IMPEACHMENT DEAL - Stanton V Johnson

I guess the modern politician whom Edwin Stanton reminds me of most is Dick Cheney. Physically they were very similar, and they shared the post of Secretary of War, albeit a century apart. Like Dick Cheney, Stanton was a Prima Donna who displayed a self indulgent affection for conspiracies, and practiced such hyperbole that “At certain crises…doubts of his sanity were widespread…”(p 286 – “Lincolns War Cabinet” Hendrick). . There were differences, of course. Stanton never actually shot anyone, but when he was a young man he did carry a large knife in his pants, which would have fascinated Freud had he been born yet. In the end, the nicest thing I can say about Stanton is that he was a “rude and offensive” manic depressive lunatic on the right side of history.

When Stanton first set eyes upon Lincoln, in an 1857 Cincinnati courtroom, the bully loudly demanded, “Where did the long-armed baboon come from?” Eight years later Stanton lay literally sobbing on Lincoln’s deathbed. Lincoln was the only man who ever controlled Stanton, and it took a lot of his time. He called Stanton “my rock”, but admitting to devising strategies for “plowing around” that rock. Lincoln’s last official act before heading out to Ford’s Theatre, was to overrule yet another Stanton overreaction.

On the day Lincoln died , Vice President Andrew Johnson from Tennessee was sworn in as President and inherited the pit- bull lap-dog that was Stanton. Over the next two years the slavery loving pro-Union Democratic President Johnson struggled to find a way to make the anti-slavery Republican Stanton “heel”. Finally, on Monday, 5 August, 1867, Johnson just asked Stanton for his resignation. To his surprise, Stanton simply said “no”.

There was a week of stunned silence from the White House, until the following Monday, 12 August , 1867,  when Johnson tried another tact. He ordered Civil War hero General U.S. Grant  to the War Office, to tell Stanton he was being temporarily suspended. Johnson also told Grant that if Stanton still refused to leave, Grant should arrest him. But Grant didn’t want to do that. Instead he and Stanton came up with a plan of their own. Grant took possession of the office. But Stanton never left the building.

There was a move to impeach Johnson for this attempt, but the votes fell short. The new congress was sworn in on Tuesday, 7 January, 1868, and on Monday, 13 January  it voted to back Stanton. The next day Grant locked the Secretary of War’s office, handed the key to an aide, and left. An hour later Stanton arrived and was handed the key. Only then did Grant tell President Johnson he had quit. The bitch was back.

In desperation, Johnson turned to a character he could control, a 63 year old paper pusher, the Armies’ Adjutant-General, Lorenzo Thomas (above). To this point, Thomas’ greatest claim to fame was that he had help spread the rumor that General William Tecumseh Sherman was crazy. That had not worked, which should have been a hint to Johnson, but he didn't take it. Now, on 21 February , 1868, the President handed General Thomas two letters. The first letter fired Stanton (Again!). The second named Thomas as Secretary of War. Johnson then ordered Thomas to deliver them to both to Stanton. Alas, it was a like sending the Little Dutch Boy to stop a forest fire. All he got was a burned finger.

At the War Office (above), Stanton read both notes, and asked, “Do you wish me to vacate the office at once?” Magnanimously, the old man answered, “Act at your pleasure.” Stanton then went down the hall to make a copy of the letter. While Thomas dumbly waited, and a clerk laboriously wrote out an exact copy of the order, Stanton arranged his thoughts and morphed into a petulant two-year old. When he returned Thomas announced that he would now issue orders as Secretary of War. To which Stanton replied “You shall not. I will countermand.” In front of Thomas, Stanton then dictated a letter to Thomas, saying, “Sir: I am informed that you presume to issue orders as Secretary of War…you are hereby commanded to abstain from issuing any orders other than in your capacity as Adjutant-General of the army.” Stanton then handed the completed letter to Thomas and ordered him out of the office.

A bewildered Thomas informed Johnson of this conversation. The President must have been flabbergasted. He ordered Thomas to return to the War Office and begin issuing orders. Thomas tried that, but discovered he could no longer get in. Stanton had locked the doors.

Stanton now went native. Food was brought in, and and drink, and Grant appointed a special guard to defend the building, against whom he did not say. This military guard was joined by members of the House of Representatives and 100 staffers, who patrolled the basement. I guess because down there Grant figured they could only shoot each  other. That night, at a White House masked ball in honor of George Washington’s Birthday, and emboldened by a little wine, Thomas boasted that in the morning he would break down the walls of the War Office and arrest the Secretary of War. It looked as if come morning, the nation would be either defended or stolen by a coup d’tetat.

What saved the nation this disaster was that Washington, D.C. (above) was, has always been, and remains to this day, a small southern town filled with gossips. Stanton heard Thomas’ boast almost as soon as he had uttered it, and at 2 o’clock in the morning as the White House Party was just breaking up, Stanton was awakening a federal judge to sign an arrest warrant. At eight the next morning, as Thomas was just setting down to eat breakfast, he was arrested and charged with violating the Tenure of Office Act, which Congress had passed to prevent Johnson from firing Stanton without Congressional approval. There was no coup d’tetat because at nine a.m. General Thomas was in court.

After he had been released on his own recognizance (who was he going to hurt?), Thomas returned to the White House, where, once again President Johnson ordered the old man to go to the War Department and take possession if it. So, for a third time, the old soldier pushed his rock of Presidential command up the hill to confront his nemeses. The old man intoned, “I will stand here.” Stanton responded, “You can stand there if you please, but you cannot act as Secretary of War. I am Secretary of War. I order you out of this office and to your own.” Thomas answered, “I refuse to go and will stand here.” It was a circular conversation, and getting nowhere fast.

After trying to issue orders to everyone he could (and meeting impassive resistance), Thomas gathered his wounded pride and asked Stanton, “The next time you have me arrested, please do not do it before I get something to eat. I have had nothing to eat or drink all day.” Now it was Stanton’s turn to be magnanimous. He produced a bottle of whisky and poured them equal amounts. Handing a glass to Thomas, Stanton said, “Now, this at least is neutral ground.”

Over the next weeks, while the Senate heard President Johnson’s impeachment trial for trying to fire Stanton, Stanton remained barricaded in the War Department. He received all dispatches and reports, had full access to the telegraph lines. He just never left the building.  Meanwhile Thomas had no access to any of that, but he appeared at daily Cabinet meetings as Secretary of War. But the two never crossed paths. And while the process was argued behind the closed doors of the Senate, a compromise (of sorts) was reached.

On Saturday, 16 May, 1868 the Senate took their first vote on an article of impeachment. It fell short of conviction. President Johnson, who had promised to cease obstructing the Reconstruction acts, would survive. The next day, Stanton wrote his letter of resignation. The crises had been resolved. But it would not be until 1887 before the Tenure in Office Act would be repealed.

Edwin Stanton was nominated to the Supreme Court by the next President, U. S. Grant. But the mercurial  clerk died four days after being confirmed by the Senate, Christmas Eve, 1869. It was so unlike him to sneak out of town before the his chance at a really grand performance.

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BUYING THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE - Gregor McGregor the Con Man.

I have a bridge for sale, if you happen to know a fish. In exchange for a small taste (bribe), boatmen working the ferries between the immigration station on Ellis Island and Manhattan would alert ropers (outside men) when they spotted a rube (a new immigrant) with a crowded oakus (A full wallet). After befriending the Bates (the victim), the rope would allow himself to be convinced to share his inside info on some of the fabulous business opportunities available for any America with a little ready cash. And, as evening settled in, the rope might even be induced to introduce the fish to Mr. George Parker, the fabulously wealthy but temporally distressed owner of the Brooklyn Bridge.

George C. Parker (the inside man) confessed that during the early 1880’s he sold the Brooklyn Bridge twice a week. He had documents showing he owned not only the bridge, but also Grant’s Tomb, the Statue of Liberty and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He sold them all, over and over again. According to historian Carl Sifakis, “Several times Parker's victims had to be rousted from the bridge…when they tried to erect toll barriers.” George’s fame stems not just from his invention of this classic American scam, but for his part in creating that other American institution, The Three Time Loser.  After his third conviction on 17 December,, 1928, George received a life sentence in Sing Sing, where the old man was very popular.

George Parker was followed by Reed (The Kid) Waddell, Charles and Fred Gondorf (whose name was used in “The Sting”), William (“I.O.U.) O’Brian McCloundy, and finally, Peaches O'Day, who was convicted of selling the Brooklyn Bridge in 1901. By the time Peaches worked the scam, the bridge had been devalued down to $200, and the very idea of selling the Brooklyn Bridge had become a joke. And if they are laughing at you, they sure don’t have confidence in you. But before them all was Gregor McGregor, a Scotsman who managed to not only sell what he did not own, but he sold what did not even exist.

Everybody in England knew who Gregor McGregor (above) was. In 1820 the tall, thin Scotsman in a tight uniform, was welcomed home by the Lord Mayor of London, as a hero. He had spent the last three years laying waste to the Spanish Main, fighting in various South American armies. He’d been made a general by Simon Bolivar, himself. And now Gregor McGregor walked into the British Foreign Office and announced that he had been made a prince (or Cazique) of the principality of Poyais. Everybody from Land’s End to Inverness was absolutely gobsmacked.

Poyais was a gift from George Frederic Augustus I, King of the Miskito Sambu tribe, who gave their name to the Mosquito Coast of Central America. It was quite a gift; 8 million acres of virgin rain forest, chocked full of lumber, or, if cleared, crop land perfect for growing sugar cane, cotton or tobacco, according to Mr. McGregor.   A small group of British adventurers were already at work, overseeing natives constructing the new capital city of St. Joseph. What was needed now, explained hero McGregor, were settlers not afraid of hard work and sacrifice, and, of course, a few patriotic investors willing to fund another expansion of the ever profitable British Empire.

McGregor secured his “in” with English social circles when in 1821 he named the very proper Major William John Richardson as his legate. Together they opened an embassy in London, and in Scotland they began offering Poyais farmland at bargain prices, as “…an asylum only for the industrious and honest.” Almost overnight they sold some 200,000 pounds worth of Poyais bonds.

The publics’ hunger for information on Poyais was fulfilled by Captain Thomas Strangeways, who penned a book describing the Mosquito Coast as free from tropical diseases, and blessed with fertile soil, which lay atop uncounted veins of gold and silver. In September of 1822, the Honduras Packet set sail for Poyais with 70 settlers, and a chest loaded with new Poyais currency. This was followed, in January, by the ship Kennersley Castle, with another 200 settlers, this time mostly doctors, accountants, and lawyers. Ah, if they only knew that the author Captain Strangeways was actually the non—plume of Gregor McGregor.

On 20 March, 1822, the Kennersley Castle arrived off the mouth of the Coco River, dividing modern day Honduras and Nicaragua. What they found were survivors of the first ship, the Honduras Packet. There was no city of St. Joseph, under construction or otherwise, and no farm land. However there was malaria, and plenty of it. Thus the name " Mosquito Coast". The Kennersley Castle dumped the settlers on the beach with the hungry and sickly survivors of the first bunch and sailed away.

Many of the white collar crowd refused to even help build their own shelters, because they had been lied to. The remainder tried to scratch their survival out of the unhappy land. One, a shoemaker, just lay down on his cot and shot himself.   A month later who should arrive but King George Frederic (yes, he was real) aboard an English ship. He now admitted he had signed away the land after Gregor McGregor had gotten him drunk.  But he now announced that he was revoking his gift. And that was the end of Poyais - in reality.  In October 50 survivors made it back to London, and reported the story in full – sort of. Some of the returning survivors even signed a letter saying that after it all they still believed in Gregor McGregor.  Human beings can be loyal to the point of stupidity. . However Mr. McGregor was not there to defend himself. He had already moved on to Paris, where, in August of 1825, he issued a new constitution for Poyais, and secured a new 300,000 pound loan through a British bank. He immediately started selling more farms in this tropical paradise that sounded far too good to be true. The non-existent citizens of Poyais must have been thrilled to learn they now lived in a Republic.

In December of 1825 Gregor McGregor (above) was arrested by French authorities. In January 1826, from his Paris prison cell, he issued a proclamation to his fellow South American potentates. None responded.  It took two trials, but in July Gregor McGregor was found… not guilty.  Only his compatriots in crime were convicted. I guess it always pays to hire the best lawyers, particularly when you pay them with other people’s money.

By the fall of 1826 Gregor McGregor was back in England, and he spent the next decade selling and re-selling Poyais in one form or another.  In 1836 the nonexistent residents of Poyais got yet another new constitution, and a flag,  with a green cross on a white background, and some competition. Two other companies started selling Poyais bonds, but  did not find it profitable enough to press the scam.  In 1839 a now almost destitute Gregor McGregor left England and sailed for Venezuela.  They granted him a modest pension for his actions in their revolution, and he died there in December of 1845.

And if it seems that Gregor McGregor’s lonely death in Venezuela offered a moral to close out our tale, allow me to point out that most people die feeling bitter and feeling alone. It has something to do with age. At least Gregor McGregor got his name on a monument outside of Caracas. Still, I have to agree with Will Rogers, who once said, “They may call me a 'rube' and a 'hick, but I'd a lot rather be the man who bought the Brooklyn Bridge than the man who sold it.”

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SEEING IS BELIEVING John Baird Almost Inverts Television

I want you to remember the date; Friday, 30 October, 1925. That was the date when William Edward Taynton almost became world famous. The 20 year old London clerk might have possessed the second most famous face of the twentieth century. Instead he remained a nobody, even though the man who recorded William’s face, John Logie Baird, was a genius. But Baird was also, unfortunately, a genius who was wrong - a phenomenon far more common than you might think. Why Baird was wrong and why William would never be as famous as he might be, is best understood if you take a moment and try, like Baird, to invent television from scratch.

The idea behind television had actually been patented by German engineering student Paul Nipkow back in 1885. But it doesn’t appear Nipkow ever actually built a working device because it was darn near impossible to do so. At the core of Nipkow’s patent was a disc with a hole in it (or holes) which allowed light from the subject focused by a lens to fall on a piece of Selenium, which is one of those paradoxical toxic killer chemicals without which human life is not possible - like salt.

Selenium had been identified as photoelectric as far back as 1839, meaning that when photons hit it, the chemical emitted electrons – it converted light into electricity. But until Nipkow, nobody could figure out a use for it. And it was poisonous to even handle. Now, when Nipkow’s disc was set to spinning at high speed it built up an image producing flickering signals from the Selenium which could “paint” in binary (on/off bursts of electrons) a recreation of the subject reflecting light into the lens.

In fact the process is far more complicated then it sounds because you needed two spinning discs, each with multiple holes and you have to match their rotations, and because the signal produced was in direct proportion to the quantity of photons striking the Selenium, and because only a fraction of the light was reflected off the subject toward the Selenium, the subject had to be so hot it almost melted. And Nipkow could only produce one image a minute.

And then there was the problem of scale. The image created was no larger than the Selenium, which meant the image could be no larger than the size of a business card. And all those problems were repeated in reverse at the receiving end.

It was enough to make you pull your hair out, which may explain why Paul Nipkow (above) developed such a prominent receding hairline.

Enter the sickly, oddly obsessed genius, John Logie Baird. At twelve Baird had been labeled “very slow” and “…by no means a quick learner.” But as an adult he was the prototype for the idiosyncratic absent minded professor - “...disheveled, shaggy-haired and sallow “ He was the prototype for a British amateur scientist - except that he was Scottish.  

Baird did not have large corporations supporting him. Instead, working in a tiny workshop among the tourist traps in Hastings, England, Baird had actually improved on Nipkow’s device, transmitting his crude images across an entire room. Okay, it wasn't a large room, but it was a transmission.

But in July of 1924 he almost electrocuted himself, whereupon his landlord politely asked him to leave.

So Baird moved to an attic room in Bah Iitalia Hotel in the Soho section of London with his equipment and his ventriloquist's dummy head he called Stooky Bill. 

His Nipkow disc and transmitter were “...glued together with sealing wax and string…but it worked.” Desperate for investors, and a regular income, Bard dropped by unannounced to the Daily Express tabloid newspaper, offering a demonstration. The editor pleaded with his staff, “For God's sake, go down to reception and get rid of a lunatic who's down there. He says he's got a machine for seeing by wireless! Watch him — he may have a razor on him.”

The editor missed a great story. Baird could now scan twelve images a second, which made live transmission of motion, practical. Sort of. And that was why he went to see William Edward Taynton. 

William was an office boy who worked a few floors below Baird’s room. He was also partially disabled. He had expressed an interest in Baird’s experiments and the two had struck up an unlikely friendship. Perhaps it was that Baird could find no fellow scientists who understood or believed in his methods. But it was on this penultimate day in October that Baird asked William to come up stairs and help him with an experiment.

William sat in a straight back chair in front of Baird’s Nipkow scanner. He had to shut his eyes very tightly to avoid being blinded (even with his eyes closed) by the banks of bright lights.

The photoelectric cell had no signal booster so the light reflected off of William’s face would produce an image of only equal power. The lights were so hot that William had to be paid to stay put. Baird turned the scanner on, the discs began to spin and Baird asked William to slowly turn his head to the left and then to the right. It might have been an historical moment. Instead the blasting glare produced only a shadow of fame.

In 1954 William Taynton (above) appeared on the American television game show “I’ve Got a Secret”. In 1965 he spoke with the BBC show about his friendship with John Baird. But William himself was never properly famous. The first human whose image was captured on Television was not even recognizable, in part because the image was so primitive, and in part because John Baird was on the wrong track.

Baird’s invention was mechanical. The invention by the American, Philo Farnsworth, would be  electronic. The Mormon genius had invented his method while he was still a teenager in high school. His scanner was not a spinning disc but a sweeping arc of electrons; faster, more precise and overall simpler than the Nipkow disc. With no mechanical moving parts, the Farnsworth invention was true television.

Still, John Baird kept plugging ahead.  In January 1926 he demonstrated his system before fifty scientists. They were amazed. Investors finally responded, including the BBC. 

In 1927 Baird sent a moving live image (in color) over 438 miles via telephone lines, between Glasgow and London. The first long distance television broadcast and the first color broadcast. In 1927!

Then in 1938 the BBC compared Baird’s system to Farnsworth’s system. During the competition Baird received a demonstration from Farnsworth himself, and even before the BBC's decision was announced Baird merged his private British company with America's RCA Corporation to gain access to Farnsworth's patents.  But Baird was caught in a doomed competition without enough funds. His mechanical version of television died a merciful death.

In 1946 the sickly Baird died of a heart attack. It would be sixty years before his contributions to television would be remembered, including his invention of the very word, “television”. He deserves to be remembered for that, if nothing else.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5ZSXPMlumc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMWVU1H5xR8&NR=1

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