WORST OLYMPICS EVER - Paris, 1900

 

I contend that 1900 saw the most horrific games in modern Olympic history, surpassed only by the ancient standard for horror when King Oenomaus was killed in an Olympic chariot crack up , followed by the race winner Pelops throwing competing driver, Myrtilus, off a cliff. 

What could have surpassed such gore and horror, committed in the name of the purity of athletic endeavor? Simply, the Paris games of 1900 when Leon de Lunden from Belgium murdered 21 birds to win the "Live Pigeon Shooting" event.

In order to make the sport even “less sporting” for the birds, the little sacrifices were released one at a time, and each human contestant was allowed to keep blasting away until he missed – twice. Sports historian Andrew Strunk has described the event as “…a rather unpleasant choice. Maimed birds were writhing on the ground, blood and feathers were swirling in the air and women with parasols were weeping…”. In all 300 unlucky pigeons were sacrificed for the Olympic ideal. Just think of it; Dick Cheney could have been an Olympic athlete! If maiming fellow competitors counted, he might have won gold.

Those Paris games of 1900 almost didn’t happen, since the French bureaucracy considered Pierre Fredy Baron de Coubertin (above), who was pushing the modern Olympic concept, as "too English”, what with his alien ideas about exercise producing a healthy mind and body. In fact it wasn’t until Coubertin resigned from the French Athletic Associations that other French sportsmen agreed to back his idea.

Unfortunately, with Coubertin out of the way, and the French Government in charge, things went down hill. Very quickly.  

First the government decided not to award medals for first place, but "valuable artwork" instead. It must have been quite a sight to see Msr. Aumoitte, winner of the “one ball” croquet championship, standing on the victory podium with a Monet hanging around his neck.

Then there was the marathon, where two American runners, Arthur Newton and Dick Grant, lead from the start. But when they reached the finish line together they discovered two heretofore unnoticed French runners, Michel Theato and Emile Champion, rested and waiting for them, and already wearing their winner’s artwork. The Americans pointed out that all the other contestants were splattered with mud while Theato and Champion looked like they had not even broken a sweat. But this being France, the American protests were worst than meaningless.

In fact, because they protested, the Americans were awarded sixth and seventh place, instead of third and fourth. Well, as Albert Camus noted in one of his lighter moments, "Pauvre de moi, du cognito tricherie, ergo se donner la mort”, or, “Please excuse me but I think you cheated so I am now going to commit suicide".  The International Olympic Committee took the American protests under consideration for twelve years, before finally rejecting them; proving once again the Jerry Lewis rule about sports rulings; timing is everything.

The Games of 1900 were the longest in Olympic History, running between 14 May and 28 October, and including such extravagant events as "Cannon Shooting", "Life Saving", "Kite Flying" (above)... 

..."Tug of War" (above)  and "Fire Fighting". 

The Croquet Tournament took 21 weeks to play out in front of a paying audience of exactly one, an elderly Englishman living in Nice, France.

Curiously the strongest protest in that the 1900 Olympics was between two Americans. The born-again Christian coaches from Syracuse University felt that competing on a Sunday would be a sin. So they talked their most athletically gifted student,  Myer Prinstein (above), the world record holder in the long jump, into going along with them. Myer was a nice Jewish boy, and he finally agreed to skip the Sunday competition out of “team spirit”.  Besides, his qualifying jump on Saturday – his actual Sabbath - had been so impressive he thought it would be good enough for the victory. And it almost was. Almost.

That Sunday afternoon (14 July, 1900), while Myer was soaking in the Parisian culture, his Catholic teammate Alvin Kraenzlein (above) broke his own sabbath and beat Myer’s long jump mark by exactly...one centimeter. That Monday, when Myer noticed that Alvin was carrying an extra Van Gough around, he started pounding on Alvin. And Alvin pounded right back. But, since they were both track stars with no upper body strength, nobody got seriously injured.

The nineteen hundred games also featured a controversial final in the “Underwater Swimming” competition. This may sound like a fancy name for drowning, but the drowners...

...er, swimmers, were actually awarded 2 points for each meter they swam under water and one point for each second they were able to remain submerged. But despite having stayed under for far longer than anyone else, Peder Lykkeberg of Denmark was disqualified because it was alleged that he “swam in circles”. Just read the rules, I say.

Also in the river (during this Olympics all the water sports were held in the river Seine, which was not nearly as clean a sewer then it is today), were the exciting finals of the “Swimming Obstacle Course”. 

This involved swimming, of course, but also pole climbing, more swimming, boat boarding and de-boarding, more swimming, followed by swimming under a boat, followed by more swimming.

The winner was Freddy Lane (above, center) from Australia,  in 2:38. Freddy climbed over the stern of the boat as opposed to clambering across the boat's wider middle. For his efforts Freddie received a 50 pound bronze horse. I presume the equestrian winners received statues of fish. Oddly enough neither of these water events were repeated at any future Olympics.

But the sport from the 1900 Paris games  I am most glad having missed was the "Equestrian Long Jump". Now, try to picture this: four spindly legs holding up a big muscular body, and with a human wearing riding garb and hat balanced on their back. Horse and rider gallop up to the jump line and then fling themselves into the air - not over anything, just up. As far as you can go..

The winner was a British stallion named “Extra Dry”(above), with a soaring leap of 20 feet and one quarter of an inch. Can you imagine the excitement that must have gripped the crowds, watching this equestrian suicidal display? A horse leaping twenty feet and one quarter of an inch; that’s just nine feet short of the current human long jump record. And we've only got two legs.

It makes me wonder if the X Games are really all that original.

- 30 -

VICKSBURG Chapter Thirty-Eight

When 34 year old Brigadier General John Gregg (above) awoke on that Tuesday morning, he was bone weary. 

His 4,500 man brigade had left Port Hudson  7 days earlier, on Tuesday, 5 May, 1863, and after a 200 mile long odyssey  - by foot and by rail -  they had staggered into Jackson, Mississippi, having lost perhaps 500 men through injury and 'straggling'. After a day of rest, on Monday, 11 May, Gregg had been forced to urge his men another dusty 27 miles to the southwest, to the county seat of Raymond. The exhausted rebels found just six of Wirt Adam's cavalrymen in the town, leaving Gregg with little idea what was waiting just over his horizon.

He was forced to rely on guidance from his superior, 48 year old Lieutenant General John Clifford Pemberton, who on 12 May was finally taking a journey of his own, 20 miles east of the Vicksburg entrenchments. Around the little village of Bovina Station (above, center), a mile west of the Big Black River, Pemberton was struggling to concentrate the 18,000 men of the divisions of Major General Carter Littlepage Stevenson, Major General John Stevens Bowen and – the biggest pebble in his shoe – the one armed Major General William Wing Loring. It seemed every order Pemberton issued inspired the vainglorious “Old Blizzards” to respond with at least 3 telegrams of protest, suggestion and or complaints.

Right now, the arrogant and rude Loring (above) was urging his commander to strike out toward the line of Baker's and Fourteen Mile creeks to force Grant into battle before he was ready. But forced into a straight jacket of passivity by Jefferson Davis's orders to defend Vicksburg and Port Hudson at all costs,  Pemberton had little choice but to wait for Grant to launch a direct assault via the Big Black River Bridge. Which is why he had his men digging entrenchments to defend the bridge and adjacent fords, instead of probing for the Yankees as Loring kept urging.

In fact most of Wirt Adam's cavalry was available for such a mission, just a few miles up the road at Edward's Depot. Except nobody shared that fact with the commanding general, not even Wirt Adams. Nor did anyone in Richmond think to inform Pemberton of the imminent arrival in Jackson of his superior, General Johnson. Not even Johnson. The infection of suspicion and mistrust in the Confederate command originated with Jefferson Davis, and fed a lack of discipline in Pemberton's junior officers.

So, struggling with the burdens of his first combat command, Pemberton vented his frustrations on General John Gregg and his 6 regiments, forty miles away on the other side of Grant's army. While the telegraph line to Jackson and Raymond was still working, Pemberton lectured the Texan. “Do not attack the enemy until he is engaged at Edwards or Big Black River Bridge. Be ready to fall on his rear or flank at any moment. Do not allow yourself to be flanked or taken in the rear. Be careful that you do not lose your command.”

However, this morning, 12 May, 1863,  General Gregg (above) learned from local militia of a Federal infantry brigade marching up the Utica Road, and decided to take the opportunity to stage a mini-Cannae. First he would tempt the Yankees into attacking the small bridge over the Fourteen Mile Creek, 2 miles south of Raymond. Once the Yankees had crossed the bridge, 1,500 Rebel infantry would sweep across the creek below the bridge, and then turning back, cut the Yankees off and crush them against Gregg's main body. To achieve that, however, Gregg would have to push his weary soldiers a little further.

Private Frank Herron of the 3^rd Tennessee infantry, remembered that morning. “"Without breakfast, tired, hungry and with blistered feet, sadness was pictured on the faces of my companions as we were hastening on through the dust...But our sadness was suddenly relieved when we saw on a porch of a palatial home some beautiful girls waving the Bonnie Blue Flag. We gave the old and familiar yell in return and no sad faces were seen for awhile...”

Gregg's plan was perfectly reasonable, but for two things. First, with Pemberton's warnings ringing in his ears, and without cavalry to screen his flanks, Gregg was forced to assign the 400 soldiers of the 41^st Tennessee regiment, under 49 year old Scottish born Colonel Robert Farquarson, to control the road north to Bolton and Edward's Depot. He also assigned the 350 men of the 50^th Tennessee regiment under Lieutenant Colonel Thomas W. Beaumont, to block the Auburn road. Together those assignments cut Gregg's offensive strength by almost a thousand men. And secondly, what was marching north from Utica was not a Federal brigade, but the 7,000 men of John Logan's 3^rd division, with two more divisions of 34 year old Major General James Birdseye McPherson's Corps, right behind them – over 17,000 soldiers in total.

The Yankees were looking for water. It was the only essential which the Federal army could not bring along.  And while hungry men might march for a week, a thirsty army would begin to collapse within 72 hours. And after 12 straight days of sunny skies, the entire state of Mississippi was drying up. Wells were beginning to run dry. Creeks were reduced to a trickle. The only reliable source of water in the area was Fourteen Mile Creek, fed by springs south of Raymond. That was McPherson's immediate goal, get to the creek and fill his canteens. And only after that, march on to Raymond.

But McPherson's Corps was not as blind as Gregg. The 6^th Missouri's raid on the Mobile and Ohio railroad the day before had revealed that a rebel brigade had passed through Crystal Springs on the way to Jackson. In addition the rails destroyed had prevented a second rebel battalion from reaching Jackson. Worse for the rebels, the roads out of Raymond had not been picketed. Civilians - and there were always random civilians – trickled out of Raymond and were captured by Yankee pickets on the Auburn and Utica roads. Each traveler, no matter their loyalties, carried confirmation that there were  rebel troops in Raymond.

Gregg put the 548 men of the 7^th Texas infantry across the Utica Road, to hold the bridge. It's commander, the recently widowed 32 year old Colonel Hiram Bronson Granbury (above), sent skirmishers across Fortymile Creek, to hide among the brush on the south bank. 

In a support position a thousand yards behind the 7^th Texas, Gregg set the Irishmen of the composite 10^th and 30^th Tennessee regiments. He told their commander, 36 year old ex-Nashville mayor Colonel Randal William McGavock, to also be ready to also assist the 50^th Tennessee, a thousand yards to the west, at the Auburn Road.

As his strategic reserve, on high ground at the eastern end of his line, Gregg placed the 315 men of the 3^rd Tennessee Regiment, under 39 year old Colonel Doctor Calvin Harvey Walker. And to their west, on a knoll beside the Utica road, he placed Captain Bledsoe and his little 3 gun battery – two 12-pound Napoleons, one bronze and one iron, and a single Whitworth Rifle, with the 500 men of the 1^st Tennessee infantry battalion protecting the only artillery he had.

The timing was close. As Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Beaumont of the 50^th Tennessee noted after the battle, even before reaching his position astride the Auburn road, “...the battle was opened by the artillery, with occasional musketry.” Beaumont added, “It was not long before General Gregg rode up and ordered me to move...into a woods in rear of the enemy's battery, and attack...unless I should find it too strongly protected...”

The 50^th Tennessee, with the 10^th/30^th composite regiment in support, crossed Fortymile Creek, and quickly found themselves facing an entire line of Yankee infantry.  Gregg had fed his own men into a trap.

- 30 -

VICKSBURG Chapter Thirty-Seven

 

The city of Vicksburg had been laid out on a series of 20 to 30 foot high steps along the Mississippi River, each marking a flood stage as the Wisconsin glaciers retreated over the previous 10,000 years. And along the crest of each of these benches ran a main north-south street. First there was Levee Street, created by the current river's high water mark, then Pearl Street, then Oak or Mulberry, then Washington Street, and along the final and highest step ran Cherry Street. 

Depot Street ran east-west, beginning at the Southern Railroad station at the levee and rose directly 30 vertical feet until it “T”ed into Washington Street. But most cross streets took advantage of the ravines which periodically eroded through the packed clay by either snaking through them - such as Madison Street a block north of Depot Street - or bridging them – as Bridge Street, a half block south, which angled across the ravine on stilts, making an easier step up to Cherry Street. It was on a north south side street, between Madison and Bridge, that the eccentric Colonel Thomas E. Robbins built the most unusual home in all of Vicksburg.

Thomas liked to be known as “Colonel” Robbins, but was best known as a Judge of the Warren County bankruptcy court, and a scavenger who took full advantage of his early notice of flotsam of local business failures and jetsam abandoned on the docks and in the warehouses. By 1840 “The Colonel” had acquired a shipment of hexagonal bricks supposedly fired in Britain, which inspired him to construct a monument to his unique business acumen.

Built atop a 17 acre mound above Washington Street, a block south of the new Warren County Courthouse, Robbins' Castle boasted a moat – the better to incubate mosquitoes – and a surrounding hedge of Osage Orange trees – whose scent disguised the deflection of cooling breezes. I suspect it was his monument which sped poor Thomas Robbins on to his final reward not long after finishing his mansion in the early 1840's. And in 1859 his house was bought by another acquiring lawyer named Armistead Burwell Junior, as a home for himself and his wife, Mary.

Armistead had been named after his father, a Petersburg, Virginia (above) slave and plantation owner and a Colonel in the War of 1812.  Sometime in 1818, Colonel Burwell had taken to repeatedly rapping at least one of his 50 pieces of property, a house slave named Agness “Aggy” Hobbs. As a result she had given birth to a daughter, named Elizabeth Hobbs. 

When Elizabeth reach 14, she was subjected to repeated whippings and rapes by a white relative to “break her spirit”, before being “married” (i.e. rented) to Hillsborough, North Carolina slave owner Alexander Kirkland, who beat and rapped Elizabeth for 4 years, until she gave birth to a son. Luckily for Elizabeth, 18 months later, Alexander Kirkland died, and Elizabeth and her son were eventually returned to the Garland family.  It was upon a foundation of this kind of brutality that the gentile southern tradition of their "peculiar institution" of slavery, rested

Armistead Burwell Junior had moved to Vicksburg in 1859 and bought The Castle because he had been told it was a “healthy spot”. However, with the arrival of secession, he dared not stay. Like his father, Armistead was a pro-union man. A slave owner, but a union man. He wrote a friend, “I dare not go any place in the interior ((as I) would be hung or imprisoned if I did.” In fact, he was arrested in September of 1861, and held for several weeks. When finally released, Armistead left the castle behind and fled north. Being a supporter of slavery was no longer enough to remain in good standing in the city of Vicksburg.

“The Gibraltar of the Confederacy” had been the capitalist dream of a Methodist minister. Newitt Vick.  In 1805 the 39 year old, with his wife Elizabeth Clark Vick and their 7 children, moved to Church Hill, Mississippi Territory, about 20 miles north of Natchez. As the saying goes, they prospered and multiplied. After adding 3 more children, in 1811 Newitt was able to buy land for his own plantation in the Walnut Hills along the Yazoo River.

Newitt called his little empire “Open Woods”, and through the sweat and blood of 66 enslaved human beings - and after adding 3 more white children - in 1818, this compromised Christian bought 612 acres along the cliffs above the Mississippi River, and surveyed and plotted out a town site, roughly 17 blocks north to south by 14 blocks east to west. But the couple never lived to profit from their investment, because both Newitt and Elizabeth died in the 1819 yellow fever epidemic.

The executor of the estate sold off the lots in 1822, for the benefit of the 13 Vick children. And the town of 500 was named in Newitts honor. Thirty-five years after its founding, Vicksburg had a population of 4,500 whites and some 30 “free colored”. In the adjacent Warren County, the population was almost 3,500 whites, but they were surrounded by 13,763 human beings held in bondage. In the county the war to defend slavery had strong support – among the whites. But within the city limits that support might be as “squishy” as the Confederate economy.

In 1861 the newly printed Confederate “gray back” dollar was worth ninety cents of its Yankee “greenback” counterpart. By the end of that first year of war the Gray Back had already lost 30% of that value. Two years later the gray back was worth less than half of its Yankee counterpart. To continue to buy food, uniforms, blankets and ammunition, the Confederacy had simply printed more gray backs. By May of 1863, almost half of Richmond's budget was allocated to paying interest on the loans needed to pay the other half of the budget.

All Confederate states extended credit to the Richmond government, but never equally. On the front lines, Virginia, Tennessee, Louisiana and now Mississippi, strained to feed and arm the men fighting on their soil. But other governors, such as 42 year old Joseph Emerson “Joe” Brown of Georgia (above),...

...and 33 year old Zebulon Baird Vance, of North Carolina (above), did everything they could to avoid releasing money or troops to serve Richmond. By 1863 it was obvious to even a stalwart like Jefferson Davis that the theory of the Confederacy was as much a failure as the Articles of Confederation had proven to be four score years earlier.

A failure on the macro and the micro scale as well. In December of 1860, while “susess” fever broke  across the region the pro-war Vicksburg Sun noted, “It has been but a very short time since a man was tarred and feathered here on account of his expressing too much confidence in Abe Lincoln.” By April, Fort Sumter had been fired upon and Lincoln was calling for 75,000 volunteers to defend Washington, 

Vicksburg resident Dr. Richard Pryor took out an ad in the Vicksburg Evening Citizen offering $50,000 for “the head of Abraham Lincoln”. Editor of the Citizen, James Swords even designed a badge promoting “Southern Rights – For this We Fight”, and suggesting if all true supporters of slavery wore them “We would then know when we met a friend.”

Such vehement sentiments had the desired effect, and the editor of the pro-union Vicksburg Daily Whig, Marmaduke Shannon, struggled to voice enough support for the war to avoid having his offices burned down. “It is enough for us to know that Mississippi...has taken its position”, he wrote. “We, too take our position by its side.” 

But as early as March of 1863, Alabamian General Edward Dorr Tracy  - who would die 2 months later in the battle of Port Gibson - had reported, “(in) this garrisoned town (above), upon which the hopes of a whole people are set...there is not now subsistence for one week. The meat ration has already been virtually discontinued, the quality being such that the men utterly refuse to eat it.” Even before Grant had crossed the river, hunger was stalking the troops and citizens of Vicksburg.

But an hour's ride out of town a seeming unlimited bounty could be found, if you could afford it. Molasses, which before the war had sold for less than 30 cents a gallon, was available for $7.00 a gallon. An 1861 $44 barrel of flour now cost more than $400.00. Salt cost $45 a bag. Turkeys were selling for $50 apiece. The fields were still filled with cotton, and the planters and the government they controlled refused to sacrifice that profit. Lieutenant General Pemberton might have simply requisitioned the supplies the city needed - as Grant was already doing -  but Pemberton felt a greater need for the goodwill of the plantation owners and bankers of Warren County.

One of the most lovely homes within the city, Wexford Lodge, sat atop that second ridge line at the eastern edge of Vicksburg, where the rebels had not extended their fortifications. For a decade it had been the home of 59 year old lawyer, “planter” and slave owner, New Hampshire born James Shirley, his 48 year old second wife from Massachusetts, Adeline Quincy and their three children - 20 year old Frederick Edward, 18 year old Alice Eugenia and 15 year old Robert. The Shirleys were well integrated into Mississippi society and economy before secession. But they remained loyal unionists.

As secession fever spread, James wrote his brother back in New Hampshire, “Our Governor....is ready and willing to tear this little, no-account, dirty Union to tatters.” Still, like General Tracy, James had noticed the citizens of Vicksburg were not enthusiastic about a war. “...banks are curtailing their discounts – drawing in their circulation....money has become scarce; capitalists have withdrawn their funds; all kinds of property has depreciated in value...” Young Fred had even proudly announced that he would rather serve Abraham Lincoln for 20 years than Jefferson Davis for 2 hours. The response of their neighbors was a viable threat of lynching. So Fred had been shipped north to Indiana for everyone's safety. But James stayed to protect his investment, part of which were his slaves.

At the opposite end of the political spectrum was 45 year old Emma Harrison Balfour. An ardent secessionist, Emma had been born in Virginia, come to Mississippi with her first husband, and after his death married Doctor William Balfours in 1847. 

They raised 5 children in their home, at 102 Crawford Street, at the corner of Cherry - 15 year old Louise, 12 year old Willie, 10 year old Alice, 8 year old Emma and 3 year old Annie. It was one of the finest residences in Vicksburg, where the Balfours hosted an 1862 Christmas Eve ball to celebrate the defeat of Grant's December invasion of Mississippi.

But that gay occasion had been interrupted by word of the Yankee Fleet entering the mouth of the Yazoo River, on their way to the battle of Chickasaw Bluffs. Day after day Grant's noose around Vicksburg tightened. Now that disunion had been declared, now that blood had been shed, now that treason had been committed, it was no longer possible that slavery would be left alone.

During the later 1840's, still a slave, Elizabeth Hobbs Kirkland had managed to establish a tiny enterprise as a seamstress and pattern cutter in Vicksburg. With her earnings she helped to support her oppressors, and then in 1852 Elizabeth  bought her and her son's freedom for $1,200 – worth $34,000.00 today.  

Over the next decade she moved to Washington, D.C., and because of her skills and ambition, was eventually introduced to Mary Todd Lincoln, the President's wife. She made dresses for the First lady, and Lizzie and Mary became friends. And by her very existence Elizabeth Hobbs Kirkland was living proof of the lies, sins and horrors created to justify slavery and white supremacy.

From its inception, the Confederacy was not only impractical and immoral, it was a cruel and inhumane fraud, perpetrated at the expense of both blacks and whites. And both races paid a heavy price for it even before the war.  And the price in the city of Vicksburg was about to go even higher.

- 30 -