WHEN THE COWS COME HOME

 

I admit that eventually we must all bow to the will of genetics, even if we aren’t common cattle. And when you come up against a human family like the Smith’s of Glastonbury, Connecticut, any argument of nature verses nurture seems almost pointless. Zephaniah Hollister Smith graduated an ordained minister from Yale, but he gave it up because he did not believe in mixing prophets with profits. Allegedly he excommunicated his entire congregation, and they returned the favor. Swinging to the other extreme Zephaniah then became a successful lawyer. His wife, Hannah Hadassah Hickock Smith was a linguist, a mathematician and a poet, all the more amazing an achievement since she lived in the second half of the 18th century when women were little more than chattel. The couple shared a fascination for astronomy, a passion for the abolition of slavery, and five girls.

 First there was Laurilla Aleroyia Smith, born in 1785, who painted portraits in her own studio on Main Street in Glastonbury. She also taught French in nearby Hartford. Then there was Hancy Zephina Smith, born in 1787. She was of a mechanical mind. She built her own boat, and invented a machine to shoe horses. Then there was Cyrinthia Scretuia Smith, born in 1788 with a green thumb. She raised fruit trees, grapes, strawberries, and grafted her own varieties of apple trees. In her free time she was also a scholar of Latin and Greek literature. But the real revolutionaries were the two youngest girls.

They told a story about Julia Evelina Smith (born in 1792.) While trapped during a long stage trip with a Chancellor and a professor, both from Yale, “Miss” Julia was insulted when the two men began an animated conversation in French, ignoring her completely. After listening for several minutes, Julia spoke up, saying “Excusez-moi, mais je comprends le français.” Without an acknowledgement of her presence, the two men immediately shifted their discussion to Latin, whereupon Julia interrupted again; “Excuse mihi , EGO quoque narro Latin.” The intellectuals were appalled at the continued interruption and shifted to Greek, and Julia responded with “Και κατανοώ επίσης ελληνική". Finally the Chancellor spoke to the lady directly, demanding, “Who the devil are you!?”

Julia also spoke Hebrew, and had been conducting her own study of both the Old and the New Testaments. You see, she had expected the world to end in December of 1843, and was determined to find out why it had not. Her younger sister, Abby Adassah Smith (born in 1797) was the quietest of the five, and much to everyone’s surprise (including herself) was perhaps the best public speaker of all. It seems a pity to point out that none of men in the area seemed to have been bright enough to garner any of the ladies’ interests in marriage.

It also seems a pity that of this entire family, all of them independently financially successful, intellectually powerful and culturally sophisticated, only the father, Zephaniah, was politically empowered. And when he died, on February 1, 1836, the richest, best educated family in central Connecticut, was no longer allowed to cast a single vote.

This oddity lay simmering beneath the surface until November of 1873. By now most of the female members of the Smith family had gone on to meet their maker, until only Julia, now aged 82, and Abby, now aged 77, were left to bear the Smith genetic code. It was then that the male officials of Glastonbury made the decision to raise the property tax assessment on the Smith farm by $100. The sisters would have no trouble meeting the obligation, but the increase bothered Abby, and she looked into it.

What she discovered was that in the entire town, only three properties had suffered the reassessment; the Smith farm, and the properties of two widows. Not a single male property owner had been reassessed. Abby was so incensed that she wrote a speech, which she delivered at the next town meeting. “…here, where liberty is so highly extolled and glorified by every man in it, one half of the inhabitants…are ruled over by the other half...All we ask of the town, is not to rule over them as they rule over us, but to be on an equality with them.”

Well, the male citizens at the meeting responded to the speech in the same way the Yale Chancellor and Professor in the coach had responded to Julia. They ignored the little lady. So, the sisters decided more radical action was required. They announced that until they received representation (the right to vote), they would no longer submit to any additional taxation. Oh, they paid their property taxes each year, and promptly, but they refused to pay the reassessment increase.

In response the tax collector, Mr. George C. Andrews, seized from the Smith farm seven cows. The bovines were almost pets of the Smith sisters -  named, Jessie, Daisy, Proxy, Minnie, Bessie, Whitey, and Lily. The cows were valued well beyond the $101.39 additional tax bill. So the determined sisters dispatched an agent to buy the beloved pets at auction, paying far in excess of the tax bill to save four of them. The remaining three were sold at auction, although I doubt they proved to be worth the price since none of the cows were willing to be milked unless Julia was present.

Meantime, the Springfield Massachusetts Republican newspaper reprinted Abby’s speech, and it was picked up and reprinted in newspapers nationwide. The story was even repeated in Europe. It was, wrote one newspaper, “A fit centennial celebration to the Boston Tea Party.”

In April Abby was denied time to speak again at the next town meeting. So she climbed on board a wagon out side and delivered her remarks from there, this time heard equally by men and women, since women were not encouraged to attend town meetings. When tax time came around again, the sisters still refused to pay the additional assessment. This time Mr. Andrews seized 15 acres of Smith pasture, worth about $2,000. And this time he moved the location of the auction at the last minute, so the sisters could not even buy back their own land. The valuable property was bought by a male neighbor for less than $80.

In response the sisters sued Mr. Andrews in local court,  and they won. The court ordered the property (and the cows) returned to the sisters, and fined Mr. Andrews $10. The city appealed, and the case began the tortuous climb through the courts. In November of 1876, the old maids won at the Connecticut Supreme Court, and the city finally accepted it had been beaten by two lady spinsters.

Julia wrote an account of their adventure, “Abby Smith and her Cows”, published in 1877. That made the sisters famous, and they spoke at suffragette meetings until Julia’s death in 1878. Abby followed her in 1886. But women still could not vote in Connecticut until the 19th Amendment to the National Constitution was officially passed, in August of 1920. The Smith family home was finally made a National Historical Landmark, but not until 1974.

The story of  Julia and Abby Smith, and their cows,  ought to be considered by members of the modern Republican Party.  In the Smith case it was the right to vote that was denied by the government. While in the modern version of the Republicans party it is the right to vote for Democrats which is denied. The problem is, one is directly connected to the other. In the former case, it was brilliance of mind and spirit that drove the two ladies to protest and win. In the latter it seems it is arrogance and selfishness that fuels the protest, and in the long run it is doomed to lose. He - or she - who holds the purse strings, holds the power. And you can advocate the destruction of the political system for only so long, because if you succeed in destroying it, you lose.

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THE BORDER LINE - Chester A. Arthur.

 

I think we have all seen his photo, but I doubt if many of you have seriously gazed into the chubby self satisfied face of President Chester A. Arthur and wondered what made him such a clothes horse? You ought to. 

“Elegant Arthur” was a vain, shallow, mutton chopped political hack who owned 80 pairs of trousers, and who rarely wore the same pair twice. “Chet”, as his friends liked to call the 6 foot 2 inch dandy raconteur, spent more on hats than most Americans earned in a year. Chester was a product of the spoils system. In six years as the Collector of the Port of New York, with a salary of $6,500 a year, Chester amassed a fortune of $3 million. And yet it was not his sticky fingers which endangers his reputation to this day . It was his massive ego, which inspired him to tell one little white lie . He fibbed about how old he was.

Chester had never held elected office before joining the Republican national ticket in 1880. He was the choice of Senator Roscoe Conkling (above), boss of the Stalwarts -  the renamed Tammany Hall graft machine. 

The arrogant "Lord Roscoe" control all political favors for the state of New York, the most populous state in the nation. And in antebellum America nobody could win the Presidency without his approval. So, in the election of 1880 Conkling forced James Garfield to accept Chester Arthur as his Vice President. 

The Republicans needed the help. During the campaign Democrats spread the rumor that Chester Arthur had actually been born in Ireland , and thus was not eligible to serve as Vice President. Candidate Arthur refused to even dignify the charge with a response, even though at least one Republican politician wondered why Chester didn't just “say where he was born, and put an end to all this mystery.”

King Roscoe's help made all the difference. Out of 4 million votes cast that Tuesday, 8 November, 1880, Garfield and Chester Arthur received just 1,898 more votes than Civil War hero Winfield Scott Hancock and Indiana banker William English. It was a bitter pill for the Democrats to swallow. But if Garfield was President, he was firmly in the pocket of the senior Senator from New York. 

Then, in December, President-elect Garfield started ignoring Conkling's picks for cabinet positions, Infuriated, King Roscoe decided to remind Garfield just how powerful he was. He resigned from the Senate. His plan was that the New York state senate would immediately and obediently re-elect him. But Roscoe had made too many enemies. After  a two month long battle, Conkling was replaced by the one term non-entity, Elbridge Gerry Lapham,  And that quick, Garfield became undisputed head of the Republican Party, determined to clean rid American politics of corrupt king makers - like Conkling. 

That December the drama of Conkling's fall filled the front pages of America's newspapers. But in the middle of the month, a small item in the back pages of The New York Times noted that Arthur P. Hinman, working for the Democratic party, had arrived in St. Albans, Vermont, to investigate the new Vice President-elect Chester Arthur's ancestry. If Chester noticed that small item in the paper, and I bet he did, it must have made him more than a little nervous.

They had picked their man well. He was a loyal Democrat with a flexible moral compass. Hinman was just scrapping by as a lawyer with offices at 14 Wall Street. But he saw himself as a noble warrior, and was given to writing poetry. Recently he had even been published in the Harper’s Magazine. That poem began, "My back is to the wall, My face is to my foes, That surge and gather around me, Like waves that winter blows”.  And this was the combative and contentious romantic bull dog  who set up shop in the town of St. Albans, 15 miles south of the Canadian border. 

Interviewed by the Times in the American Hotel at the corner of Main and Lake Streets,  Himman claimed his investigation had uncovered that Chester A. Arthur was actually, “born in Canada....that he was 50 years old in July instead of October...and generally that he is an alien and ineligible to the office of Vice-President.” It would prove hard to disprove the allegation. Vermont did not begin recording and issuing birth certificates until 1857 - 28 years and a month after Arthur's birth. Yet, the tiny article, printed under the headline “Material For a Democratic Lie”, caused barely a hiccup back in Washington. After all Chester was just the vice president. He did not matter.

Still, it was just one more reason why, after taking the oath in March of 1881, President Garfield had bared Chester Arthur from even entering the White House. Garfield had decided on civil service reform, doing away with the profitable spoils system.   Then, on 2  July , in a Washington, D.C. train station, President Garfield was gunned down. In September, 88 days later, Garfield died of blood poisoning, and abruptly, the charming but vapid Chester A. Arthur was President, and the assassin had publicly tied the new POTUS to the murder.

What happened next did not improve the trouser snake's public image. Chester refused to occupy the executive mansion until Lewis Comfort Tiffany had spent two months and lots of public money redecorating it, with pomegranate plush drapes and a floor to ceiling ornate wood and glass screen (above) jammed into the main entrance hall. To complete the grotesque gilded age transformation of a national monument, 24 wagon loads of historical paintings, furniture and furnishings accumulated by Presidents John Adams through Ulysses Grant were sold at auction. It was just one more reason why a journalist would later write, “No man ever entered the Presidency so profoundly and widely distrusted as Chester Alan Arthur.”

The Democrats saw a quick opening, but Hinman rushed his shot and he missed. His new conspiracy theory presented in the fall and winter of 1881, was a repeat of what he had told the Times, with a few more details. But again the story fell apart. This time there was the testimony of Chester Abell, the doctor who delivered the future President. The boy was even named after him.

Dr. Abel insisted Chester had been born in tiny Fairfield, Vermont, about half way between St Albans and the Canadian border. 

And although the father, William Arthur (above), had not become a naturalized American citizen until 1843, there was no doubt Chester's mother, Malvina, born in 1821, was blatantly American born. 

Malvina's (above) grandfather had fought in the American Revolutionary Army, for crying out loud. So when Chester Arthur was born in October of 1830 he was automatically an American citizen, like his mother, no matter what his father's status.  And once President Chester Arthur began to crusade for the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, his public image improved and most people forgot the Democratic smear.  In fact the public began to notice that Chester was just so...likeable. It even began to look as if he might even run for re-election. And that meant that Arthur Hinman would be back.

Lawyer Hineman's third theory was a nice little story. See, Malvina's parents had lived for years just 8 miles over the border, in Dunham, Quebec.  William and Malvina had met and eloped in Dunham. 

So it would have perfectly natural for Malvina to seek her mother's help in minding her four older children when it came time to deliver Chester (above) in the fall of 1830.  And as for Dr. Abel's testimony, well, the old man was just confused. See, two years earlier,  in 1828, there had been another son, named Chester Abel Arthur, born in Fairfield, Vermont. That 1828 baby was the child Dr. Abel had remembered. That baby had died before his first birth day. There was no record of the 1828 birth, or the 1828 death. Bu then there was no record of Arthur's 1830 birth either, not in Vermont or Canada. But, said Hinman, that was the way it had happened.  

Years later, when applying to Union College in Schenectady New York, young Chester Alan Arthur (above) had appropriated his dead brother's birth date and location, making him an American citizen and qualifying him for student aid.  It was such a good story that Hinman put it all down in a book, “How A British Subject Became President of the United States”, which Democratic publishers were happy to release in the summer of 1884, with another Presidential election approaching. That same year, with the popular Arthur likely to be on the ballot, the new theory was summarized  in an article Hineman  wrote for the Brooklyn Eagle Newspaper.  And that got reprinted all over the country.

It might have caught on. It might have become a majestic conspiracy theory, like the rabbit Alice followed, or a million other myths created by political hacks.  And the Democratic party might have fallen down that rabbit hole in the election of 1884. The American people have always been drawn to conspiracy theories, be it FDR sacrificing Pearl Harbor in 1941, or  Lee Harvey Oswald's claim he was a patsy in November of 1963, or the black helicopters hiding in National Parks in the 1990's, or even Donald Trump's malicious lie about a stolen election.   But reality intervened in 1884 when President Chester Arthur fell ill and decided not to run for re-election. And as quickly as that, Arthur Hinman lost his livelihood. He had become irrelevant, the Jeb Bush of his age, leaving behind a brown smudge as his only contribution to the historical record.

Chester Alan Arthur left the White House in March of 1885 a very sick man. On 16 November, 1886 he ordered his son to burn all his personal papers, reducing to ashes all the shady deals he had cut while a loyal Stalwart for Senator Conkling.  And then on 18 November, he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, and died. Mark Twain, the man who had invented the title “Gilded Age”, offered a powerful obituary; “It would hard indeed to better President Arthur's administration”

After his work as a hatched man dried up, Arthur Hinman suffered the roller coaster life of a political flunky, in with one administration, out with the next. His law business fell off and his was forced to move to cheaper space at 644 Hancock street in Brooklyn. But then the worm turned again and by 1901 he was back at 375 Fulton Street, just blocks from City Hall in Manhattan.  But he never lost his pugnaciousness. In October of 1904, the now aging lawyer got into a fist fight with an undertaker, a Mr. Joseph P. Pouch. Hinman had represented Pouch's  wife in their divorce case, and when the judge awarded her custody of their 7 year old child, Arthur Hinman offered to effect the transfer, to avoid a confrontation. With any other lawyer that might have worked. But Hinman was never one to suffer an insult. He belted Joe in the eye, and Joe pounded Himman in the face and head. Poor Joe got arrested for contempt of court, and Mrs. Pouch got her child. And Arthur Hinman got the fight he always relished. It was straight out of  the final stanza of his poem, where Arthur recalls his “life of combat”; "I stand, poor speck of dust, Defiant, self reliant, To die – if die I must.” Well, hell, we all must.

And the mystery of Chester Alan Arthur's birth would not be finally be answered until 1949 when Chester A. Arthur's great-grandson donated the family bible to the New York Public Library. And there, recorded in the handwriting of the President's father, William Arthur, are listed in order, the births of all nine of his children. The name of the first male and fifth child is indeed Chester Alan Arthur. But the birth date is October 5, 1829. It was the same year William Arthur was elected to the school board in Fairfield, Vermont. And all the great mystery and drama compounded by politicians over the birth place of President Chester Alan Arthur, boiled down to a  vain man's vanity about his age. He want to appear a year younger than he actually was.  Simple, and foolish. But human.

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THE SAUSAGE FACTORY

 

"He's the kind of man a woman would have to marry to get rid of."

Mae West

I wish William Bright (above) had been more of a hero. In reality he struggled his whole life against his own bigotry and bad timing. First, he was a Democrat, which in the late 1860's was the definition of political irrelevancy.   In 1867 Bright emigrated westward, to South Pass City,  a sort of rest and resupply stop astride the 7,500 foot high wagon route through the Rocky Mountains. 

The transcontinental railroad was in the process of making the town (above) and the pass irrelevant. What had drawn the 44 year old William and his new wife, along with 2,000 miners, to South Pas was the discovery of gold nearby.  Not that William was much of a miner, but the he used what little money he had made trading in mining claims to buy a saloon...just as the gold was running out. By the end of the year South Pass City had a total population of just 60 people, and a disturbing number of them were temperance supporters, making even Mr. Bright's saloon irrelevant..

"The only good woman I can recall in history was Betsy Ross. And all she ever made was a flag."

Mae West

Nationally, by 1869 the Democrats were an endangered species on the national stage. Victorious in the Civil War, the party of Lincoln dominated the 41^st Congress, controlling the Senate - 57 Republicans to just 9 Democrats, and 150 Republicans to just 65 Democrats in the House of Representatives. Thus it was no surprise that the newly selected first governor for the new Wyoming Territory, would be a good Republican – Ohioan John A. Campbell.  

Arriving in the railroad town of Laramie, the new Governor promptly called elections for the Territorial Legislature to be held on Tuesday, 3 August, 1869. And shortly thereafter the newly appointed U.S. Attorney for the territory, another good Republican by the name of Joseph Carey, issued a legal opinion that because of the new 14^th and 15^th Amendments to the Constitution, no person could be denied the right to vote because of their skin color. And that was the start of all kinds of Wyoming insanity

"Anything worth doing is worth doing slowly."

Mae West

The turnout on election day was disappointing. Only 5,266 men showed up to cast ballots. More might have voted but for the gangs of drunken Democrats flashing guns and knives around all the polling places because they did not believe blacks or Asians or people who thought blacks or Asians should be allowed to vote, were no allowed to vote.  Still, it seems unlikely better order at the polls would have significantly changed the outcome. 

The census taken the following year found only 6,107 men in the entire territory. And when the new legislature convened in Cheyenne in October of 1869 it consisted in total of 12 Representatives in the lower house and 8 Councilmen in the upper house -  and they were all Democrats.

"A man in the house is worth two in the street."

Mae West

One of the most prominent Democrats elected was the racist from South Pass City (above), William Bright. He was so respected by his fellows that he was named President of the Council (the upper house) before the legislature got down to work. And they were very busy, passing 86 laws and 13 memorials and resolutions by mid-December. 

One law ensured that male teachers should not be paid more than women teachers, while another guaranteed that wives would retain property rights after separating from their husbands. And then there was the  “Act to Prevent Intermarriage between White Persons and those of Negro or Mongolian Blood,” which was self explanatory. Governor Campbell vetoed that one, but the legislature passed it again over his veto. And then, wrote the Wyoming Tribune, “amid the greatest hilarity, and after the presentation of various funny amendments and in the full expectation of a gubernatorial veto, an act was passed enfranchising the women of Wyoming.”

"Those who are easily shocked should be shocked more often."

Mae West

William Bright introduced the measure, labeled Council Bill (CB) 70 on 30 November.  It read, in full, “Section 1. That every woman of the age of eighteen years, residing in this territory, may at every election to be held under the laws thereof, cast her vote. And her rights to the elective franchise and to hold office shall be the same under the election laws of the territory, as those of electors. Section 2. This act shall take effect and be in force from and after its passage.” 

And according to his supporting speech, William Bright's primary reasons for introducing such a revolutionary measure – there were only about 1,000 females over the age of ten in all of Wyoming - was that, as an unnamed Councilman said, “if you are going to let the n--gers and the pigtails (Chinese) vote, we will ring in the women, too.”  Three members of the council disagreed on grounds that even as a joke, neither women nor African Americans nor Asian Americans should be considered intellectual or moral equals to white men. This lowered the bar for that contention. But CB70 passed the same day, 6-2 with one abstention.

"Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before."

Mae West

When things got to the other side of the Rollings House hotel in Cheyanne (above), where the legislature was now meeting,  Benjamin Sheeks, also from South Pass, led the opposition. He tried to permanently table the bill, and when that failed he and his allies tried adding “poison pill” amendments, such as the addition of the phrase,  “colored women and squaws” to section one, and substituting the word “ladies”, as in “ladies of the evening” for the word “women”. These attempts produced some laughter, but they were both defeated. 

Then Sheeks (above) moved to temporally table the bill, so the House could consider more “pressing matters” first. That passed, but it bought the opponents only two days more to lobby against the joke measure.

"Every man I meet wants to protect me. I can't figure out what from."

Mae West

When the debate was resumed, opponents tried moving to adjourn three times in a row, hoping to catch somebody in the outhouse or off sneaking a shot of whiskey or a beer. All three attempts failed. Then it was moved that CB70 should be reconsidered on 4 July, 1870 – seven months after the house permanently adjourned. Amid all the laughter and snickering, that maneuver was also defeated . But Sheeks did finally amend CB70, raising the voting age for women from 18 to 21. After all a joke's a joke, but let's not go crazy here. And then, finally, at 8:20 that night the house approved CB70, 7 to 4. It was immediately moved to reconsider the issue, but that was just as quickly defeated. And with that, finally, the issue of female suffrage was dumped into the lap of the Republican Governor, with a snicker..

"The score never interested me, only the game."

Mae West

Governor John Campbell was a bit young, but he was nobody's fool. He knew this bill was intended to mock Republicans for giving the vote to African-American males, and because Edward M. Lee, the appointed Republican Territorial Secretary, was an ardent supporter of female suffrage. As the measure had moved through the legislature, Campbell had asked advice from everybody he knew, looking for the least embarrassing option. 

And in the end, Governor Campbell (above) decided the best thing to do was to not take the bait, meaning not fight the issue as he had with the racial marriage bill. After considering the matter for a few days Governor Campbell decided to simply sign it without comment, which he did on 10 December, 1868. In Wyoming, females now had the right to vote.

"His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork."

Mae West

Back in South Pass City, Justice of the Peace R.S. Barr decided to deliver the punch line to Mr. Bright's joke. On Valentine's day 1870 he placed an ad in the local newspaper, offering to resign his position “whenever some lady elector shall have been duly appointed to fill the vacancy.” Ha, ha, and no lady appeared. But they did serve on a grand jury, and they did vote at the next territorial election, in 1871. And the world did not dissolve into an estrogen mush 

"I never said it would be easy, I only said it would be worth it."

Mae West

William Bright would not stand for re-election. His bar went bankrupt in 1870, and he moved to Denver, and from there back to his hometown of  Washington D.C.  On 3 May 1912 the Cheyenne State Leader ran his obituary. “Mr. Bright was 86 years of age, and had been for twenty years past an employee of the government printing office...(He) moved to Wyoming and...drew up and fought through the bill for woman suffrage, which was the first law of its kind ever presented to a law-making body in the United States.” And often, that is how you become a hero -  in retrospect and with heavy editing.

"I use to be Snow White, but I drifted."

Mae West

In 1871, at the next meeting of the Territorial Legislature, the male politicians, led again by Mr. Sheek, passed a bill to overturn female suffrage. Governor Campbell vetoed it, and the attempt to override by a two third margin failed, but only just barely. Women in Wyoming retained their voice in their government by one slim vote.   But it would be 1910 before a woman would be elected to serve in the Wyoming legislature, and into the 1950's they were routinely blocked from serving on juries. And yet, Wyoming insists on calling it's self the “Equity State”. It seems to me, that is something of an gross exaggeration.

"To err is human - but it feels divine."

Mae West

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