John 316 Marshall

The word that throws the pallor of death over everything we study about the USA between the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. As I have read the biographies of the first Presidents (I'm on #12 now), one issue puts all others in the shade—slavery. Slavocracy defines the era. No law could be passed, no President elected, no infrastructure improvements enacted, without the blessing of the slaveowners' interest. The latter always had enough clout to run the show, until Lincoln was elected. By the way, he won only 42% of the vote when he was elected, barely enough to win the electoral college. Before the Civil War, the northeast usually voted as a bloc, as did the newly opening lands of the west, and as did the southern slave states. The south always had enough clout to throw its weight around politically. They were often the lynchpin that held fragile coalitions together. The tragedy is; slavery mocked our claim of being a land of the free. There were actually slave markets close to th...

God rules in the affairs of men, and decides who will or will not be President. I have to admit, from a finite human perspective, it seems Henry Clay was born and bred to be our President. In reading the biographies of the Presidents, one name keeps recurring in the  leaders of the early 1800s. Henry Clay seemed to be omnipresent. They called him the Great Pacificator (we would say peacemaker). Four times he came up with compromises that held our union together under almost impossible odds. He bought the USA time, enough time to allow the north to become strong enough to end slavery and win the Civil War. His greatest contribution was his profound influence on Abraham Lincoln. The latter said every major political idea he had was based on the teachings of Henry Clay. Lincoln quoted Clay often, and grieved profoundly each time Clay lost the Presidency (thrice) and when Clay died (in 1852). For me, the biggest surprise of his life was how his American System was so bitterly opposed b...

In 1939 Clark Gable was Rhett Butler, Dorothy walked the yellow brick road, and Freeman Cleaves wrote one of the most suspenseful books I have ever read. Huh? Freeman who? His biography of William Henry Harrison is a hold-your-breath can't-put-the-book down thriller. Historians often write in broad strokes. They tell of large movements and trends. Cleave also does this, but at the same time knows when to slow down the action, to recount every second, every breath. His descriptions of the War of 1812 battles defies my ability to explain. He talks about bullets striking flesh and near misses, cannonballs decimating targets, rifles firing, tomahawks and scalping knives destroying. There were actually times when it would have been impossible for me to stop reading, and put the book down. It shows the human side of war, the groans, shouts, and cries of the common soldier on the battlefield. The heroism recounted in the stories is beyond comprehension. The British, native Americans, and ...

My Grandpa Marshall preached against Kennedy in the 1960 election, but then had a sudden change of heart in the voting booth, and voted for JFK. After the vote in 1960, Grandpa returned to his yellow dog Democrat ways. When Nixon made his return, and was elected President in 1968, Grandpa just about went bonkers. Grandpa said terrible things about Nixon. He couldn't seem to talk about the President in normal ways. "Tricky Dick" was a well-known, much used, nickname for Nixon, and Grandpa relished using it. But this was not enough for Grandpa's dislike of Nixon. Grandpa invented a new image of derision. He felt Nixon was pompous, and dubbed him "King Richard". He once told me that he believed Nixon stayed awake at night, practicing in the privacy of his bedroom how to best march to "Hail to the Chief". You must remember, my grandpa was not a raving lunatic. He was an intelligent, very astute, man. He was a gifted Baptist preacher. What was ...

I remember little about Ike. I do recall New Years Eve, December 31, 1959. After our midnight watch service at Illmo (now Scott City) Baptist Church we headed to a local restaurant with other church families. This was a rare event for us. We always went to bed early, but every year our church brought in the new year with a circle of prayer, after which we headed straight home and went to bed. Not so on the last night of the 1950s. That night there were images on the walls of the restaurant commemorating the decade. There was a large picture of Ike, and another of Khrushchev. The latter had a mean, mad snarl on his face. At barely eight years old, all I remember knowing for sure was that the Russian leader was a bad, evil man. That's the sum total of my memories about Eisenhower's Presidency. But what happened in 1960 politics was burned into my psyche. I remember many details of the 1960 Presidential election as if I had been an adult rather than a boy when it happened. I...