
Rating: | ★★★★ |
Category: | Books |
Genre: | History |
Author: | Sarah Vowell |
The pilgrimages, and she compares them to the medieval Christian kind, are dedicated to exploring the lives and tragic deaths of three slain 19th Century American Presidents--Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, and William McKinley. Because these are men long in their tombs--one well remembered as The Great Emancipator, one of interest as a imperialist "war president" sending troops to conquer foreign soil (McKinley) and the last, Garfield, remembered perhaps only in his native Ohio by history buffs--Vowell can take license to bring out a number of off-beat and witty observations about the men and their killers.
Lincoln, for instance, was shot by John Wilkes Booth, from the back at Ford's Theater while he was watching a play. A lot of people know that. What many don't know is that Booth timed his shot to a laugh-line in the play, "Our American Cousin" that Mr and Mrs Lincoln and their companions were watching from balcony seats just above the stage. 'At least", she writes, "he allowed Lincoln to go out on a hoot."
And here is Vowell on the then-current Bush Administration:
"Proportionate to my own mounting frustrations at feeling increasingly excluded from the best interests of the current administration's control in these extraordinary times helps me toward a visceral understanding of the motivation of one who would perpetrate a violent act upon the leader of the free world. My capacity for this depth of empathy also gives me pause, for I have no idea how far away I am from the "invisible line" that separates me from a similar or identical purpose....Please allow me to state for the record that I am completely against violence of any kind as a way of resolving conflicts.
"That crafty explanation slaps me in the forehead with all the force of "duh." Until that moment, I hadn't realized that I embarked on the project of touring historic sites and monuments having to do with the assassinations of Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley right around the time my country iffily went to war, which is to say right around the time my resentment of the current president cranked up into contempt. Not that I want the current president killed. Like that director, I will, for the record (and for the FBI agent assigned to read this and make sure I mean no harm -- hello there), clearly state that while I am obsessed with death, I am against it."
Clearly Ms. Vowell has a bit of a twisted take on the subject of historical events, which she admits as much in her referring to the quest as ''this whole morbid assassination death trip".
What Vowell produced is a cheery and informative book that both educates us about the American past as shows us how this past has a peculiar habit of replicating itself in modern times. This is especially true when she recounts the distressing activities of President McKinley who in 1898 ordered American military units to conquer the Philippines, in a bloody and sadly torture-filled campaign, from the indigenous rebels who were trying to liberate the islands before the Americans even showed up. She correctly contrasts this with activities of Messers Bush and Dick Cheney, et al, in invading Iraq on what we now know to be less than up-front pretenses.
Here is an animated clip inspired by Vowell's ventures to a Bed and Breakfast in the course of her research of Assassinations Past.
I will have my personal librarian see if she can get me a copy of this to read/ It sounds interesting
ReplyDeleteI know you're an American History guy, Fred, so I think you'll enjoy this.
ReplyDeleteI was sort of hoping that Ms Vowell was referring to the current president here Doug, but then discovered she was talking about the previous incumbent whose name I don't actually remember, but you know the one who assassinated America, he smirked a lot.....oh what was he called, it's gone....anyway?
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like a great book Doug and I enjoyed the little cartoon about the enforced socialising at the B&B breakfast.
It is indeed close to hell to be seated next to a disparate collection of fellow boarders, with whom we have no common interests save our shared humanity, immediately after getting up and before the first coffee of the day.
This book is made even more interesting because it is written by an American who doesn't drive, it is like encountering a Japanese who doesn't eat fish, or a Dutch citizen who doesn't cycle....a view from the margins. Thanks for the review Doug.
LOL...Or an Irishman allergic to beer, or a Canadian male who doesn't pine to skate about swinging a stick at a puck on some perpetually icy lake near his local trading post ;-) ... yes, Americans who don't drive are looked upon as hopeless non-conformists, rebels without a gear shift, fringe people best avoided if one wants to get ahead in Freedom's Land.
ReplyDeleteGlad you enjoyed the review and the video, AA. I wanted to present some of Vowell's off-beat humor, and what I perceive is her love of American history, warts and all.
One example I left out was the strange coincidences between all the assassinations covered and the curious proximity of the acts to the presence of Robert Lincoln, the slain 16th President's eldest son.
In April of 1865, "Bob" Lincoln was at his father's bedside at the boarding house next to Ford's Theater where his father was carried, mortally wounded with a bullet in his head, after the shooting. Robert had spent most of the Civil War as a student at Harvard University, preparing for the Law. (Lincoln's wife Mary had begged the President to spare Robert from any military actions; she had lost her second child, the pre-teenager Willie, to a bad fever in 1862. Willie, alas, was considered by many family friends to be most like his dad.)
Robert Todd Lincoln was posted as a junior officer to General U.S. Grant's main staff in near Washington City right at the end of the war.
Nothing unusual there, you say? ...well, in 1881 Bob pops up again at the second assassination of a President. He was Serving as President James A. Garfield's Secretary of War. "Bob" was standing on the railway platform with Garfield waiting for greet the Secretary of State back to the capital... when a demented man named James Gaiteau, a desperate office-seeker and former free-love religious cultist who wanted to be Ambassador to France, shot Garfield twice in the back. "Bob" was unhurt. Garfield died two months later, as much a victim of the eccentric and unsanitary medical procedures of the day as the deranged man's bullets.
Flash forward twenty years later to Buffalo, New York 1901... "Bob" Lincoln was now a big-time lawyer with the Pullman railroad company. (More his mother's son than his father's, Robert Todd Lincoln was no friend of the labor movement, but I digress...) The young Lincoln, a big cog in the now corporate-dominated Republican political machine, and his family go by a luxurious Pullman train to visit the Pan-American Exposition, and to meet with President McKinley. (The Exposition was designed in part to repair America's aggressive image in Latin America in the aftermath of Spanish-American War--when Cuba was put under the USA's hegemony--along the lines of the Anglo-Egyptian government model, and Puerto Rico made a permanent outright colony. Oh, yeah, and we wanted to get a "zone" to build our own trans-oceanic canal, which we helped take from Columbia in 1903, thus creating Panama. )
But no sooner than Old Bobbo steps off that posh train at Buffalo than McKinley is shot and mortally wounded at the near-by Exposition by a self-described anarchist named Leon Golgosz. He is the only prominent official to be present near all three assassinations. Vowell dubs him "Jinxy McDeath".
Thanks for the fascinating story of Bob Lincoln Doug. I wonder what conclusions he drew about political life after witnessing those 3 assassinations, from the sound of it they got the wrong man on every occasion. I wonder if he died thinking he was the luckiest or the unluckiest man in America?
ReplyDeleteVery interesting stuff Doug.
That'ss an excellent question AA. I couldn't find any reflections by Robert Lincoln--so far-- on his being so close to the deaths of three Presidents. (He lived to the age of 84 by the way, long enough to be present when the Lincoln Memorial was dedicated in Washington in 1922.)
ReplyDeleteBut I did happen to come across another bizarre coincidence. It seems that the young Robert Lincoln's life was saved by John Wilkes Booth's elder brother, Edwin Booth, at a train station just a year or so before the assassination of his father!
This incident was one that Robert recounted many times to friends and in response to magazine editors asking him if the incident actually took place. In a 1909 edition of "Century Magazine" (found on history.net) Bob Lincoln recalled in writing what happened as he tried to board a train late at night while on vacation from Harvard University in either 1863 or 64.
"The incident occurred while a group of passengers were late at night purchasing their sleeping car places from the conductor who stood on the station platform at the entrance of the car. The platform was about the height of the car floor, and there was of course a narrow space between the platform and the car body. There was some crowding, and I happened to be pressed by it against the car body while waiting my turn. In this situation the train began to move, and by the motion I was twisted off my feet, and had dropped somewhat, with feet downward, into the open space, and was personally helpless, when my coat collar was vigorously seized and I was quickly pulled up and out to a secure footing on the platform. Upon turning to thank my rescuer I saw it was Edwin Booth, whose face was of course well known to me, and I expressed my gratitude to him, and in doing so, called him by name."
Edwin Booth by the way, unlike his deranged younger brother, was a staunch Union man and Lincoln supporter who was estranged from his younger brother and played no part in the assassination. After the murder, Edwin was so devastated that he stopped performing on stage for nine months. (A considerable time, considering that he was in demand as one of the premier Shakespearean actors in America, as had been his father, Junius Brutus Booth.)
When Edwin finally returned on the New York stage, in the lead role in "Hamlet" he received a rousing five-minute ovation by the audience as he entered from the wings for his first scene! The infamy that he feared would haunt himself and his family did not extend to him that evening.
To bring matters full circle perhaps, Abraham Lincoln and his wife were avid theater-goers while in Washington, attending performances over 100+ nights during the war while he was President. Lincoln was also found of reading Shakespeare plays out loud during his off-time and while travelling. (His favorite play was "Macbeth".) He and Mary had seen both Edwin and John Wilkes perform at Ford's and other theaters in Washington.
I have never actually stayed at a B & B and now I know I will avoid them like the plague. lol This sounds like an interesting book by an excellent writer.
ReplyDeleteNeither have I, Iri Ani. I always thought such a lodging too potentially quaint to bear. Give me a modest hotel room with a near-by ice machine and lots of water pressure for the shower.
ReplyDelete