September 23, 1944:The Fala Address

Richard Nixon's "Checkers" speech was delivered on national television on this day in 1952. For more on that, see the January 9 DPD. Less well remembered these days, but also named for a dog, is a speech given exactly eight years earlier by FDR when he was running for his fourth term in 1944. He spoke in Washington, DC, to the Teamsters (the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America, to give its formal name).

Much of the speech, naturally, was given over to attacking his opposition -- "You know, many of the Republican leaders and Congressmen and candidates... would not even recognize these progressive laws if they met them in broad daylight...." But he also brought up the subject of whether he'd sent a destroyer to pick up his dog Fala in the Aleutians, as Republicas had charged.

"But perhaps the most ridiculous of these campaign falsifications is the one that this Administration failed to prepare for the war that was coming," Roosevelt said toward the end of the speech. "I doubt whether even Goebbels would have tried that one. For even he would never have dared hope that the voters of America had already forgotten that many of the Republican leaders in the Congress and outside the Congress tried to thwart and block nearly every attempt that this Administration made to warn our people and to arm our Nation. Some of them called our 50,000 airplane program fantastic. Many of those very same leaders who fought every defense measure that we proposed are still in control of the Republican party - look at their names - were in control of its National Convention in Chicago, and would be in control of the machinery of the Congress and of the Republican party, in the event of a Republican victory this fall.

"These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or on my sons. No, not content with that, they now include my little dog, Fala. Well, of course, I don't resent attacks, and my family doesn't resent attacks, but Fala does resent them. You know, Fala is Scotch, and being a Scottie, as soon as he learned that the Republican fiction writers in Congress and out had concocted a story that I had left him behind on the Aleutian Islands and had sent a destroyer back to find him - at a cost to the taxpayers of two or three, or eight or twenty million dollars- his Scotch soul was furious. He has not been the same dog since. I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself - such as that old, worm-eaten chestnut that I have represented myself as indispensable. But I think I have a right to resent, to object to libelous statements about my dog.

"Well, I think we all recognize the old technique. The people of this country know the past too well to be deceived into forgetting. Too much is at stake to forget. There are tasks ahead of us which we must now complete with the same will and the same skill and intelligence and devotion that have already led us so far along the road to victory."

September 22, 1862:The Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation

Whereas on the 22nd day of September, A.D. 1862, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, containing, among other things, the following, to wit:

That on the 1st day of January, A.D. 1863, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.

That the executive will on the 1st day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof, respectively, shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State or the people thereof shall on that day be in good faith represented in the Congress of the United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such States shall have participated shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State and the people thereof are not then in rebellion against the United States.

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-In-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for supressing said rebellion, do, on this 1st day of January, A.D. 1863, and in accordance with my purpose so to do, publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days from the first day above mentioned, order and designate as the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof, respectively, are this day in rebellion against the United States the following, to wit:

Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana (except the parishes of St. Bernard, Palquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James, Ascension, Assumption, Terrebone, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the city of New Orleans), Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkeley, Accomac, Morthhampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Anne, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth), and which excepted parts are for the present left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.

And by virtue of the power and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States and parts of States are, and henceforward shall be, free; and that the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.

And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all case when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.

And I further declare and make known that such persons of suitable condition will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.

And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God.

September 21, 1867:Henry Stimson's Birthday

Though never a president, Henry Stimson was one of those men who proved himself exceeding valuable to more than one president -- but especially FDR. Though a committed Republican, Roosevelt tapped Stimson to be Secretary of War in the summer of 1940. He'd held the same position previously -- under William Howard Taft.

He was also instrumental in overseeing the Manhattan Project, as his obit in the New York Times in 1950 makes clear: "When he was in his late seventies Mr. Stimson was the civilian administrative head of a victorious army of more than 10,000,000, the largest ever raised by the United States. It was in this post that he was largely responsible for bringing to an abrupt end over Hiroshima and Nagasaki the violence that had frustrated his diplomacy in the Nineteen Thirties when he was President Hoover's Secretary of State. Mr. Stimson later disclosed that he had not hesitated in recommending to the recently sworn in President Truman the first use of the atomic bomb.

" 'My chief purpose was to end the war in victory with the least possible cost in the lives of the men in the armies which I had helped to raise,' Mr. Stimson wrote in the February, 1947, issue of Harper's magazine. 'In the light of the alternatives which, on a fair estimate, were open to us, I believe that no man in our position and subject to our responsibilities, holding in his hand a weapon of such possibilities for accomplishing this purpose and saving those lives, could have failed to use it and afterward looked his countrymen in the face.' "

September 20, 1881:Chester A. Arthur Takes the Oath

Vice presidents have succeeded to the presidency exactly nine times in the 200-plus history of the office. The Gilded Age saw the unlikely accession of Chester Alan Arthur to the presidency after less than a year as vice president, some of which was spent out of the public eye. During President Garfield's slow decline, Arthur didn't want to seem to be to eager for his boss's demise, and so did very little.

Late in the evening on September 19, 1881, the end came for James Garfield. Arthur took to oath of office twice after that: once in private, a few hours into September 20 (pictured), and then in public two days later. On the occasion of the public swearing in, he gave his inaugural address:

"For the fourth time in the history of the Republic its Chief Magistrate has been removed by death. All hearts are filled with grief and horror at the hideous crime which has darkened our land, and the memory of the murdered President, his protracted sufferings, his unyielding fortitude, the example and achievements of his life, and the pathos of his death will forever illumine the pages of our history.

"For the fourth time the officer elected by the people and ordained by the Constitution to fill a vacancy so created is called to assume the Executive chair. The wisdom of our fathers, foreseeing even the most dire possibilities, made sure that the Government should never be imperiled because of the uncertainty of human life. Men may die, but the fabrics of our free institutions remain unshaken. No higher or more assuring proof could exist of the strength and permanence of popular government than the fact that though the chosen of the people be struck down his constitutional successor is peacefully installed without shock or strain except the sorrow which mourns the bereavement. All the noble aspirations of my lamented predecessor which found expression in his life, the measures devised and suggested during his brief Administration to correct abuses, to enforce economy, to advance prosperity, and to promote the general welfare, to insure domestic security and maintain friendly and honorable relations with the nations of the earth, will be garnered in the hearts of the people; and it will be my earnest endeavor to profit, and to see that the nation shall profit, by his example and experience...."

September 19, 1881:James A. Garfield Dies

James Garfield, 20th President of the United States, was also one of the more luckless occupants of the office. Not only did he did in office by assassination, he died a lingering, painful death that could have prevented by proper care, even at the time, had his doctors been up to it -- but the job was botched.

Garfield's term thus became the second-shortest in presidential history, after William Henry Harrison. "During the long deathwatch [the public] eagerly scanned the latest telegraph bulletins and grabbed the special editions of the newspapers that chronicled the distinguished patient's medical ups and downs," wrote historian Allan Peskin in Presidential Leadership (2004). "When the end came, the nation erupted in a cathartic burst of extravagant grief. Thousands waited patiently in the Washington heat to view the body of the lost leader as it lay in state under the Capitol dome. Tens of thousands lined the railroad tracks to pay homage as the funeral train carried him back to Ohio. Hundreds of thousands crowded into Cleveland to witness the last rites, and millions of copies of memorial tributes, biographies, and eulogies flooded an apparently insatiable market.

"Clearly, Garfield in death, if not in life, touched some vital chord of American sentiment. The public mourned him more for what he was than for what he did. They remembered an impoverished boy, reared in a log cabin by his widowed mother, who was redeemed from a life of dissipation by a religious experience, who then rose from menial labor to respectability through education, becoming a professor of ancient languages and then president of his small Ohio college. The Republican Party brought him into politics, and the Civil War thrust him onto the national stage as the Union's youngest major general. From there it was an easy step to Congress, where he served for seventeen years, becoming a master of financial legislation and his party's floor leader, then to a surprise presidential nomination and a narrow electoral victory -- the only sitting House member ever elected president."

September 18, 1812:Herschel Vespasian Johnson's Birthday

In the four-way race that was the presidential election of 1860, there were four candidates for vice president as well, including Herschel Vespasian Johnson (pictured), former governor of Georgia. He ran with Stephen Douglas as a "Northern" Democrat, but the ticket only won one state, Missouri, and took three of New Jersey's electoral votes, for a total of 12 electoral votes, a meager showing indeed. The ticket did, however, come in second behind the Republicans in the popular vote nationwide -- such as the nation was at that point.

After the election, Johnson served the Confederacy as a Senator. After the war, he was returned to the US Senate by voters in Georgia, but that body would not seat him, and he ended his days as a judge in Georgia, dying in 1880.

And who were the other vice presidential candidates in that momentous election? Republican Hannibal Hamlin, of course, won the veep prize, but has became as much of an historic footnote as any of the losers, which is a common fate of vice presidents. Running with John C. Breckinridge -- the incumbent vice president -- on the "Southern" Democratic ticket was Joseph Lane of Oregon. They got 72 electoral votes. Running with John Bell on the nonce Constitutional Union ticket was Edward Everett of Massachusetts, who got 39 electoral votes. He is not remembered for this vice presidential bid. Instead, Everett is remembered as the speaker who came before Lincoln at Gettysburg.

September 17, 1787:Constitution Day

Today is the day in 1787 that most of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia signed off on the document and submitted it to the Articles of Confederation Congress, which passed it along to the states without comment for ratification. Thus it became the document that originated the presidency, which has now been in continuous existence for more than two centuries.

These days September 17 is known as "Constitution Day," an occasion most of the nation ignores.

Today is also the day in 1859 when Joshua Norton (pictured) of San Francisco proposed -- make that proclaimed -- an alternate form of government for the several states, namely an empire, with him as Emperor Norton I. In letters he distributed to various local newspapers, he said:

"At the peremptory request and desire of a large majority of the citizens of these United States, I, Joshua Norton, formerly of Algoa Bay, Cape of Good Hope, and now for the last 9 years and 10 months past of S. F., Cal., declare and proclaim myself Emperor of these U. S.; and in virtue of the authority thereby in me vested, do hereby order and direct the representatives of the different States of the Union to assemble in Musical Hall, of this city, on the 1st day of Feb. next, then and there to make such alterations in the existing laws of the Union as may ameliorate the evils under which the country is laboring, and thereby cause confidence to exist, both at home and abroad, in our stability and integrity.

"NORTON I, Emperor of the United States."

Until his death in 1880, Norton I issued various decrees to the amusement of the public, including the abolition of the United States itself, and of the Republican and Democratic parties. He also became "Protector of Mexico" along the way. Some 10,000 people showed up at his funeral.

More on Norton I here.

September 16, 1968:Sock it to Me?

In mid-September 1968, presidential candidate Richard Nixon appeared on television -- hardly a surprise, considering how important the medium had become to campaigns since the 1950s -- but in this case the appearance was distinctly novel. He was on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-in, the intensely popular ten-gags-a-minute comedy show of the late 1960s. Nixon was one of the gags. No presidential contender had done anything like that before, not at least on purpose.

"Not long ago, I went to the Museum of Television and Radio, on West Fifty-second Street, to see episode No. 15 of Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, wrote Elizabeth Kolbert in the New Yorker in 2004. "When the episode originally aired, on September 16, 1968, Laugh-In was just beginning its first full season—it had débuted eight months earlier, as a mid-season replacement—but was about to become the No. 1 show on television. The program begins with all the usual Laugh-In mayhem. 'It must be "Sock it to me" time,' a youthful Goldie Hawn announces, before hitting herself over the head with a plastic mallet. The mayor of Burbank gets pelted with Ping-Pong balls; Joanne Worley is doused with water; Ruth Buzzi is crushed by a stage set; and Judy Carne is pelted, doused, crushed, and then sprayed by a skunk. Still wet, she answers a phone, and on the other end (ostensibly) is Governor Nelson Rockefeller. 'Oh, no, I don’t think we could get Mr. Nixon to stand still for a "Sock it to me," ' she chirps, at which point the show cuts away to Richard Nixon.

"Nixon’s appearance on Laugh-In lasts four seconds. At first, he is looking stage right; then he turns toward the camera. He widens his eyes in what seems to be an effort at feigned surprise but comes off looking more like mock dismay. 'Sock it to me?' he asks, drawing out the 'me?' in a way that suggests he has perhaps never heard the line before.

"Episode No. 15 was broadcast at the height of Nixon’s (ultimately successful) campaign against Vice-President Hubert Humphrey, and was an immediate sensation. George Schlatter, the creator of Laugh-In, now runs a television production company in Los Angeles. He told me that Nixon had been extremely reluctant to be on the show; although the producers had repeatedly entreated him to appear, his campaign aides had even more insistently urged him not to. Eventually, the race brought Nixon out to Los Angeles. He gave a press conference, and Schlatter and one of Laugh-In’s writers, Paul Keyes, who happened to be a close friend of the former Vice-President’s, went over to watch it, bringing a TV camera with them.

“ 'While his advisers were telling him not to do it, Paul was telling him how much it would mean to his career,' Schlatter recalled. 'And we went in, and he said, "Sock it to me." It took about six takes, because it sounded angry: "Sock-it-to-me!" After that, we grabbed the tape and escaped before his advisers got to him.

“ 'Then, realizing what we had done—because he did come out looking like a nice guy—we pursued Humphrey all over the country, trying to get him to say, "I’ll sock it to you, Dick!" ' Schlatter went on. 'And Humphrey later said that not doing it may have cost him the election. We didn’t realize how effective it was going to be. But there were other factors in the election, too—I can’t take all the blame.' ”

September 15, 1857:William Howard Taft's Birthday

Today is the birthday of William Howard Taft, 27th President of the United States and 10th Chief Justice of the United States. Mostly forgotten are humorous anecdotes about him, but these days there's a web site devoted to the subject, so funny Taft stories aren't completely relegated to library microfilms.

For example: "Even by 1905 this story was old, but as an article that year noted, 'It is such a good old story that it can never be printed too often': When Taft was Governor of the Philippines he explored the mountainous islands. After a particularly arduous trip, he cabled to Secretary of State Elihu Root, 'Rode forty miles on horseback to-day; feeling fine.' Root wired back, 'Glad you are feeling fine; how is the horse?'

Several pages of such stories are here.

September 14, 1901: Theodore Roosevelt, 42, Becomes President

President McKinley lingered for a time after been shot, but ultimately did not survive his wounds. On September 14, 1901, Theodore Roosevelt became the 26th President of the United States, taking the oath of office in Buffalo, New York. No one before or after has been so young at the beginning of his time in that office: 42 years and 322 days.

According to the web site of the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site: " September 8 - 10, 1901: As McKinley's condition continued to improve, Roosevelt felt it was safe to leave Buffalo. On Tuesday night he took an all night train to the Adirondacks where his family was already on vacation. He left detailed instructions with Ansley Wilcox [his friend in Buffalo] on the chance that he would be asked to return to Buffalo....


September 11 - 13, 1901: On Thursday evening, September 12th, Roosevelt and a group of family and friends hiked up Mt. Marcy and spent the night there. Back in Buffalo, McKinley's condition had changed for the worst and he was rapidly deteriorating. Upon his return from the hike on Friday afternoon, Roosevelt was met by a messenger who carried the news that McKinley was dying and Roosevelt should return to Buffalo as soon as possible. The Vice President left his cabin in the late evening of Friday, September 13th for the thirty-five mile carriage ride to the nearest train station at North Creek. He arrived there just before dawn and was told of the President's death. He took a train to Albany and another one to Buffalo, arriving here at about 1:30 pm. McKinley had died at 2:15 am that morning, September 14, 1901...


September 14, 1901: Theodore Roosevelt arrived in Buffalo at 1:30 pm. He was met at the train station by Ansley Wilcox and brought back to this home. After lunch and a visit to the Milburn home to pay his respects to Mrs. McKinley, Roosevelt returned to the Wilcox house for the inauguration.

This site was chosen by Roosevelt as the most appropriate place for the ceremony. It took place in the Wilcox library at approximately 3:30 pm. A small crowd was assembled including a few newspaper reporters who were allowed to take notes. The photographers were barred from the room until after the ceremony. Roosevelt wore formal clothing borrowed from some of the guests who were present. The oath was administered by Federal District Judge John R. Hazel.

September 13, 1788:The First Presidential Election Scheduled

Technically, the US Constitution was adopted when the ninth state to ratify it, New Hampshire, did so on June 21, 1788. However, the new union wouldn't really have hung together unless Virginia had approved it, which it did four days later.

These events inspired the Confederation Congress to pass an Election Ordinance on September 13, which provided for the selection of presidential electors in the states on January 7, 1789, and set February 4 as the day they would cast their ballots. Thus the first presidential election was set in motion on this day 219 years ago. Everyone was certain that George Washington would take the prize.

According to the web site "The Papers of George Washington," maintained by the University of Virginia, "The Constitution left it up to each state to choose the manner in which their Electors were chosen (Article II, section 1). North Carolina and Rhode Island had not yet ratified the Constitution and had no Electors in the election of 1789. The New York legislature was unable to pass an election act in time to choose its allotted 8 Electors, failed to appoint any by 7 January, and cast no electoral votes on 4 February. A total of 69 Electors voted in the first Presidential Election (2 Electors in Maryland, and 1 in Virginia failed to cast ballots).

"Each elector had two votes, at least one of which had to be cast for a person outside their state. The votes were to be forwarded to Congress, where they would be counted in the presence of the Senators and Representatives. The person with the most votes would be President; the one finishing second in the balloting would be Vice President. Congress convened in New York on 4 March 1789; quorums were achieved in the House and Senate on 1 and 6 April 1789, respectively. Congress confirmed the results of the first presidential election (see below) when it officially counted the ballots on 6 April 1789.

"Vice President John Adams assumed his duties as president of the Senate on 21 April and George Washington was inaugurated as President of the United States on 30 April 1789."

September 12, 1880: H.L. Mencken's Birthday

Today is H.L. Mencken's birthday. The memory of the newspaper columnist and cynical bastard is fading, and it's too bad. Cynical he might have been, but he sure could turn a phase, and phase-turning is mostly a lost art in our time.

Naturally, he had little good to say about US presidents and the presidency, though in one of the following quotes there's a hint of liking for Calvin Coolidge, if only by comparison with his predecessors and successors. So without further ado, some Mencken quotes on presidents and, lastly, the office itself:

"[T]he only thing wrong with Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was that it was the South, not the North, that was fighting for a government of the people, by the people and for the people."

"[Warren Harding's] speeches left the impression of an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea; sometimes these meandering words would actually capture a straggling thought and bear it triumphantly a prisoner in their midst, until it died of servitude and overwork."

"[Warren Harding] writes the worst English I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean-soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights."

"We suffer most not when the White House is a peaceful dormitory, but when it is a jitney Mars Hill, with a tin-pot Paul bawling from the roof. Discounting Harding as a cipher, Coolidge was preceded by one World Saver and followed by two more. What enlightened American, having to choose between any of them and another Coolidge, would hesitate for an instant?"

If there had been any formidable body of cannibals in the country he would have promised them with free missionaries, fattened at the taxpayer's expense." (On Harry Truman's 1948 presidential campaign.)

"The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre -- the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.

"The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."

September 11, 1936:FDR Dedicates Boulder -- Hoover -- Dam

On September 11, 1936, President Franklin Roosevelt pressed a key in Washington, DC, to signal the startup of the Boulder Dam's first hydroelectric generator. It was the culmination of years of effort to dam the Colorado River, a herculean engineering feat still regarded with awe. FDR had not, however, been instrumental in the project. His predecessor, Herbert Hoover, had been -- as president, but especially during his stint as Secretary of Commerce in the mid-1920s.

Writing in the article "What's in a Name?" (2006), Nevada State Archivist Guy Rocha noted: "On September 17, 1930, at a ceremony south of Las Vegas to celebrate the project’s start-up, President Herbert Hoover’s Secretary of the Interior Ray Lyman Wilbur concluded his speech by stating 'I have the honor to name this greatest project of all time—the Hoover Dam.' The announcement naming the dam after the sitting president, who had been involved in planning for the dam earlier in his career, drew only scattered applause with the nation sinking into its greatest economic depression. Some in attendance predicted that the proposed dam workers’ town would be named Wilbur City instead of Boulder City. The Washington Daily News, referring to the controversy in Congress over naming the dam, editorialized that 'we care not even a tinker's dam who calls it what, so long as it goes up pronto and does its job in the southwest.' A congressional act passed on February 14, 1931 made the name Hoover Dam official.

"By April 1931, work was underway in Black Canyon to build Hoover Dam. The construction proceeded ahead of schedule. The diversion tunnels around the dam site were opened in November 1932, shortly after Franklin Delano Roosevelt defeated Herbert Hoover for the presidency of the United States. With a new president came a new Secretary of the Interior, Harold Ickes, and a return to the name Boulder Dam.

"On May 8, 1933, in one of his first administrative acts, Secretary Ickes declared that henceforth the dam rising from the floor of Black Canyon would be called Boulder Dam and no longer Hoover Dam. Ickes claimed the name change would end the public confusion caused by his predecessor’s political decision to honor his boss, who Ickes argued had contributed virtually nothing to the project. Author Joseph Stevens, in his comprehensive work Hoover Dam An American Adventure (1988), states that Ickes’ claim that Hoover didn’t help in bringing the Boulder Canyon project to fruition was 'blatantly false' and 'it appeared that Ickes’ renaming of Hoover Dam was a political act, a mean-spirited attempt to shred the already tattered reputation of the former president, as well as an unsubtle snub to those who had supported him.' However, the name of the dam was never officially changed from 'Hoover'...

"On April 30, 1947, the name Hoover Dam was 'officially' restored by a joint resolution of a Republican-dominated Congress and signed by President Harry S Truman, a Democrat. Former President Hoover in a private communication to one of the resolution’s sponsors expressed his gratitude that an insult had been rectified. Still, many Roosevelt partisans continued to call the great concrete edifice Boulder Dam and still do. Public reaction to the controversy was colorfully articulated by Frank Romano Sr. who proposed, in a May 10, 1947, letter to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, that the name be changed a third time to "Hoogivza Dam."

September 10, 2007:Jane Wyman Dies

Word broke a few hours ago that Jane Wyman, the first wife of President Ronald Reagan, has died at age 93 (or possibly 90). Rest in peace, Ms. Wyman.

From her obituary in the Telegraph:

"In 1938 she had co-starred with Ronald Reagan in the B-movie Brother Rat and she rejoined him in the sequel, Brother Rat and the Baby (1940). Married to her first (or, by some accounts, second) husband at the time, she was soon divorced, and the couple married in 1940. They had had three children --Maureen, who would die of cancer in 2001; Michael, whom they adopted; and another daughter who lived for just nine hours after being born prematurely.

"But after their marriage their careers diverged, with Jane Wyman rising towards the top of her profession, while Reagan languished in the B-movie league. She told friends that she found him dull and in 1948 she obtained a divorce, complaining that 'I just couldn't bear to watch that damn Kings Row one more time' (a reference to a film in which Reagan had played the second lead and which he was in the habit of showing to dinner-party guests).

"After winning her Oscar the following year, Jane Wyman observed in an admirably brief acceptance speech: 'I won this award for keeping my mouth shut, so I think I'll do it again now.' As her former husband remarried and embarked on his stellar political career, she maintained a discreet silence about their life together. Reagan, though, excluded all references to Jane Wyman from the original draft of his memoirs, An American Life, and had to be coaxed by his editor into allowing his ghostwriter to insert a brief four lines about her into the manuscript...

"In 2004, after the death of President Reagan, she broke her silence regarding her former husband, praising him as 'a great president and a great, kind and gentle man.' "

Her full Telegraph obit is here.

September 9, 1887:Alf Landon's Birthday

Alfred Mossman Landon of Kansas might have lost in a big way to FDR in 1936 -- his reluctance to campaign indicates the he was probably sure he had no chance of winning -- but he does have one distinction among Republican nominees for the presidency, win or lose. He lived longer than any of them, surviving to be 100, his adult life spanning the Progressive Era to the age of Reaganomics.

After he died in 1987, the New York Times published this story about Landon: "Mr. Landon leavened the disappointment of his loss in 1936 with humor. Assessing his two-state victory, Mr. Landon said, 'As Maine goes, so goes Vermont.'

"He displayed the same sense of humor a month after the election, when, as the outgoing Governor of Kansas, he addressed the Gridiron Club, an organization of Washington newspapermen.

'' 'If there is one state that prepares a man for anything, it is Kansas,' he said. 'The Kansas tornado is an old story. But let me tell you of one. It swept first the barn, then the outbuildings. Then it picked up the dwelling and scattered it all over the landscape.

" 'As the funnel-shape cloud went twisting its way out of sight, leaving nothing but splinters behind, the wife came to, to find her husband laughing.

" 'She angrily asked him, "What are you laughing at, you darned old fool?"

'' 'And the husband replied, "At the completeness of it." ' ''

September 8, 1974:Ford Pardons Nixon

According to the US Constitution, Article II, Section 2, the President of the United States has wide latitude in granting pardons for offenses against the United States: "The President ... shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment." Since Washington's time, various presidents have used that power to various degrees.

In living memory, no pardon kicked up a storm like Gerald Ford's pardoning of Richard Nixon, ahead of any conviction or even indictment of the former president, on this day 33 years ago. There was the cry of "corrupt bargain" at the time (though not quite in those old-timey words), but in more recent years this opinion has faded somewhat in favor of the contention -- which Ford said all along -- that current President Ford essentially got tired of dealing with the distraction that was former President Richard Nixon, and dreaded a protracted effort to try him.

This is the entire text of the pardon:

"By the President of the United States of America, a Proclamation

"Richard Nixon became the thirty-seventh President of the United States on January 20, 1969 and was reelected in 1972 for a second term by the electors of forty-nine of the fifty states. His term in office continued until his resignation on August 9, 1974.

"Pursuant to resolutions of the House of Representatives, its Committee on the Judiciary conducted an inquiry and investigation on the impeachment of the President extending over more than eight months. The hearings of the Committee and its deliberations, which received wide national publicity over television, radio, and in printed media, resulted in votes adverse to Richard Nixon on recommended Articles of Impeachment.

"As a result of certain acts or omissions occurring before his resignation from the Office of President, Richard Nixon has become liable to possible indictment and trial for offenses against the United States. Whether or not he shall be so prosecuted depends on findings of the appropriate grand jury and on the discretion of the authorized prosecutor. Should an indictment ensue, the accused shall then be entitled to a fair trial by an impartial jury, as guaranteed to every individual by the Constitution.

"It is believed that a trial of Richard Nixon, if it became necessary, could not fairly begin until a year or more has elapsed. In the meantime, the tranquility to which this nation has been restored by the events of recent weeks could be irreparably lost by the prospects of bringing to trial a former President of the United States. The prospects of such trial will cause prolonged and divisive debate over the propriety of exposing to further punishment and degradation a man who has already paid the unprecedented penalty of relinquishing the highest elective office of the United States.

"Now, THEREFORE, I, GERALD R. FORD, President of the United States, pursuant to the pardon power conferred upon me by Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, have granted and by these presents do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9,1974.

"IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this eighth day of September, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and seventy-four, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and ninety-ninth.

"GERALD R. FORD"

September 7, 1819:Thomas A. Hendricks' Birthday

Thomas Andrews Hendricks now reposes at the picturesque Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis, under a sizable monument. Few know who he was. In his time, however, he was among Indiana's most successful politicians, serving as governor of that state, as well in the US Senate.

Though not running for president in 1872, he received 42 of the electoral votes that otherwise would have gone to Horace Greeley, the Democratic candidate who died shortly after losing the popular election. In that election, Hendricks received more electoral votes that election than any other Democrat -- Benjamin Brown of Missouri got 18 electoral votes, Charles Jenkins two, and David Davis, one -- though of course the Republican candidate, US Grant, won the electoral college with 286 votes.

In 1876, Hendricks was the Democratic vice presidential nominee, and had the office stolen from him every bit as much as Samuel J. Tilden lost the presidency through fraud, though that was merely incidental -- no one sets out to steal the vice presidency. In 1884, when Grover Cleveland became the first Democrat to win the White House since James Buchanan, his running mate Hendricks became the first Democratic vice president since John C. Breckinridge, unless you count Andrew Johnson.

Hendricks died in office in November 1885 after serving not quite nine months, becoming one of a long string of pre-1920s vice presidents to die in office, who also included George Clinton, Elbridge Gerry, William King, Henry Wilson, Garret Hobart and James Sherman. Hendricks' colleagues in government clearly thought enough of him to honor him in an unusual way -- in fact, in a unique way for vice presidents. In 1886, his face appeared on a 10-dollar silver certificate (pictured). Among vice presidents who were never also president, he is the only one thus honored.

September 6, 1901:McKinley Shot

At the beginning of the 20th century, an assassin decided who would be president for the third time in 35 years when an anarchist mortally wounded William McKinley in Buffalo, New York. A little more than a week later, President McKinley died of his wounds.

Interestingly, many years later, the Warren Report took up the subject of the previous three presidential murders in passing. On pp 509-510, it discusses what happened to McKinley: "Between 1894 and 1900, anarchists murdered the President of France, the Premier of Spain, the Empress of Austria, and the King of Italy. At the turn of the century the Secret Service thought that the strong police action taken against the anarchists in Europe was compelling them to flee and that many were coming to the United States. Concerned about the protection of the President, the Secret Service increased the number of guards and directed that a guard accompany him on all of his trips.

"Unlike Lincoln and Garfield, President McKinley was being guarded when he was shot by Leon F. Czolgosz, an American-born 28-year-old factory worker and farmhand. On September 6, 1901, the President was holding a brief reception for the public in the Temple of Music at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo. Long lines of people passed between two rows of policemen and soldiers to reach the President and shake his hand. In the immediate vicinity of the President were four Buffalo detectives, four soldiers, and three Secret Service agents. Two of the Secret Service men were facing the President at a distance of 3 feet. One of them stated later that it was normally his custom to stand at the side of the President on such occasions, but that he had been requested not to do so at this time in order to permit McKinley's secretary and the president of the exposition to stand on either side of McKinley. Czolgosz joined the line concealed a pistol under a handkerchief, and when he stood in front of the President shot twice through the handkerchief. McKinley fell critically wounded.

"Czolgosz, a self-styled anarchist, did not believe in rulers of any kind. There is evidence that the organized anarchists in the U.S.A. did not accept or trust him. He was not admitted as a member to any of the secret anarchist societies. No co-plotters were ever discovered, and there is no evidence that he had confided in anyone. A calm inquiry made by two eminent alienists about a year after Czolgosz was executed found that Czolgosz had for some time been suffering from delusions. One was that he was an anarchist; another was that it was his duty to assassinate the President.

"The assassin said he had no grudge against the President personally but did not believe in the republican form of government or in rulers of any kind. In his written confession he included the words, 'I don't believe one man should have so much service and another man should have none.' As he was strapped to the chair to be electrocuted, he said: 'I killed the President because he was the enemy of the good people--the good working people. I am not sorry for my crime.'

"McKinley lingered on for 8 days before he died... on the morning of September 14. Czolgosz, who had been captured immediately, was swiftly tried, convicted, and condemned to death. Although it seemed to some contemporaries that Czolgosz was incompetent, the defense made no effort to plead insanity. Czolgosz was executed 45 days after the President's death. Investigations by the Buffalo police and the Secret Service revealed no accomplices and no plot of any kind."

Could he have survived? Maybe. Dr. Zebra notes that "there was intense controversy about McKinley's medical care. Some thought that McKinley could have been saved had renowned surgeon Roswell Park performed the operation [he was delayed in getting to Buffalo from Niagra Falls]. More recent commentators believe, however, that McKinley died from pancreatic necrosis, a condition which is still difficult to treat today, and which the surgeons of McKinley's time could not have treated or prevented."

September 5, 1975:Squeaky Attempts an Assassination

On September 5, 1975, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme -- Manson Family nutjob, not quite 27 -- became the first woman known to attempt an assassination of a US president, Gerald Ford. She pointed a .45 Colt semiautomatic at the president as he was gladhanding a crowd in Sacramento, Calif., but it didn’t fire when she squeezed the trigger. She’d apparently forgotten to put a round in the firing chamber.

From an account in Newsweek the week after the attempt: “Ford awoke at 6 that morning in his sixth-floor suite at the Senator Hotel. With his usual verve, he conferred with aides and then sat through the Annual Host Breakfast of California businessmen whose 1,000 or so members gave him a rousing reception.

“Outside the hotel, the Secret Service and Sacramento police had taken what they believed were adequate security precautions. Ford was scheduled to walk up a broad, curving pathway that led to the rear steps of the capitol building, and police lines had been set up to keep the crowds in check at the left of the walk. An encouraging throng of state employees, newsmen and rubberneckers had turned out to wait for the President, and no one really noticed anything unusual when the girl in red strolled up and took a place in the crowd under a stately magnolia near the President's line of march.

“Shortly after 10 a.m., and slightly behind schedule, Ford swept through the lobby of the Senator Hotel and trotted out to the street. He blinked in the bright morning sunlight and headed for the capitol. Instantly spotting the friendly crowd, he cheerfully moved forward, double-pumping hands and smiling every step of the way. Then suddenly, recalled Karen Skelton, a 14-year-old who was standing next to the girl in red, ‘the color went out of his face.’

" ‘He was smiling and as soon as he touched my hand, he turned pale and pulled away,’ " said Irene Morrison, 28, a secretary who had turned out to see the President. The girl in red had stepped forward, reached under her dress and then straightened up. ‘I extended my left hand to her -- that's when I saw the gun,’ Ford told Newsweek’s Thomas M. DeFrank later. ‘Then Ernie [Secret Service agent Ernie Luzania] grabbed me and I was gone.’ "

“The weapon also caught the eye of Larry M. Buendorf, 37, a crack Secret Service agent, former Navy pilot and expert skier who has served as the President's body man all over the world. ‘Gun!’ he bellowed to his colleagues and he leapt forward to grab Squeaky's pistol and twist her gun hand behind her back. His shout set off an immediate action drill the Secret Service uses for emergencies. ‘Let's go,’ yelled Luzania, the acting chief of Ford's security detail. With that he lunged into the President, buckling Ford's knees - to reduce his target profile…”

“Within seconds other agents formed a protective human cocoon around their charge. ‘Everyone get out of the way, get out of here,’ roared one agent. The flying wedge carried the President by the scruff of his blue suit to safety. ‘Are you all right, sir?’ a reporter asked when the President reached the capitol steps. ‘Sure,’ he replied - in a shaken voice that barely rose above a whisper.

Meanwhile, Buendorf had forced Squeaky to drop the gun. By one account, she shouted, ‘Don't get excited. It didn't go off. It didn't go off. Can you believe it?’ Buendorf muscled her up against a tree, borrowed a pair of handcuffs from a Sacramento cop and manacled his charge. Some eyewitnesses reported later that Squeaky bleated a final verbal assault on Ford: ‘He is not a public servant.’

“For the time being, no one could tell whether she had pulled the trigger. When investigators examined the gun they found that it had four bullets in its seven-slug clip - but the firing chamber itself was empty. During the scuffle a few witnesses heard an ominous click, but no one heard a shot. One educated guess was that Squeaky had cocked the gun's hammer with her thumb (hence the click) but had forgotten the essential step of pulling back the slide that shoves a bullet into the firing chamber.”

Except for a few days in December 1987, when she managed to escape from a federal prison in West Virginia, Fromme has spent her days since 1975 behind bars, serving a life sentence.

Today is also the day in 1905 when the Treaty of Portsmouth, ending the war between Russia and Japan, was signed. The ever-versatile Teddy Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States, brokered the peace. For his efforts, he won the Noble Peace Prize, the first American to do so. Among presidents, Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter have also won it, and among vice presidents, Charles Dawes did.

September 4, 1951:The First Transcontinental Television Transmission

Nonstop, 24-hour, wall-to-wall television is our fate in the early 21st century, but as recently as 60 years ago there was no such thing as a national TV broadcast. That changed on September 4, 1951, with the first coast-to-coast television broadcast, and it so happened that the first person featured on such a broadcast was the 33rd President of the United States, Harry Truman.

According to Mass Moments, a web site produced by the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities: "On this date in 1951... a program was transmitted live from coast-to-coast for the first time ever. President Harry Truman's opening speech at the Japanese Peace Conference in San Francisco was broadcast... Both the content and the technology were significant. The Peace Conference would formalize the end of hostilities with Japan, opening the door for Japan's economic recovery, while the broadcast initiated a new era in telecommunications.

"The linking of the country in a simultaneous broadcast evoked the day in 1869 when the Golden Spike was driven to mark the completion of the first transcontinental railroad. Only this time the new connections were carrying words and pictures, not passengers and freight.

"As soon as World War II was over, the number of TV stations, almost all located in cities, began to grow exponentially. In 1946 six stations were broadcasting to about 20,000 households; by 1950, 98 stations were reaching approximately 7,000,000 households — nearly one in every ten...

"But wiring the entire nation was an expensive proposition. In 1948 AT&T invested $40 million in an experiment. The company used microwave radio technology to transmit a television signal from San Francisco to Chicago, and then existing coaxial cables to carry the signal from Chicago to the East Coast. This made it possible for people in over 50 cities across the country to view the same programming at the same time.

"The opening session of the Japanese Peace Convention in San Francisco represented the first trial for the experimental system, and it was a success. Eighty-seven stations all over the U.S. received and broadcast Truman's speech.

"Regular network shows soon followed. Within a month, I Love Lucy debuted on CBS..."

September 3, 1838:Frederick Douglass Escapes Slavery

Today is the anniversary of Frederick Douglass' escape from slavery. As a young man of about 20, he took his passage to freedom on a train, the very newest form of transportation in the 1830s. He left Maryland disguised as a free black sailor.

The former slave and abolitionist also has the distinction of being the first black man ever nominated for the vice presidency, albeit by a minor party with no chance of election. His nomination by Equal Rights Party to be Victoria Woodhull's running mate in 1872 was strictly symbolic (see May 10), and Douglass took no interest in campaigning or even acknowledging the nomination.

He did, however, hold a number of appointed offices at various times, including minister-resident and consul-general to the Republic of Haiti and chargé d'affaires for the Dominican Republic (1889–1891), appointments made by President Harrison.

September 2, 1901:"Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick"

Among other things, President Theodore Roosevelt is associated with the line, "Speak softly, but carry a big stick." It's unclear whether TR came up with it himself, or, as he claimed in a letter to New York Assemblyman Henry L. Sprague dated January 26, 1900 -- when TR was governor of New York -- that it was a "West African proverb." Roosevelt was a well-read man, and perhaps he picked it up in a now-forgotten volume that may or may not have been too accurate in recounting African proverbs.

In any case, TR used it in 1900 in reference to political struggles he'd recently had within the narrow world of New York State politics. But the phrase was too good not to use again -- Roosevelt, as an author himself, surely appreciated that -- and it turned up again on September 2, 1901. Now he was Vice President Roosevelt, speaking to an audience at the Minnesota State Fair. The speech, as to be expected, was in support of the McKinley's administration's international policies. No one knew that in less than two weeks, Roosevelt would be president.

"Right here let me make as vigorous a plea as I know how in favor of saying nothing that we do not mean, and of acting without hesitation up to whatever we say," Roosevelt said that early September day in Minnesota. "A good many of you are probably acquainted with the old proverb, 'Speak softly and carry a big stick – you will go far.' If a man continually blusters, if he lacks civility, a big stick will not save him from trouble, and neither will speaking softly avail, if back of the softness there does not lie strength, power. In private life there are few beings more obnoxious than the man who is always loudly boasting, and if the boaster is not prepared to back up his words, his position becomes absolutely contemptible. So it is with the nation. It is both foolish and undignified to indulge in undue self-glorification, and, above all, in loose-tongued denunciation of other peoples. Whenever on any point we come in contact with a foreign power, I hope that we shall always strive to speak courteously and respectfully of that foreign power.

"Let us make it evident that we intend to do justice. Then let us make it equally evident that we will not tolerate injustice being done us in return. Let us further make it evident that we use no words which we are not which prepared to back up with deeds, and that while our speech is always moderate, we are ready and willing to make it good. Such an attitude will be the surest possible guarantee of that self-respecting peace, the attainment of which is and must ever be the prime aim of a self-governing people...

"Barbarism has and can have no place in a civilized world. It is our duty toward the people living in barbarism to see that they are freed from their chains, and we can only free them by destroying barbarism itself. The missionary, the merchant and the soldier may each have to play a part in this destruction, and in the consequent uplifting of the people. Exactly as it is the duty of a civilized power scrupulously to respect the rights of all weaker civilized powers and gladly to help those who are struggling towards civilization, so it is its duty to put down savagery and barbarism. As in such a work human instruments must be used, and as human instruments are imperfect, this means that at times there will be injustices, that at times, merchant, or soldier, or even missionary may do wrong..."

September 1, 1883:Alex Tyler Dies

John Tyler, 10th President of the United States (1841-45), was also the most fecund of presidents, siring a total of 15 legitimate children, and allegedly two more by slave women, though this cannot be confirmed. Tyler's possible dalliance hasn't attracted nearly as much attention as Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings (or, for that matter, the possible love child of Grover Cleveland and the confirmed illegitimate daughter of Warren Harding).

Tyler (pictured), besides producing a lot of children, also had the good fortune unusual in the 19th century of having all but one of the 15 survive to adulthood, though he did not live to see all of them grow up. His last child, Pearl, was less than 2 years old when he died, and she lived until 1947.

Today is the day that John Alexander "Alex" Tyler died in 1883. He was the second child born to John's second wife, Julia, and though he survived to manhood, did not live to see old age: he was only 35. His father left office about three years before he was born, returning to his plantation in Virginia, "Sherwood Forest."

Regarding Alex Tyler, the web site presidentschildren.com has this to say: "He was born April 7, 1848 and died at age 35 on September 1, 1883. He ran away from home at fourteen to enlist in the Confederate Army. He was rejected as too young, then later joined the Confederate Navy. Alex enlisted in the German Army at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. He worked as an engineer and a surveyor in the American West. He married a cousin but was often separated from her. His death has spawned several mysterious theories, but most historians accept an account that he died of dysentery after drinking contaminated water in New Mexico in 1883. He had one child."

August 31, 1864:McClellan Nominated

In 1864, the rump Democratic Party in the North turned to Gen. George McClellan as its standard-bearer. By this time, he was already a great What If of American history. What if he'd had the bulldog determination when it came to fighting that US Grant later displayed? Would a Union victory have come sooner? Would McClellan be standing for president in 1864 basked in glory the way Grant was in 1868, with Grant himself notable as the former commander of the Army of the Tennessee, but otherwise undistinguished? Or would an early defeat of the Confederacy, without the wide destruction of actual history, left the southern states prone to make guerrilla warfare?

And what if McClellan had won the presidency in 1864? It's well known that in the summer of 1864, Lincoln doubted his chances for re-election, though perhaps even he was being too gloomy about his prospects. In any case, with the fall of Atlanta at almost the same time as McClellan's nomination, things were looking up for Lincoln. Besides, McClellan's candidacy had something of a ball-and-chain in the form of the party's copperhead platform, which he took great pains to distance himself from. It didn't do him any good -- he lost to Lincoln by a fair margin. Father Abraham outpolled Little Mac even among the Army of the Potomac voters, it seems.

The September 17, 1864, issue of Harper's Weekly had this to say: "General McCLELLAN'S next appearance is as the candidate of the Democratic party for the Presidency. The platform of the party which nominated him is only too evidently a peace-on-any-condition platform. It declares explicitly in favor of an immediate armistice, which will restore to the rebels all which they have lost, and whether the Convention of States which it advocates results in Union or not it still declares for peace. It says distinctly : " The experiment of restoring the Union by war has proved a failure." McCLELLAN'S exposition of his own views in his West Point speech is just as explicit in the opposite direction. He says:

" 'To efface the insult offered to our flag, to secure ourselves from the fate of the divided Republics of Italy and South America, to preserve our Government from destruction, to enforce its just power and laws, to maintain our very existence as a nation, these were the causes which impelled us to draw the sword. Rebellion against a Government like ours, which contains the means of self-adjustment and a pacific remedy for evils, should never be confounded with a revolution against despotic power which refuses redress of wrongs. Such a rebellion can not be justified upon ethical grounds, and the only alternatives for our choice are its suppression or the destruction of our nationality. At such a time as this, and in such a struggle, political partisanship should be merged in a true and brave patriotism, which thinks only of the good of the whole country. It was in this cause and with these motives that so many of our comrades have given their lives, and to this we are all personally pledged in all honor and fidelity. Shall such devotion as that of our dead comrades be of no avail? Shall it be said in after ages that we lacked the vigor to complete the work thus begun? That after all these noble lives freely given we hesitated and failed to keep straight on until our land was saved? Forbid it, Heaven, and give us firmer, true hearts than
that!' "

August 30, 1963:The Hot Line Established

Hollywood has it that the hot line between the United States and the Soviet Union consisted of a pair of red telephones, one in the White House, the other in the Kremlin. The actually hot line, of course, was (and is) not like that.

The system was first established on August 30, 1963, less than a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. A contemporary New York Times article described it: "The decision to establish the 'hot line' is a direct outgrowth of the serious delays that developed in diplomatic communications between the two capitals during the Cuban crisis last fall. Diplomatic messages are now sent over normal commercial channels to the United States and Soviet Embassies in Moscow and Washington.

"With the time consumed by transmission, coding and decoding, translation and delivery, hours are often required before a message reaches its destination.

"The direct link, which is available 24 hours a day, will make it possible for the heads of the two Governments to exchange messages in minutes.

"A message from President Kennedy to Premier Khrushchev, for example, will be sent to the Washington terminal of the link in the National Military Command Center in the Pentagon. There American Teletype operators will type the message on a teleprinter and a punched tape.

"After checking the typed message against the original copy, the Teletype tape will be fed into a Teletype transmitter. As the message goes out, it will be encoded by a "scrambling device" to prevent anyone from reading it at relay points along the 10,000-mile cable circuit.

"In Moscow, the message will go through a decoding device and appear on a Teletype machine in the Kremlin near the office of Premier Khrushchev."

President Kennedy never got to use it; nor, for that matter, did Nikita Khrushchev. According to CCN's The Cold War series: "The first message sent on the hot line came into Washington from Moscow in the early hours of June 5, 1967. In his memoirs, President Lyndon Johnson recalled picking up the phone in his White House bedroom -- and hearing the voice of his defense secretary, Robert McNamara.

" 'Mr. President,' said McNamara, 'the hot line is up.'

"Several hours earlier, war had broken out between Israel and its Arab neighbors. The Soviet premier, Aleksei Kosygin, wanted to know if the United States had taken part in Israel's surprise attack on Egypt -- which was receiving Soviet support at the time. Johnson denied any involvement and said the U.S. was calling for a truce in the conflict.

"For the next several days, until a cease-fire was reached, the two sides sent as many as 20 messages over the hot line, to make sure that what later became known as the Six Day War would not escalate into a global nuclear war. "

August 29, 1916:New War Power for the President

In the summer of 1916, Woodrow Wilson and Charles Evans Hughes were locked in close contest to see if Wilson would receive a second term, Congress allowed that the president -- whomever it would be -- would have a new extraordinary power during time of war.

On August 29, 1916, Congress passed "An Act Making Appropriations for the Support of the Army for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1917," and it contained the following language: "The President, in time of war, is empowered, through the Secretary of War, to take possession and assume control of any system or systems of transportation, or any part thereof, and to utilize the same, to the exclusion as far as may be necessary of other than war traffic thereon, for the transfer or transportation of troops, war material and equipment, and for other such purposes connected with the emergency as may be needful if desirable."

The best-remembered example of a president using this power was in 1950, when President Truman seized the railroads to avert a strike-related shutdown a few weeks into the Korean War (see August 25). But President Wilson made use of the act much earlier, in December of 1917.

According to Getting There: The Epic Struggle Between Road and Rail in the American Century, (2000) Stephen B. Goddard wrote: "Railroad leaders held the key to effective mobilization [in World War I]. Feeling the public’s angry glare upon them, they created a war board, to gather their independent lines into one massive network. But asking bitter rivals to cooperate in servicing each other’s customers predictably produced only bickering and backbiting. And the smothering restrictions upon them by the Interstate Commerce Commission compromised their efficiency. By December, Wilson knew that the time for jawboning and conciliation had passed. The President seized control of the nation’s railways but left their ownership untouched.

"To relieve the overwhelmed railroads, the military had little choice but to order trucks bound for the European front to drive from Midwestern plants across narrow, frozen dirt roads to the Atlantic Coast, during a winter that turned out to be one of the most severe on record. Thirty thousand trucks bumped along as crews worked around the clock to clear heavy snowdrifts. Throughout 1918, America’s shackled and antiquated railroads and its pitifully inadequate roads did their best to mobilize and supply an overseas force of two million men."

August 28, 1968:The Democratic National Convention, Chicago

Nearly 40 years later, the events surrounding the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in the summer of 1968 still inspire hyperbole, such as this by one Dean Blobaum, who has (according to his web site) a "quasi-academic research interest in the history of radical movements in the 1960s":

"Heads were cracked, tear gas billowed, police lines advanced through demonstrators—and television cameras captured some of the graphic scenes. The eyes of the nation focused on Chicago and we decided who we were, what side we were on, and what we would fight for. Chicago changed minds, Chicago changed politics, Chicago changed the Left, Chicago changed the media, Chicago changed those who were here and those who watched from far away, and Chicago changed Chicago."

On August 28, 1968, Vice President Hubert Humphrey was nominated for president, but that was overshadowed by events outside the convention hall. For a more sober assessment, we turn to the Chicago Public Library: "Some of the country's most publicized anti-war demonstrations took place at the 1968 Democratic National Convention... Police, national guardsmen, and federal troops prepared for the arrival of a hundred thousand protesters. The number of persons at any of the protest sites never exceeded six or seven thousand, including a thousand undercover agents and a number of spectators. As the following passage from the city's official report illustrates, animosity was high on both sides:

" 'Large amounts of hair spray were sold in the Old Town area stores during the time of the Convention. The expulsion of hair spray from a can when set fire to works as a home-made flame thrower. Royal Blue Food Store at 744 W. Fullerton Avenue reported large groups of Yippies purchasing large quantities of hair spray. It is common knowledge that Yippies have no use for hair spray or other cosmetics for personal use.'

"Most clashes between the police and demonstrators happened in and about the Grant Park-Michigan Avenue and Lincoln Park areas. Compared to anti-war protests elsewhere in the country, and other riots in Chicago, damage and injuries were minor. However, many of the brief clashes were televised live or played later. Six hundred forty-one persons were arrested and numerous protesters, as well as 198 police officers, reported injuries. The events continued to receive wide public attention, due to the federal government using a new law to charge eight persons with conspiring to cross state lines to cause riots. The Chicago Conspiracy Trial also made good theater and continued to draw attention to the convention for many years."

August 27:Birthday of Vice Presidents

Three vice presidents were born on August 27, more than any other day in the calendar, though only two if you count vice presidents who never made it to the presidency.

In 1809, Hannibal Hamlin (pictured, left) was born in Paris, Maine, and spent most of his life as a successful Maine politician. He was 15th Vice President of the United States, under President Lincoln, and as such the first Republican to hold that office; he is also the only Mainer to be vice president, and the only veep named after a Carthagian. Lincoln unceremoniously dropped him from the ticket in 1864, so President Hamlin was not to be.

In 1865, Charles C. Dawes (pictured, right) was born Marietta, Ohio, though he's associated with Evanston, Illinois, where he lived later in life as a successful banker and Republican politico. Dawes was 30th Vice President of the United States, under President Coolidge, and in as much as one can fail at being vice president, Dawes did. Early in his term he managed to alienate both the president and the US Senate, so his time as vice president was even more uneventful than is usual for that office.

August 27 is also birthday of Lyndon Johnson, 37th Vice President and 36th President of the United States, born in 1908.

August 26, 1839:La Amistad Captured

On this day in 1839, the brig USS Washington captured the Spanish vessel La Amistad off Long Island. Amistad was under the control of African slaves who had rebelled off the coast of Cuba and who wanted to return to Africa. Thus began an complicated cause célèbre in the United States, with the Africans and their allies among American abolitionists struggling to win their freedom against other parties, such as the Spanish government -- and the Van Buren administration -- who would reclaim them as slaves. The case went all the way to the US Supreme Court, and among others arguing the case for the Africans was the Sixth President of the United States, John Quincy Adams, by then a Congressman from Massachusetts.

"After an appeal was made to the Supreme Court, [abolitionist] Lewis Tappan visited John Quincy Adams at his home in Massachusetts in an effort to persuade 'Old Man Eloquent' to argue the Africans case in Washington," writes Douglas Linder in Famous American Trials. "Former President Adams, then 74 and a member of Congress, at first resisted, pleading age and infirmity. But Adams believed firmly in the rightness of the cause, and eventually agreed... 'By the blessing of God, I will argue the case before the Supreme Court,' Adams was quoted as saying. That October 1840 date he wrote in his diary: 'I implore the mercy of God to control my temper, to enlighten my soul, and to give me utterance, that I may prove myself in every respect equal to the task.'

"The next month Adams stopped by Westville, near New Haven, to visit his clients. He found them all in a thirty-foot-by-twenty-foot room, taken up almost entirely by thirty-six cots. Adams shook hands with [Africans] Cinque and Grabeau, telling them 'God willing, we will make you free.' Later, Adams would receive touching letters from two of the younger Africans, Ka-le and Kin-na.

"On Monday, February 22, 1841, arguments began in the Supreme Court's crowded chamber in the U.S. Capitol... John Quincy Adams began his argument on February 24th. He did not disappoint. He argued that if the President had the power to send the Africans to Cuba, he would equally as well have the power to seize forty Americans and send them overseas for trial. He argued that Spain was asking the President to 'first turn man-robber,...next turn jailer,... and lastly turn catchpole and convey them to Havana, to appease the vengeance of the African slave-traders of the barracoons.' He attacked the President for his ordering a naval vessel to stand ready in New Haven harbor, he attacked a southern intellectual's defense of slavery, and he quoted the Declaration of Independence: 'The moment you come to the Declaration of Independence, that every man has a right to life and liberty, an inalienable right, this case is decided. I ask nothing more in behalf of these unfortunate men than this Declaration.' "

On March 9, 1841, the Supreme Court affirmed, 7-1, lower court decisions freeing the Amistad slaves, who eventually returned to Africa.

August 25, 1950:Truman Seizes the Railroads

In an age of jet travel and the Interstate system, it's hard to imagine how dependent the United States once was on its railroads, but the nation was in 1950. Two months after the start of fighting in Korea, President Truman took a step that, though probably justified by wartime necessity, seems exceptionally radical today. He ordered the Army to take control of the nation's railroads ahead of a strike that would have shut them down.

"On August 25, 1950, President Harry Truman ordered the Army... to seize control of all major U.S. railroads from the 194 owning companies by August 27," writes Shaun Kirkpatrick, U.S. Army Military History Institute, on Army.mil, homepage of the US Army. "The order came before a national labor strike, scheduled for August 28, would have shut down the country's most important means of transportation.

"Secretary of the Army, Frank Pace Jr., said in a statement that day, 'We must not permit the flow of essential support to the forces in Korea to be interrupted.' Assistant Secretary of the Army, Karl Bendetsen, telegraphed the union presidents and rail companies and asked if labor and management would work under Army control. Both sides agreed to comply with the Army's request for continued operations, and the labor unions called off their strike.

"The strike plans arose out of more than a year of disagreements between unions and rail companies over wage demands and desired rule changes. The sides took another 21 months to reach a settlement; meanwhile, the Army retained control of national rail operations while also handling the Korean War.

"Due to the wartime shortage of troops, the Army spared only 46 officers, one enlisted man (a sergeant), and eight civilian clerks to full-time rail service. It did this successfully by staying in the background when possible, interfering with rail operations only when necessary to maintain uninterrupted service...

"On May 21, 1952, rail companies and the major labor unions finally settled their dispute. President Truman approved return of the rail systems to private ownership on May 23. Secretary Pace formally terminated 21 months of wartime control of America's railroads later that day."

August 24, 1814:The British Burn the White House

In the summer of 1814, the British attacked Washington City, but not with enough strength to occupy it. Instead, the goal was to wreak havoc, and this they did. Most famously, they burned the executive mansion not long after it had been evacuated.

Capt. George Gleig was an officer in the force that sacked Washington, and he wrote an account of the event:

"... the troops advanced forthwith into the town, and... they proceeded, without 'a moment's delay, to burn and destroy everything in the most distant degree connected with government. In this general devastation were included the Senate House, the President's palace, an extensive dockyard and arsenal, barracks for two or three thousand men, several large storehouses filled with naval and military stores, some hundreds of cannon of different descriptions, and nearly twenty thousand stand of small arms.

"There were also two or three public rope works which shared the same fate, a fine frigate pierced for sixty guns and just ready to be launched, several gun brigs and armed schooners, with a variety of gunboats and small craft. The powder magazines were, of course, set on fire, and exploded with a tremendous crash, throwing down many houses in their vicinity, partly by pieces of the wall striking them, and partly by the concussion of the air whilst quantities of shot, shell, and hand grenades, which could not otherwise be rendered useless, were thrown into the river."

"... the blazing of houses, ships, and stores, the report of exploding magazines, and the crash of falling roofs informed them, as they proceeded, of what was going forward. You can conceive nothing finer than the sight which met them as they drew near to the town. The sky was brilliantly illuminated by the different conflagrations, and a dark red light was thrown upon the road, sufficient to permit each man to view distinctly his comrade's face.

"... When the detachment sent out to destroy Mr. Madison's house entered his dining parlor, they found a dinner table spread and covers laid for forty guests. Several kinds of wine, in handsome cut glass decanters, were cooling on the sideboard; plate holders stood by the fireplace, filled with dishes and plates; knives, forks, and spoons were arranged for immediate use; in short, everything was ready for the entertainment of a ceremonious party. Such were the arrangements in the dining room, whilst in the kitchen were others answerable to them in every respect. Spits, loaded with joints of various sorts, turned before the fire; pots, saucepans, and other culinary utensils stood upon the grate; and all the other requisites for an elegant and substantial repast were exactly in a state which indicated that they had been lately and precipitately abandoned."