’.”

    Decades later, some Russian writers of the Brezhnev era embraced postmodernist relativism: “Yes, they say, Communist dogma was a great lie—but then again, absolute truths don’t exist anyhow, and it’s hardly worthwhile trying to find them.” In this way, the masterpieces of Russian fiction became the object of condescending scorn.

    And so, in one sweeping gesture of alienated vexation, classical Russian literature—which never disdained reality but sought the truth—is dismissed as next to worthless. Denigrating the past is deemed to be the key to progress. And so today it’s once again fashionable in our country to ridicule, debunk, and throw overboard the great Russian literature, steeped as it is in love and compassion.

    Even more than Russia, Solzhenitsyn said, the West has embraced this shallow relativism. The most advanced theories teach that “there is no God, there is no truth, the universe is chaotic, all is relative, ‘the world as a text.’” Postmodern literature purports to “play,” but this is “not the Mozartian playfulness of a universe overflowing with joy—but a forced playing upon the strings of emptiness.”

    In literature as in life, “nothing can be fashioned on a neglect of higher meanings.” No doubt about it, Solzhenitsyn maintained, the world is going through a profound and accelerating spiritual crisis, and its only hope—great literature—is betraying its mission. In a rare moment of hopefulness, Solzhenitsyn found it “hard to believe that we’ll allow this to occur.” He said, “Even in Russia, so terribly ill right now—we wait and hope that, after the coma and period of silence, we shall feel the reawakening of Russian literature, and witness the subsequent arrival of fresh new forces” that will spiritually uplift the world. But only if people return to “higher meaning.”

    If Solzhenitsyn’s warnings about their society’s collapse irritated Westerners, his exalted view of literature struck them as too naive to take seriously. How many Americans regard novels as supremely important, let alone redemptive? Today, as literature departments “decolonize” the curriculum, fewer and fewer become acquainted with the greatest works at all.

    More and more, students view literature as what they teach—or rather, used to teach—in required courses. Literature no longer has sufficient prestige to attract the best minds, and so the process of decline accelerates. Who reads contemporary poetry, and what timeless American novels have appeared in the past half century?

    What’s more, young people increasingly lack the patience that great literature demands. They surf, they scan, they tweet. So how likely is it that, as Solzhenitsyn hoped, literature would transmit the experience needed to avoid a disastrous future?

    When a country disparages the classics, it invites what Russians experienced as a “seventy-year long ice age.” People imprison themselves in the present moment and, in the name of freedom, enslave themselves to a single way of seeing the world. Wisdom earned by very different experiences seems increasingly irrelevant.

    At the end of The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn directly addressed those elites most resistant to his warning:

    All you freedom-loving “left-wing” thinkers in the West! You left laborites! You progressive American, German, and French students! As far as you are concerned, none of this amounts to much. As far as you are concerned, this whole book of mine is a waste of effort. You may suddenly understand it someday—but only when you yourselves hear “hands behind your backs there!” and step ashore on our Archipelago.

    1 We Have Ceased to See the Purpose: Essential Speeches of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, ed. Ignat Solzhenitsyn (Notre Dame, Indiana: Notre Dame University Press, 2024).

    Photo: AP Photo, File

  • ’White Slaves’

    ’White Slaves’

    ‘White Slaves’ by Roger McGrath

    Historian Roger D. McGrath takes issue with the fundamental argument of The 1619 Project.

    For many years I taught a U.S. history survey course.

    One of my lecture topics was American slavery. I made a real effort to put the peculiar institution into historical perspective.

    I noted that slavery was not something reserved for blacks here in America but was as old as man himself and recognized no racial bounds. There had been slavery in Asia, slavery in Africa, slavery in Europe, and slavery in the Americas. Yellow man enslaved yellow man, black man enslaved black man, white man enslaved white man, and red man enslaved red man.

    This shouldn’t have come as a surprise to college students, but, as the years went by, more and more incoming freshmen were surprised to learn that slavery was not uniquely American and not uniquely a black experience. Shortly before I retired from teaching I began running into something more stupefying than sheer historical ignorance:victimology.

    I encountered black students whose worldview was formed by a sense of victimhood. They were not willing to concede that suffering enslavement was universal. If I were black, I would have been elated to learn that slavery was not something reserved for blacks only—that my race had not been singled out as deserving nothing better.

    This was certainly the reaction, more often than not, of my black students in my early years of teaching. Today, however, we are reaping the bitter fruit of years of politically correct indoctrination in schools, and blacks are outraged when the enslavement of other peoples is discussed.

    The outrage deepens when white slaves are mentioned and becomes near hysteria when it is pointed out that whites suffered far more severe forms of slavery than that experienced by blacks in American colonies and the United States.

    Examples abound, but one of many from ancient Rome should suffice: The average life expectancy for a slave in the Roman mercury mines was nine months. Moreover, most of the slaves put to work in the mines were of Celtic or Germanic stock—as white as one could get. They became slaves as a consequence of Roman wars and therefore cost next to nothing.

    They worked under brutal conditions and day by day absorbed more and more mercury. They experienced terrible pain, mental confusion, loss of eyesight and hearing, and died as their liver and kidneys failed. No matter. There were thousands upon thousands of conquered folks waiting to replace them.

    If ancient Rome is too distant, though, examples of white slaves in the New World can be cited. Having grown up with Seumas MacManus’s The Story of the Irish Race, I learned from a young age that tens of thousands of Irish were enslaved and shipped to the West Indies to labor and die on sugar plantations.

    There have been studies of recent vintage devoted entirely to the subject, including Sean O’Callaghan’s To Hell or Barbados: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ireland.

    Such works have caused a near hysterical reaction in academe. Politically correct professors are livid that the topic is even discussed. As one of my teaching assistants, who was a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party, said to another one of my TAs—30 years ago now — “There are some facts students just shouldn’t know.”

    It is difficult to determine exactly when the first Irish were shipped to the West Indies, but by the mid-1630’s the trade was well underway. There were the Free Willers, who voluntarily sold themselves for a term of indenture, usually seven years.

    There were also the Redemptioners, who were duped into signing contracts of indenture. Once in the New World, they were sold for cash at auctions. Then, there were the Spiriters, who were kidnapped and, like the Redemptioners, sold at auctions. 

    Many of those kidnapped were children, some as young as eight. One agent bragged he kidnapped and sold an average of 500 children a year (see Robert Louis Stevenson “Kidnapped”) throughout the 1630’s. Another agent said he also averaged hundreds of children annually, and one year sold 850.

    The death toll for Africans shipped to the New World was high; so too was the death toll for the Irish. A loss of 20 percent during the voyage was considered normal, a percentage of deaths equal to that suffered by Africans in the infamous Middle Passage.

    Typical was a ship carrying planter Thomas Rous and his 350 indentured servants. Every day two or three died and were tossed overboard. By the time the ship arrived in Barbados, 80 of the indentured had died. Most of the ships that carried the Irish were the same ships used in the African slave trade, and the Irish were packed into the holds of the ships in identical fashion to the blacks.

    Once on the island, death came regularly to the survivors of the voyage. They were forced to work no less than a 12-hour day and fed only cornmeal and potatoes. The tropical sun blistered their white skin, and diseases took a frightful toll.

    Those who survived their term of indenture were a minority. Moreover, various infractions allowed planters to extend the term of indenture, and for many this meant life. Whipping and branding were common punishments. Maiming was also practiced. When a plot to rebel was revealed in 1648, conspirators were arrested and sentenced to death.

    They were hanged and drawn and quartered. Their heads were mounted on pikes, which were placed on the main streets of Bridgetown, the capital of Barbados.

    Nonetheless, all of this was but a prelude to the trade in human cargo that occurred following Cromwell’s rampage through Ireland, 1649-52. So many Irish soldiers were killed or exiled to continental Europe that the Emerald Isle was left with tens of thousands of widows and fatherless children.

    This caused England’s ruling council in Ireland to pass one of history’s most cynical orders: That Irishwomen, as being too numerous now—and therefore, exposed to prostitution—be sold to merchants, and transported to Virginia, New England, or other countries, where they may support themselves by their labour.

    Cromwell’s soldiers now rode about Ireland rounding up Irish women and children, and some men, as if they were cattle being driven to market. The captives were herded into holding pens and branded with the initials of the ship that was to transport them to the New World.

    Fetching the highest prices were young women, who were highly prized by the Caribbean planters, who “had only Negresses and Maroon women to solace them.” Estimates of how many women and children were transported and sold vary widely, but 50,000 is a conservative number.

    No less a figure than physician and attorney Thomas Addis Emmet, a founder of the United Irishmen and a participant in the Rising of 1798, and later the attorney general of the State of New York, put the figure at more than 100,000, following a careful study.

    After four years the horrific trade in women and girls was stopped but only because, says John Patrick Prendergast in The Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland, “the evil became too shocking and notorious, particularly when these dealers in Irish flesh began to seize the daughters and children of the English themselves, and to force them on board their slave ships.”

    None of these women or children had signed contracts of indenture. They were simply sold as servants for an indeterminate period of enslavement. In Barbados they went on the auction block. The best looking of the young women were bought as concubines by the wealthy English planters.

    Occasionally, a planter would formally marry one of the young women. Most of the Irish females were used as servants in the planters’ households, but many labored in the fields alongside men. Others were put to work as prostitutes in brothels, and some, many of them no more than 13 years of age, were forced to breed with black slaves. The mulatto offspring became the property of the planter.

    In this way a small planter could rapidly increase his slave population without the expense of purchase. Boys could also fetch high prices at auctions when homosexual planters and merchants wanted young playthings. English visitors to the island worried not about the sufferings of the Irish, but that the “slavery corrupts the morals of the master” and turns respectable Englishmen into “the most debauched devils.”

    By 1660, half or more of the white population of Barbados was made up of indentured Irish. The same was true of St. Lucia, St. Christopher, Jamaica, Antigua, St. Kitts, Nevis, and Montserrat.

    Those indentured servants who were shipped to the American colonies were the lucky ones. For the most part they were freed after their term of indenture, usually four or seven years, although a number saw their indentures extended for minor infractions. Many were worked to death long before their term was up.

    The planters in Virginia, for example, had a vested interest in keeping a black slave healthy and, as a result, might get 40 years of work out of him. The planter had little similar concern for the Irish, Scot, Welsh, or English servant who would usually be gone at the end of his indenture.

    Overworked and malnourished, the servant often died young. In his weakened condition, he fell prey to disease. The big killer in the tidewater regions of the South was malaria, which arrived in the New World from Africa carried by the Anopheles mosquito. Anywhere there were large bodies of standing water and warm temperatures the Anopheles mosquito thrived.

    If it hadn’t been for malaria, black slavery might not have developed in the colonies. Blacks had protection—the sickle cell—from the disease, while whites did not. Otherwise, free whites and white indentured servants would have supplied all the labor needed. By 1700—80 years after the first Africans had arrived—there were only some 6,000 black slaves in Virginia, less than eight percent of the population.

    Without malaria and other tropical diseases it is unlikely that this percentage would have increased. During his term of indenture the servant was a slave in all but name. He could be bought and sold and punished brutally. Some were beaten to death. Women were often raped. Owners of the servants rarely suffered any kind of penalty for their inhuman treatment of their property.

    Nonetheless, there was an end date to this bondage, and this has caused an almost hysterical reaction to the use of the term slave when describing indentured servants, especially when discussing Irish in the West Indies.

    Academics now write articles about the “myth of Irish slavery.” The authors of these articles argue that the Irish entered into servitude voluntarily and signed contracts of indenture. That was true for only a minority of the Irish shipped to the West Indies and clearly not true for the kidnapped women and children. Moreover, it seems to me that the term slave is more accurate than the euphemistic term servant.

    The owner of such a servant had near-total control over his destiny. If a master could put a servant on the auction block, then he owned not only the servant’s labor but the servant himself. He was chattel.

    The great English essayist, pamphleteer, and novelist Daniel Defoe, known best for Robinson Crusoe, had it right when he said indentured servants are “more properly called slaves.” ◆

    It is unsurprising that the current crop of those in the box marked race intensely dislike being informed of the enslavement of people not of “color”.

  • A Promise To America

    A Promise To America

    It is difficult to know which the media is going to focus on at any one hour. They seem to be focusing on The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. The following is a brief history.

    Foreword

    A PROMISE TO AMERICA

    Kevin D. Roberts, PhD

    Forty-four years ago, the United States and the conservative movement were in dire straits. Both had been betrayed by the Washington establishment and were uncertain whom to trust. Both were internally splintered and stra-tegically adrift. Worse still, at that moment of acute vulnerability and division, we found ourselves besieged by existential adversaries, foreign and domestic. The late 1970s were by any measure a historic low point for America and the political coa-lition dedicated to preserving its unique legacy of human flourishing and freedom.

    Today, America and the conservative movement are enduring an era of division and danger akin to the late 1970s. Now, as then, our political class has been discredited by wholesale dishonesty and corruption. Look at America under the ruling and cultural elite today: Inflation is ravaging family budgets, drug overdose deaths continue to escalate, and children suffer the toxic normalization of transgender-ism with drag queens and pornography invading their school libraries. Overseas, a totalitarian Communist dictatorship in Beijing is engaged in a strategic, cultural, and economic Cold War against America’s interests, values, and people—all while globalist elites in Washington awaken only slowly to that growing threat. Moreover, low-income communities are drowning in addiction and government dependence. Contemporary elites have even repurposed the worst ingredients of 1970s “radical chic” to build the totalitarian cult known today as “The Great Awokening.” And now, as then, the Republican Party seems to have little understanding about what to do. Most alarming of all, the very moral foundations of our society are in peril.

    Yet students of history will note that, notwithstanding all those challenges, the late 1970s proved to be the moment when the political Right unified itself and the country and led the United States to historic political, economic, and global victories.

    The Heritage Foundation is proud to have played a small but pivotal role in that story. It was in early 1979—amid stagflation, gas lines, and the Red Army’s inva-sion of Afghanistan, the nadir of Jimmy Carter’s days of malaise—that Heritage launched the Mandate for Leadership project. We brought together hundreds of conservative scholars and academics across the conservative movement. Together, this team created a 20-volume, 3,000-page governing handbook containing more than 2,000 conservative policies to reform the federal government and rescue the American people from Washington dysfunction. It was a promise from the conservative movement to the country—confident, specific, and clear.

    Mandate for Leadership was published in January 1981—the same month Ronald Reagan was sworn into his presidency. By the end of that year, more than 60 percent of its recommendations had become policy—and Reagan was on his way to ending stagflation, reviving American confidence and prosperity, and winning the Cold War.

    The bad news today is that our political establishment and cultural elite have once again driven America toward decline. The good news is that we know the way out even though the challenges today are not what they were in the 1970s. Conservatives should be confident that we can rescue our kids, reclaim our culture, revive our economy, and defeat the anti-American Left—at home and abroad. We did it before and will do it again.As Ronald Reagan put it:

    “Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation.”

    This is the duty history has put before us and the standard by which our generation of conservatives will be judged. And we should not want it any other way.

    The legacy of Mandate for Leadership, and indeed of the entire Reagan Revolution, is that if conservatives want to save the country, we need a bold and courageous plan. This book is the first step in that plan.

  • Speech that made a Jewish State Possible

    Speech that made a Jewish State Possible

    Speech that made possible a Jewish State –

    Jan. 2, 1948 by Golda Meir

    I have had the privilege of representing Palestine Jewry in this country and in other countries when the problems that we faced were those of building more kibbutzim, of bringing in more Jews in spite of political obstacles and Arab riots.

    We always had faith that in the end we would win, that everything we were doing in the country led to the independence of the Jewish people and to a Jewish state.

    Long before we had dared pronounce that word, we knew what was in store for us.

    Today we have reached a point when the nations of the world have given us their decision – the establishment of a Jewish state in a part of Palestine. Now in Palestine we are fighting to make this resolution of the United Nations a reality, not because we wanted to fight. If we had the choice, we would have chosen peace to build in peace.

    Friends, we have no alternative in Palestine. The Mufti and his men have declared war upon us. We have to fight for our lives, for our safety, and for what we have accomplished in Palestine, and perhaps above all, we must fight for Jewish honour and Jewish independence. Without exaggeration, I can tell you that the Jewish community in Palestine is doing this well. Many of you have visited Palestine; all of you have read about our young people and have a notion as to what our youth is like. I have known this generation for the last twenty-seven years. I thought I knew them. I realize now that even I did not.

    These young boys and girls, many in their teens, are bearing the burden of what is happening in the country with a spirit that no words can describe. You see these youngsters in open cars—not armoured cars—in convoys going from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, knowing that every time they start out from Tel Aviv or from Jerusalem there are probably Arabs behind the orange groves or the hills, waiting to ambush the convoy.

    These boys and girls have accepted the task of bringing Jews over these roads in safety as naturally as though they were going out to their daily work or to their classes in the university.

    We must ask the Jews the world over to see us as the front line .

    All we ask of Jews the world over, and mainly of the Jews in the United States, is to give us the possibility of going on with the struggle.

    When trouble started, we asked young people from the age of seventeen to twenty-five who were not members of Haganah, to volunteer. Up to the day that I left home on Thursday morning, when the registration of this age group was still going on, over 20,000 young men and women had signed up. As of now we have about 9,000 people mobilized in the various parts of the country. We must triple this number within the next few days.

    We have to maintain these men. No government sends its soldiers to the front and expects them to take along from their homes the most elementary requirements—blankets, bedding, clothing.

    A people that is fighting for its very life knows how to supply the men they send to the front lines. We too must do the same.

    Thirty-five of our boys, unable to go by car on the road to besieged Kfar Etzion to bring help, set out by foot through the hills; they knew the road, the Arab villages on that road, and the danger they would have to face. Some of the finest youngsters we have in the country were in that group, and they were all killed, every one of them. We have a description from an Arab of how they fought to the end for over seven hours against hundreds of Arabs According to this Arab, the last boy killed, with no more ammunition left, died with a stone in his hand.

    I want to say to you, friends, that the Jewish community in Palestine is going to fight to the very end. If we have arms to fight with, we will fight with those, and if not, we will fight with stones in our hands.

    I want you to believe me when I say that I came on this special mission to the United States today not to save 700,000 Jews. During the last few years the Jewish people lost 6,000,000 Jews, and it would be audacity on our part to worry the Jewish people throughout the world because a few hundred thousand more Jews were in danger. That is not the issue.

    The issue is that if these 700,000 Jews in Palestine can remain alive, then the Jewish people as such is alive and Jewish independence is assured. If these 700,000 people are killed off, then for many centuries, we are through with this dream of a Jewish people and a Jewish homeland.

    My friends, we are at war. There is no Jew in Palestine who does not believe that finally we will be victorious. That is the spirit of the country. We have known Arab riots since 1921 and ’29 and ’36. We know what happened to the Jews of Europe during this last war. And every Jew in the country also knows that within a few months a Jewish state in Palestine will be established.

    We knew that the price we would have to pay would be the best of our people. There are over 300 killed by now. There will be more. There is no doubt that there will be more. But there is also no doubt that the spirit of our young people is such that no matter how many Arabs invade the country, their spirit will not falter. However, this valiant spirit alone cannot face rifles and machine guns. Rifles and machine guns without spirit are not worth very much, but spirit without arms can in time be broken with the body.

    Much must be prepared now so that we can hold out. There are unlimited opportunities, but are we going to get the necessary means? Considering myself not as a guest, but as one of you, I say that the question before each one is simply whether the Yishuv, and the youngsters that are in the front line, will have to fail because money that should have reached Palestine today will reach it in a month or two months from now?

    Is it possible that time should decide the issue not because Palestinian Jews are cowards, not because they are incapable, but merely because they lack the material means to carry on?

    I have come to the United States, and I hope you will understand me if I say that it is not an easy matter for any of us to leave home at present—to my sorrow I am not in the front line. I am not with my daughter in the Negev or with other sons and daughters in the trenches. But I have a job to do.

    I have come here to try to impress Jews in the United States with the fact that within a very short period, a couple of weeks, we must have in cash between twenty-five and thirty million dollars. In the next two or three weeks we can establish ourselves. Of that we are convinced, and you must have faith; we are sure that we can carry on.

    I said before that the Yishuv will give, is giving of its means. But please remember that even while shooting is going on, we must carry on so that our economy remains intact. Our factories must go on. Our settlements must not be broken up.

    We know that this battle is being waged for those not yet in the country.

    There are 30,000 Jews detained right next door to Palestine in Cyprus. I believe that within a very short period, within the next two or three months at most, these 30,000 will be with us, among them thousands of infants and young children. We must now think of preparing means of absorbing them. We know that within the very near future, hundreds of thousands more will be coming in. We must see that our economy is intact.

    I want you to understand that there is no despair in the Yishuv. This is true not only of the young people. I have travelled the road from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and other roads quite a bit. I have seen these dangerous buses filled not only with young Haganah men and girls, but with old people travelling the roads as a matter of course.

    When you go to Tel Aviv now, you will find the city full of life; only the shooting that you hear on the outskirts of Tel Aviv and Jaffa reminds one that the situation in the country is not normal. But it would be a crime on my part not to describe the situation to you exactly as it is.

    Merely with our ten fingers and merely with spirit and sacrifice, we cannot carry on this battle, and the only hinterland that we have is you. The Mufti has the Arab states—not all so enthusiastic about helping him but states with government budgets. The Egyptian government can vote a budget to aid our antagonists. The Syrian government can do the same

    We have no government. But we have millions of Jews in the Diaspora, and exactly as we have faith in our youngsters in Palestine I have faith in Jews in the United States; I believe that they will realize the peril of our situation and will do what they have to do.

    I know that we are not asking for something easy. I myself have sometimes been active in various campaigns and fund collections, and I know that collecting at once a sum such as I ask is not simple.

    But I have seen our people at home. I have seen them come from the offices to the clinics when we called the community to give their blood for a blood bank to treat the wounded. I have seen them lined up for hours, waiting so that some of their blood can be added to this bank.

    It is blood plus money that is being given in Palestine.

    I know that many of you would be as anxious as our people to be on the very front line. I do not doubt that there are many young people among the Jewish community in the United States who would do exactly what our young people are doing in Palestine.

    We are not a better breed; we are not the best Jews of the Jewish people. It so happened that we are there and you are here. I am certain that if you were in Palestine and we were in the United States, you would be doing what we are doing there, and you would ask us here to do what you will have to do.

    I want to close with paraphrasing one of the greatest speeches that was made during the Second World War—the words of Churchill.

    I am not exaggerating when I say that the Yishuv in Palestine will fight in the Negev and will fight in Galilee and will fight on the outskirts of Jerusalem until the very end. You cannot decide whether we should fight or not. We will. The Jewish community in Palestine will raise no white flag for the Mufti. That decision is taken. Nobody can change it. You can only decide one thing: whether we shall be victorious in this fight or whether the Mufti will be victorious. That decision American Jews can make. It has to be made quickly within hours, within days.

    And I beg of you—don’t be too late. Don’t be bitterly sorry three months from now for what you failed to do today. The time is now.

    I have spoken to you without a grain of exaggeration. I have not tried to paint the picture in false colours. It consists of spirit and certainty of our victory on the one hand, and dire necessity for carrying on the battle on the other.

    I want to thank you again for having given me the opportunity at a conference that I am certain has a full agenda to say these few words to you. I leave the platform without any doubt in my mind or my heart that the decision that will be taken by American Jewry will be the same as that which was taken by the Jewish community in Palestine, so that within a few months from now we will all be able to participate not only in the joy of resolving to establish a Jewish state, but in the joy of laying the cornerstone of the Jewish state.

    Speech from http://www.tamilnation.org/ideology/golda.htm.