Missing stuff from a HS history book

American History

When I first learned it was so Americentric. Reading a variety of historians, I always thought those high school books will soon overturn this and tell a more complete story. Nope.  They now vomit political correctness. Here’s what I mean--let’s just choose the Revolutionary War as an example. 

.     The preliminary things that are important to realize about our Revolt are that France was 4 times as big as Great Britain and Spain was twice as big.  Netherlands and Britain were small.  Second, Sugar was king in the new world, not cotton or tobacco or furs. When France lost the French and Indian War, they ceded unprofitable Canada but really held onto (are you ready for this?) Haiti.  Dutch, French, Swedes, Spanish all vied for the Caribbean Sugar Islands.  Add Portugal and they were the real villains in slave biz, not USA, as the PC assumes today. Third, Enlightenment.  When Jefferson wrote the Declaration, it was pure Enlightenment logic and it influenced Whigs in Parliament like Burke and Fox to sympathize.  Fourth George III, the monarch who wanted to think of himself as a great warrior like his dad George II, was a Palace Puppy who never even saw the sea until he was an old man (Yes, an Englishman!) He appointed second rate ministers who never went on a fact-finding mission to America either. And his generals had No Real Strategy to win and reoccupy.

            So the Americans won the logic appeal, the propaganda game, the spying game and the guerilla warfare game.  When they won at Saratoga, Oct. 1777, Benjamin Franklin went to work.  He should be as big a hero as Washington.  He got the French to ally in 1778 and America was no longer alone. Spain tacitly backed France in hopes of recovering Gibraltar.  Dutch wanted British Caribbean islands and also joined against Britain.  Then in 1781, Corwallis surrendered at Yorktown which really took the wind out of British war hawks. (And here our HS history books seem to pronounce the war over) But Brits were winning other victories and it wasn’t the end of the war.  Adm. Howe defeated Admiral De Grasse in the Caribbean saving their precious sugar islands.  They stopped the Spanish siege of Gibraltar and Britain was once again ruler of the seas. Franklin met a peace delegation in Paris and talked sense.  There was no winning for the Brits in USA. Washington had just threatened hanging a British officer in retaliation for a loyalist atrocity and suddenly opinion in England had turned from “colonists are feckless dummies” to “this Washington is one tough cookie”.  Franklin, knowing that the Canadians were ambiguous about the Revolt, offered to make no claims on Canada and leave it in British hands.  But USA must be outright independent.   Then he enticed the French with a first of its kind treaty for free international fishing in the Grand Banks off Newfoundland. French felt like they were back in the game in N. America with that provision.  (First international fishing treaty ever done) Then he wooed England with the idea that once America was recognized as independent, the 2 nations had far more to agree about than to dispute.  France and allies signed. England signed. Everyone thought they had gotten a good deal.  In the ensuing toasts in Paris, a Frenchman boasted of their alliance by saying to a Brit, “the thirteen United States will someday form the greatest empire in the World.” To which the Brit retorted, “Yes Monsieur, and they will all speak English, every one of them.” The British historians think this was the beginning of the Anglo-American Special Relationship.  (I think they forget War of 1812 and other disputes). Sly Franklin sailed home from Paris with an Independent United States of America.

Venona women

Angeline “Angie” Nanni, the last survivor of the Venona Project, has finally given an interview at age 99.  Venona was one of the greatest counter-espionage triumphs of the Cold War, a top secret effort to break encrypted Soviet spy messages.  In 1945, the uneducated Angie sought a better job and was found to be a virtuoso mathematician in a government test.  Previously she had worked as bookkeeper in dad’s grocery and sisters’ hair salon.  The Venona Project was mostly women mathematicians—Gloria Forbes, Mildred Hayes, Carrie Berry, Joan Callahan, Gene Grabeel, and Angie.  They were rural women, hired during WW II when men were in short supply-- ferocious intellect, and powerful linguists, attention to details and math. Over the years many dropped out.  It was terrifically lonely work and forbid discussion. You couldn’t date without risk that the date might be a Soviet plant.  Angie feared even joining church or going to mass.

            Soviets were known for unbreakable codes.  A letter would be assigned a 5-digit number which was then multiplied and divided mysteriously by 5-digit “keys” which varied daily, and digits were then shifted around in the document.  This is all done with non-carrying arithmetic (example: 8 + 6 = 4, not 14). Reverse this to decipher. But the women figured how to decode without knowing the keys.  They did it analytically by noticing repeated numbers representing common words and phrases in Russian. (Like English ‘the’, ‘and’, ‘yes’,’no’) They would then back out the mathematics. And they learned tricks in deciphering from the Nazis, who were trying to do the same and left records after the war.  Theirs was one of the greatest feats in the history of US cryptology. 

            Near the end of the forties, a Russian defected and implicated Whitaker Chambers, an American.  Under interrogation, Chambers named a few names in our government working for the Soviets.  The whole episode blew up when it was discovered that Soviets had stolen our atomic bomb secrets. The House Un-American Activities committee met and Sen. Joe McCarthy named 51 American government workers suspected of being Soviet spies. The Venona women knew who among that group was actually a spy.  They had cracked messages that implicated Julius and Ethel Rosenberg as the bomb secret snitches.  And they knew that high-ranking Alger Hiss was also a spy. Yet they couldn’t speak.  Nor could a deciphered message be used in trial or the Soviets would know the Americans had cracked their code.  Often the OSS/CIA would use ancillary information in a message to prove a conviction. At other times, the guilty lucked out and were told sternly that their cover was broken and that they’d better find a new life.  William Weisband, a fluent Russian speaker, was a deep mole in the NSA but never prosecuted.  Angie said she suspected him because he was so ‘snoopy’ and she always hid her papers on her desk when he came around.

            The Venona women had only a familial fellowship with one another.  Going out to lunch in housedresses and purses, they looked like very low level government workers.  But Angie found her faith in much Bible reading as Luther had done 500 years before. What she found made her “almost a Protestant”. Her 23 nieces and nephews were her surrogate children.  She was their Favorite Aunt. Jim DeLuca moved to DC for grad school at George Washington U. in part because Aunt Angie was there. She never shared what she had been doing for 35 years at NSA. But Mary Ann DeLuca tells about how in the waning days of the Obama Admin some were discussing the Rosenbergs sympathetically wanting them exonerated.  Aunt Angie overheard and said, “Oh, honey, they can’t.  We had them.  They are guilty.” Then she walked away.  In 2001 Jim DeLuca was online reading about the de-classified Venona Project and there was Angie’s name! He asked her about it. “Oh,” she said, “That was nothing.” But it was.  When Russian citizens stormed the KGB office in Moscow, 1993, files were divulged.  It turned out Joe McCarthy was wrong.  There were actually 406 Soviet spies in the US government, most of whom were known by the quiet Venona women.

Peter's bones

While excavating the grave of Pope Pius XI, under the floor in St. Peter’s Basilica the bottom fell out of the hole revealing grave chambers of ancient Romans.  Vatican Hill was once a sort of ancient body dumping grounds for humans without means.  Peter’s post-crucifixion body was dumped there in 66 AD. Pius XII began a quest.  Houston oil tycoon, George Strake, a Catholic philanthropist was asked to secretly fund the dig.  Monsignor Kaas, supervised a young priest named Ferrua who headed an excavation crew.  WW II had started.  It had to be hand dug, secret from Mussolini and the press.

            Ferrua wanted fame.  He egotistically kept results hidden from Kaas and dug fast.  Emperor Constantine had built the original St. Peter’s Basilica (337 AD) over Peter’s grave.  This was the request of his mother Helena, a faithful Christian convert.  But Romans held ancestors in great honor and built family mausoleums which had come to be placed all over the hill.  Most of the families had passed-on so Constantine decided to backfill nearly one million cubic yards of earth onto the hill to make it flat-topped. Much earlier, about 100 AD, a presbyter, Gaius left a letter that explained to a pagan that the graves of Paul along the Appian Way and Peter’s grave, secretly marked on Vatican Hill could be easily visited.  Other writings said that Constantine later put the bones in a bronze burial vessel and placed this in a marble grotto along with a fortune in gold.  The basilica was rebuilt in 1520. So Ferrua, found an older altar under the present one and dug beneath it.   The enormous St. Peter’s basilica had to be buttressed by cement piles so that they could dig out a hollow under the floors.  What was revealed was a necropolis of streets lined with splendid family vaults, frescoes and mosaics from the 2^nd century.  And once in awhile there were also Christian niches, secret and small, lest they gain attention. . Most human bones were discarded and no photographs taken by Ferrua’s team—horrid archeological practices. Kaas objected to the desecration of the dead and each day collected discarded bones and put them in labeled boxes to be stored . One set of bones had been covered by royal purple cloth with dye stains still intact.  Two very old hillside retaining walls were found and for some inexplicable reason, the Roman engineers had left them intact, making the building whose foundation encompassed them assymetrical—very odd for Roman construction. And in a niche at the foot of a red brick wall, beneath the altars, they found bones, surrounded by Christian votives and coins.  Peter was found! The discovery was announced in 1949. And the bones were given to the Pope who kept them in his apartment.

            Emperor Nero had started a runaway fire, July 18-19, 64 AD to clear buildings for a palace.  The implicated ruler blamed the fire on Christians and many were executed. Among them, Paul and Peter who was crucified upside down.

            After Pius XII and his successor, John XXIII had passed on, Giovanni Montini, papal secretary, rose after many ballots to become Pope Paul VI.  He had doubts about the results of the dig because he had seen the internal bickering of the parties involved.  So he brought in a respected archeologist skilled in the new science of forensics, who judged the ‘Peter’ bones to be 2 young men and an elderly woman. Ferrua protested.  The Pope brought in an expert in epigrahy—a skilled linguist who also knows slang, usages, and monument inscriptions of the time.  Margherita Guarducci had deciphered a Minoan language and other unknown Greek.  Her faith was agnostic.  But as she read the hastily scratched words of graffiti on the retaining wall, she was stunned.  Here were written prayers of the early Christians, “Peter, pray for me”, “Spirit, show Severus the gospel,” and finally, “Peter is within.” Plus, it was written in the graffiti code of persecuted Christians. Guarducci said she realized the incredible bravery of these early Christians and it reconnected her to the Christian faith of her youth.  Then she found an officially chiseled Roman inscription, “In Hoc Vince” [In this conquer] the words Constantine heard in his vision of the cross. (as if he’d put his own prayer with that of the saints)  “Peter is within” implies Peter’s bones were buried in the wall. And beneath a section where hundreds of names followed by AΩ [names of deceased Christians], were scratched was a marble niche. No bones? Kaas had stored them, purple-stained with a label.  It was the skeleton of a 60 to 70 year old robust male whose feet had been cut off, common practice of Roman soldiers in removing an inverted body which had been crucified.  Modern DNA Forensics has shown these bones are that of a Jew.  All of this took place after much bickering among Vatican bureaucrats and was not resolved conclusively until 2012. 

            So now we know why Constantine left the old walls, counter to normally good engineering. He read the prayers too. No bronze sarcophagus, just the precious gold of inspired Christians who passed on and were buried around Peter.  One world-renowned archeologist came to know Jesus as her Lord and Savior who was inspired by all the” graffiti” she read.  And Severus?  He’s later listed as SeverusAΩ.

Pilgrims

Stuff I learn about the Pilgrims.  So how did this group come to be?  Why were there 4 voyages from 1620-31? How did they decide to go? Survive?

            After Henry VIII parted the the pope, he told the church leaders he was now head of the church.  He wanted no change in worships, but wanted to adopt reformation beliefs.  Archbishop Cranmer and the bishops conferred and decided he’d never accept Calvinism with its strict behavioral demands, and instead picked Lutheran doctrine.  So the Anglicans were Catholic worship/Luther’s theology. This got mixed reviews but no riots.  90% of English thought of themselves as Catholic.  But after Henry’s son Edward IV ruled only 5 years, sister Mary, born of Katherine of Spain, came to power and tried to force Catholicism back into the church. Bloody Mary went after any reticent Protestant or even someone who wanted to talk it over.  Result: Several thousand forced to flee, often to Netherlands where the English traded.  Holland was the commerce capital and made a vibrant economy by freely allowing refugees to come with their foreign ideas. And the Low Countries were the place for fabric weaving.  Wales and Western England were the place for sheep and wool.  East Anglia (Eastern England) was heavy in ship commerce, and Northern England was getting acquainted with Presbyterianism.  Holland was Calvinist and thus most of the new ideas were Calvinistic that spread to Britain.  When the Low Countries declared independence from Spain, 10,000 Englishmen rushed to help their cause. 

            There was a city in Yorkshire (north) that was blamed for the beheading of Mary Stuart.  She was Elizabeth’s cousin, raised in France and quite Catholic.  When she assumed the throne of Scotland, she clashed with John Knox and the Presbyterians there.  So much so, that about 8 years after she’d become queen, she fled leaving behind her infant son, James. This was a big problem for Elizabeth of England, who secretly ordered her placed on house arrest, because Mary was the rightful heir of the English throne, had Parliament not recinded Elizabeth's bastardness.  But Parliament had seated Elizabeth instead of Mary because Elizabeth was Protestant. A revolt might dethrone Elizabeth. 18 years later, Mary was beheaded way up north at a Yorkshire castle. Elizabeth claimed someone had countered her orders (even though it solved everything.  Nephew James could now become the future Protestant King of England, since she had no heirs) Who dunnit? Calvinists hated Catholics with a passion and the church nearby had a Calvinist (Puritan) pastor.  The scapegoated Scrooby church was exiled in mass to Holland. 

            There, others from Worchestershire (west) and East Anglia, being persecuted, also joined them. Congregation grew to 250 people in Lieden, Netherlands.  And it became a center for printing Puritan/Separatist (Calvinist) books and tracts to be secretly smuggled back to England.  There were writers like William Brewster (former Cambridge professor), Robinson (the pastor), and Edward Winslow.  Some soldiers who had joined the Dutch revolt like Miles Standish, a rich woolens merchant, Thomas Brewer, who bankrolled everything, and a lot of illiterate but devout peasants.  It was tough times.  Most could only do the menial jobs of textile trade and they lived in much poverty.  Dissatisfaction made them want to go elsewhere, even though Holland allowed them precious free speech.  Robert Cushman, a merchant, negotiated with the British Virginia Company to allow a settlement next to Jamestown.  The Government (Privy Council) okayed reluctantly under the reasoning that it was better to have these radicals harass the Spanish in the new world, rather than to stay home and harass us.  Two old rotten boats and some cautious investors were found to fund the project. 

            45 “Pilgrims”(members of Leiden congregation) and 25 other adventurers joined plus a crew to make 102 people.  They encountered rough storms in the western Atlantic and miraculously survived. Landed in November near present day Provincetown, MA as the weather was getting wintery and the crew refused to go south to VA. Too late to build houses, they stayed aboard and went hunting/exploring on land. Wrote the Mayflower Compact. That winter, a mystery disease killed 50 of the 102.  Only six pilgrim women survived. Many of the non-pilgrims were non-believers and ex-cons. Brewster and Brewer held them together while Standish enforced order. 

            They found an abandoned Indian village.  The Pawtuxets had been wiped out by white-man’s disease, contacted from befriending fisherman (offshore area had been fished by English and Irish for 100 years).  There were fields and huts.  The pilgrims found corn (almost unknown in Europe) and the village had several brooks. In the days before pipes, in order to found a town, you had to have a brook to bring fresh water, washing water and carry away waste going through the townsite. And they met one lonely former resident, Squanto, who had been captured into slavery and taken to Europe before his tribe died.  He’d escaped, found his way to the house of a guy who worked for the Virginia company, who hired him as a coastal guide on the next fishing voyage, then let him escape back to his native land. Squanto gave the Pilgrims life-saving advice on poisonous plants and planting corn.

            The Pilgrims were bent on sharing the gospel with the natives, #2 priority after settling.  But they had brought no seed, not enough candles, hardly any livestock but much Dutch cheese.  The women often figured things out.  They observed how Indians would break off a pine branch, wait for sap to bead at the wound, then smear it on the tip of the broken branch. Makes a torch-candle they named “candlewood”.  Fish were phenomenally plentiful and that is how the Pilgrims paid off their investors over the years.  Deer replaced cattle for meat and hides for clothes.  (Rarely did Pilgrims wear those outfits they are portrayed in).  Being English, they tried making shelters of wattle and daub, but the dauby mud kept falling out from the wet climate.  Women observed the Indians had used ‘shingles’ of bark and hide which later evolved into the shingled and clapboard siding of New England.  Making friends with the Wampanoag tribe was key because they wanted the Pilgrims to stay in the “ghost village” to keep the warlike Naragansetts out. Many of the later Pilgrims had been Yorkshire peasants, so they were tough redneck types who could survive.

            Mayflower sailed back in 1623 and other ships followed until most of the Lieden congregaton had a chance to join.  My great..grandfather Solomon Leonard came in 1629 or 1630.  Cousin to Brewster, he and Miles Standish and Bradford founded the town of Bridgeport. His wife, Sarah Chandler, was sister to one of the original 1620 pilgrims.

            Odd stuff I learn.  Pilgrims didn’t celebrate Christmas and thought it was poor taste to rabble-rouse after Advent which was “little Lent” with repentance and watchfulness.  But they drank beer copiously.  The non-drinking of Calvinists in our age are mainly Baptists who have added this.  Some would think Puritans and Separtists don’t like sex, but the opposite was true.  They hated Catholic teaching that celibacy was “higher” and sex was sinful.  They stressed love from Ephesians 5 for couples and shelled out kids like mad.  2 babies were born on the 2-month voyage over.  And virtually all the women were midwives.  It was not a specialty.  Moreover they understood the necessity of clean linens and water at birth.  But the Pilgrims didn’t take baths (believed you should only bathe at certain times of the moon).  Squanto told them they needed to because they “stincked”. So here we have a nice clean American telling the unwashed foreigners they needed clean up their act.