THE COMET Chapter One Not Like Any Thunder

I invite you to watch as the sleek midnight blue and white aircraft designated “Yoke Victor” slowly begins its takeoff roll down runway 19L.  The four de Havilland Ghost turbojet engines cradled close inboard within the wings roared as they produce 200,000 pounds of thrust. At 112 knots Captain Maurice Haddon imperceptibly pulled back on the control column and 100,000 pounds of aluminum alloy, wires, rubber tubing, ambitions and 43 souls floated off the asphalt. 

It is 4:39 pm on the sweltering hot Saturday, of 2 May, 1953. Thunderheads are feasting on the heavy air above Calcutta, like false promises of Indra the King of Heaven.  As the twin bogie wheels of “Yoke Victor” fold neatly into the underbelly, the crew and passengers of Flight 783 have less than six minutes to live. 

Comet Take Off

Over the previous decade the sun had begun setting on the British Empire. India and Palestine were already free. Egypt was straining at the leash, as were South Africa, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. Designed over that same time span, the world's first passenger jet, the De Haviland designed and built Comet (above), was a bold technical gamble which, if won, would give Britain a five year advantage in commercial aviation.

The Comet cruised at twice the speed of its piston engine competition, the American built DC – 4, cutting travel time between London and Singapore or South Africa by two days. For example, Yoke Victor, the 8^th Comet assembled, had begun this day in Singapore, passing 1650 hours of safe flight since leaving the De Haviland factory three years earlier. 

On the flight to Calcutta the pressurized cabin provided shirt sleeve comfort while flying 9 miles above the weather in -55°C. air. Hydraulics amplified the pilot's muscles to compensate for the 80% reduction of air pressure. The jet engines burned cheap kerosene and were more reliable, making even a half empty Comet profitable for the operator, British Overseas Airways Corporation.

Four minutes after taking off, as Yoke Victor climbed northwestward over the dry West Bengal plains, Radio Officer Alfred Wood notified their next stop at Delhi they expected to cover the 800 miles in two hours and 19 minutes. He then added, “Climbing to 32,000 feet.” Two minutes later Delhi informed Yoke Victor of the local barometric pressure, so the crew of the Comet could fine tune their altimeter. There was no response.

Twenty-five miles north northwest of Calcutta, in the rice paddies and jute fields outside the village of Jagalgori, field workers were suddenly pummeled by a 60 mile per hour gust of wind. Then they

heard a distant explosion and saw a flash of light. Looking up they witnessed an airplane on fire, saw it split in two, and watched in horror as the pieces fell to the ground all around them. Many ran to the flaming wreckage but it was quickly evident there was no one to be helped. Twenty minutes later a constable telegraphed the police in Calcutta, “Plane knocked down by tempest.” Like all first reports, it was wrong.

There was no radar track of the flight of Yoke Victor, and no data or cockpit voice recorder. Investigators could only study the 5 mile long path of debris. It lay generally along the aircraft's heading of 334 degrees.  The scattering indicated the plane had broken up at high altitude. 

At the southern end of the debris field were the port outer elevator with port top skin of Yoke Victor, then the starboard outer elevator with sections of the starboard bottom skin. The tubular cabin structure had landed, upside down in two pieces - nose to half way down the tube at frame 27, and the aft center section, including the stub of the wings encasing the engines, to the pressure bulkhead at the rear of the fuselage (above) - all of which landed in a dry river bed and in the branches of a large tree.

Calcutta Crash

Because of the paucity of evidence, the Indian court of inquiry issued their report a mere three weeks later. BOAC flight 783 had crashed they said, because of either “Sever gusts encountered in the thunder squall...” or, because of unease about the new hydraulic control system,   “Over controlling or loss of control by the pilot...” Making their own assessment of the jigsaw puzzle of parts, De Haviland agreed with the Indian court. Yoke Victor had been destroyed in mid-flight by either an “act of God”, or pilot error. It was recommended that in the presence of turbulence the speedy jets be slowed down.  But no one questioned keeping the Comet in the air. 

Seven months later, on Sunday 10 January, 1954, another Comet rolled down a runway, this time at Rome's Ciampino airfield. On it's tail was prominently displayed it's International Aircraft identification:, G-ALYP; “G” for Great Britain, “A” indicating a heavier then aircraft, “L” for the 12^th pass through the 26 letters in the alphabet, “Y” for a De Haviland Comet and “P” for the Comet hull number 60003 – the third Comet constructed and the first to be released into service with BOAC.  

Yoke Peter first flew on 9 January, 1952. After test flights it was turned over to BOAC for 39 hours of training flights. Then, on 2 May, 1952, Yoke Peter became the first Comet to enter scheduled service, with a 21 hour flight from London via 5 stops to Johannesburg, South Africa. In its first year the 8 Comets in the BOAC fleet flew 12 million miles, carrying 30,000 of the wealthy and privileged, 35 at a time.

The plane had begun the day in Singapore, and was labeled BOAC Flight 783 – the last two digits an odd number because the course was to be westbound - with stops in Bangkok, Calcutta, Karachi, Bahrain and Beirut, before arriving in Rome. On the ground at Ciampino airfield, the passengers were off loaded while Yoke Peter was refueled.

BOAC maintenance chief, Gerard “Gerry” Arthur Bull interrogated the aircrew about problems, and then did a personal inspection, checking the landing gear, and looking for fuel or oil leaks. He found only what he called “incidental damage” and remembered thinking “We've got a clean airplane today.” At 10:18 that morning 31 year old pilot Alan Gibson signed the reports detailing the fuel and cargo on board. 

Then the 29 passengers – including 10 children returning from school vacation - re-boarded the aircraft. As they did, at 10:19, a BOAC Argonout (DC 8) piston engine airliner also headed for London, tail i.d. G-ALHJ , took off.

At 10:31am Central European time, 10 January, 1954, 33 year old First Officer William Bury guided Yoke Peter into a sky with a thin and broken ceiling above 15,000 feet. It was near perfect flying weather, and not a storm in sight. Pilot Gibson had more than 6, 500 hours of experience, and Bury, another 4,900 hours. Yoke Peter itself had achieved 3,681 hours of safe, speedy and profitable travel. 

Just after take off Captain Gibson, who was handling the radio, called to Able Love How Jig, asking “In due course, could you pass your height of cloud cover, please?” Captain John Richard Johnson, on the slower DC-8 (above), responded, “Well, we are currently at 20,000 feet. We'll let you know when we pass through it.”

The first “way point” for Yoke Peter was a directional radio beacon, 74 air miles northwest of Rome. At 10:42am Captain Gibson contacted the airport, “We are abeam of the Civtavecchia beacon, flying at 23,000 feet.” Eight minutes later, at 10:51am, as Yoke Peter climbed out over the Tyrrhenian Sea Gibson was heard from again, calling, “George How Gig, from Yoke Victor.” Captain Johnson quickly replied, “George Yoke Peter from George How Jig, go ahead” Captain Gibson said, “George How Jig. Did you get my....” Abruptly the radio went silent.

Johnson was concerned by the way Captain Gibson had been cut off in mid-sentence, and immediately tried to raise Yoke Peter again. When there was no reply, he contacted Rome, “We lost all contact with BA 781, and then they seemed to disappear. Can you read them?” At 10:56 Rome called out to Yoke Peter. Again there was no reply, because, by then, everyone on board, was dead.

Some 27,000 feet below on the ocean surface, some five miles south of the iron rich Cape Calimati on Elba, two fishermen heard the Comet before being suddenly startled by what 33 year old Luigi Papa called “...a break in the air”. His partner, 31 year old Givanni Di Marco, described “... three explosions, very quickly, one after the other”. For a moment all was quiet. Luigi remembered, then “...I heard a sound like thunder, but it was not like any thunder I had heard before.” Givanni saw, several miles away, “...a silver thing flash out of the clouds. . Smoke came from it. It hit the sea. There was a great cloud of water.”

The two men headed to the spot as quickly as they could. But, “By the time I got there all was still again,” recalled Givanni di Marco. “There were some bodies in the water. We began to pick them up. There was nothing else we could do." Still in shock Luigi Pappi said sadly, “Every time we went near a corpse we would shout, come over here, come over here! Because they seemed still alive, their eyes open. But when you got near you could see they were dead.”

The surface of the ocean was covered with debris and bodies from the innovative Comet, north of the romantic island of Montecristo, east of the prison island of Poanso, some 16 miles off the coast of Tuscany and 5 miles south of the fabled island of Elba in 400 to 600 feet of water. There were no survivors.

And from the instant of the crash, officials at De Haviland, BOAC, and the British Air Ministry began to wonder, what the hell was wrong with the Comet.

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A WOMAN SCORNED: Kentucky Tragedy.

 

I don’t know if Solomon Porcius Sharp (above) could have been President. But a man who had the job, John Quincy Adams, described the Kentucky lawyer as, “The brainiest man that ever came over the Allegheny Mountains.” He was not, however, a very nice man. But then nobody in this story were very nice people.  Some were born unpleasant, and some became horrid with circumstances..

Kentucky became a state in 1792, and, in 1825, was still mostly wilderness,  And yet the 38 year old Sharp had already served two terms as a federal Congressman for Kentucky, four years as State Attorney General, and was now starting his second term as a state legislator – so the boy was not lacking for ambition, brains or talent. He spent his last day on earth, Sunday, 5 November, 1825, conferring with political allies. Every indication was that come Monday morning, he would easily be elected Speaker of the Kentucky House. It even seemed possible his next stop would be the United States Senate, and then, possibly, the White House; except, an ex-girlfriend of his had other plans. 

Her name was Anna Cooke, and in her youth she had been a real Southern Belle. However Anna was never described as a great beauty. And her family were nearly destitute, having lost both their fortune and their father in the depression of 1819.  

Forced to retreat with her mother and five younger brothers to an isolated farm in southern Kentuckt outside of Bowling Green,  Anna was not likely to make a good match. But she was  "a freethinker, reader of romantic fiction, and a libertine."  Or so said her critics.  I suspect she also had a passion for men and for gambling and for gambling on men. Given her situation and her sex, Anna had little choice.  But like all gamblers, the more Anna gambled the more she lost. Few suitable men of "good families" (i.e. wealthy,) wanted to be responsible for her gambling debts. 

In 1820, at the age of 35 and still single , Anna had gambled heavily on Solomon P. Sharp.  But when she became pregnant that year, Sharp refused to marry her. The lady was now officially socially ruined. And after her child was still born, the lady had nothing left to lose. In May of 1820, determined to return the pain she had endured, Anna publicly accused Solomon Sharp with being the father.  His political allies responded by claiming the dead child had been born with black skin, and thus could not be the child of a white politician

In a slave state like Kentucky, in a bigoted misogynous nation such as America in 1820, in a land "of the fiddle and whiskey, sweat and prayer, pride and depravity"   it was a truly vicious attack.  With no living male relatives willing to challenge Sharp to a duel, (all three of her  brothers had recently died of fever)  Anna had no way to respond.  In fact, her reputation was left in tatters no matter which side was believed.  And two hundred years later it is impossible to comprehend the depth of her social isolation. But we are certain about what happened next. 

By 1824 Anna Cook was a spinster approaching forty, and her rose had withered.  A critic described her as short, with dark hair and eyes, a few missing teeth, stoop shouldered and  “in no way a handsome or desirable woman.”  She still had slaves to provide her with some feeling of superiority, but lack of money meant her fashions could not keep up with the trends. And yet inside Anna there still burned a passion, which had metamorphosed into a burning fierce hatred of her old boyfriend and respected politician, Solomon Sharp. 

And just at this opportune moment 22 year old Jereboam Orville Beauchamp (above) appeared and asked for her hand in marriage. He had been a neighbor and a one time student in Sharp’s law office.  And to hear Jereboam tell it, the hypocrisy of the vicious attack against Anna had awakened an almost religious hunger for justice within him...or so he said.  

In response to his proposal, Ann agreed with one stipulation. She would marry the younger Jereboam if he promised to murder Solomon Sharp. Thus, to call their marriage an affair of the heart seems somehow to have missed the point.  And as soon as it was convenient after the 1824 wedding,  Jereboam traveled to the state capital of  Frankfort, looking to fulfill his promise to his new bride.

Of course there might have been another explanation for the timing of Jereboam’s marriage and expedition to Frankfort, besides moral outrage. The week before, on 25 October, 1825,  a warrant for Jereboam’s arrest had been issued by the sheriff in Bowling Green.  It seems a single young woman named Ruth Reed was suing Jereboam for child support. 

So the gallant defender of Anna's chaste womanhood might well have been the dead-beat dad of an illegitimate child himself.  Do you get the feeling that the public morality of neither of the times nor Mr. Beauchamp nor Ms. Cook nor Mr. Sharp, were quite what they claimed to be?  Sort of just like today, yes?

Frankfort in November of 1825, when Jereboam arrived, was a wooden town of just 1,500 souls. It had been established at a ford across the Kentucky River, and was named for Stephen Frank, an early settler. The village became the state capital because local boosters contributed $3,000 in gold to the state treasury, and property for public buildings. It was not a generous act, as the boosters got rich selling house lots in the new burg. 

But despite the investment, Frankfurt was, in 1825, and remains to this day, one of the smallest state capitals in the Union. There were in 1825, a few brick structures in town, so fire was constantly updating the architecture.  Earlier in 1825 Frankfort had burned down its sixth state capital building, and the legislature was currently renting a Methodist Church for its use. 

Directly across Madison Street from that Methodist temporary cathedral of democracy was the rented two story abode of Solomon Sharp, his wife and their 3 children. And around the corner from the front of the mansion there was a second door (above , right), which opened directly onto the family room.  It was referred to as the side/rear entrance.

Jereboam waited in the shadows of the Methodist church until Sharp returned to his Madison street home, sometime after midnight on 6 November, 1825. Then, as the clock approached two in the morning, he knocked on a side/rear door. 

In the murder's own words, "“I knocked three times loud and quick, Colonel Sharp said; "Who's there" - "Covington I replied," quickly... Colonel Sharp opened the door. I advanced into the room and with my left hand I grasped his right wrist. The violence of the grasp made him spring back and trying to disengage his wrist..."I don't know you," said Colonel Sharp...Mrs. Sharp appeared at the partition door and then disappeared... I said in a persuasive tone of voice, "Come to the light Colonel and you will know me," and pulling him by the arm... " Jereboam then cut the conversation short by thrusting a dagger into Solomon’s neck, severing his aorta. Solomon Sharp was dead shortly after he hit the floor. Jereboam then fled into the night. The first political assignation in American had just been committed.

There were, of course, elaborate conspiracy theories which sprang up around the assassination of Solomon Sharp, spurred on by the victim’s politics and the $4,000 reward offered.  But the police stuck to what they could prove.

Four nights after the murder Jereboam was arrested in his home. The cops never found the murder weapon. And although Sharp’s widow eventually identified Jereboam’s voice as the one she heard call out “Covington”,  she had initially identified that voice as belonging to Mr. Patrick Darby, another of her husband’s many political enemies.  But several witnesses testified that Jereboam had repeatedly threatened to kill Solomon, and after a 13 day long trial, the jury had no doubts. On 19 May, 1826, after just one hour of deliberations, they returned with a verdict of guilty.

In his jail cell Jereboam dropped all pretense of innocence and wrote out a lengthy confession (above), filled with all the drama and heroics he clearly wanted people to believe he possessed.  The court even delayed his execution so he could finish his diatribe.   According to Jereboam, Solomon had repeatedly admitted his crime against Anna, and had begged for mercy.  

Even if true (and considering his injuries, such a speech would have not been physically possible), how that justified the cold blooded murder of a father of 3 small children (above his grave the word "father" would even be carved in stone),  Jereboam did not attempt to explain.  And in the end it did not matter, because, as one commentator has pointed out,  the entire affair now “went from tragedy to romantic melodrama.”

While he awaited execution, Anna was allowed to share her husband’s cell each night, coming and going during the day.  Into his place of confinement she slipped in a bottle of laudanum, a potent mixture of 89% grain ethanol, 10% opium and 1% morphine. The lovers intended a joint suicide, but instead produced only a double regurgitation marathon.  

The absurdity of that sickening episode was matched only by the ineptitude of the jailers, because, just two days later,  these pin-headed penitenciariests allowed Anna to carry a knife into the cell for yet another unregulated visit. Jereboam stabbed himself in the abdomen. Anna then grabbed the knife and stabbed herself in the stomach. If it was a race, she won. She died an hour later. 

Jereboam lived long enough that the jailers had to manhandle the wounded thespian up the thirteen steps of the scaffold, where he died, two hours after his wife.

They were buried together in the same grave, under a lengthy poem, composed by Jereboam (above), and filled with noble words, self pity and maudlin sentiment. So the real cost of Anna Cook’s revenge and Solomon Sharp's ego was three lives; her's  and the lives of two men she professed, at various times, to have loved. And I suspect she thought that was a fair trade. And that is the real tragedy in this so called "Kentucky  Tragedy".

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TOO MANY GOVERNORS Nebraska Goes Nuts

I am surprised more people didn't get lynched in Nebraska during 1890 -91. Tempers were tense on the prairie, and the newspapers could be trusted to be neither fair nor accurate. In the election on Tuesday, 4 November, 1890, the Republicans and Democrats split between them seven seats in the state senate and forty-six seats in the house. That left every other seat to the upstart “hogs in the parlor”, the People’s Independent Party.

The farmer's PIP won eighteen in the senate and fifty-four in the house.  And to those who dream about the transforming- the log-jam busting magic -  of a third party in Congress, let the experiences of the PIPs be a lesson in reality.

Cornhusker politics have often been more colorful than the reticent citizens are wont to admit to outsiders. What other state’s tourism motto could boast with a straight face “We go both ways”? Either they don’t think anybody else is bright enough to get that joke, or they aren’t. And either possibility is not a compliment to the denizens of Nebraska.

Even before Nebraska was admitted to the union, on 7 January, 1859, a fracas of fisticuffs fractured the Nebraska territorial legislature, between those who lived north and those who lived south of the Platte River. It may seem pointless to be divided by a stream famously described as “too thick to drink, and too thin to plow”, a river which, in the late summer, resembles more plain than flood plain, but politics is rarely about reality and doubly so in Nebraska, where reality is so flat and peppered with cow poo. After the brawl the South Platte faction removed themselves across the river to the hamlet of Florence, which had, according to the newspaper “Nebraskian”, “…been, for months, laboring assiduously to delude strangers that it was a city”.

The entire place only became a state over President Andrew Johnson’s veto in 1867. And in the 1870 Supreme Court decision “Baker V. Morton” the justices had to slap down the state’s power structure for stealing land from a poor sod buster and using it to bribe state legislators, in the infamous “Skiptown scandal”. But all of this would prove a mere foretaste to the bounty of bovine pie hurling offered up after the election of 1890.

To the farmers living on the Nebraska prairie in the 1880’s it seemed the railroads were standing on their throats. And to those concerned about Health Care Reform or Union busting, I urge you to study the century long struggle against the railroad monopolies. All across the American west, farmers had bought their land from the railroads. The banks which held their mortgages were owned by the railroads. The only way to get their wheat and corn to market was via the railroads. The only silos to store their harvested crops while awaiting shipment were owned by the railroads. The railroad monopolies set the shipping rates and the silo rates and there was no appeal to their heartless bookkeeping.

Try and start a bank to break the railroad monopoly, and the state legislators would make it illegal. Try and build your own silo, and the state legislators would make it illegal. Politics in Nebraska were so rotten it was said the Union Pacific Railroad picked one of the States’ two Senators, while the other was chosen by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway.

Theoretically the American two-party system should offer the oppressed a choice. But by 1890, thanks to political contributions from the railroads,  the Democrats supported a laissez faire approach to capitalism, while the Republicans were tied to an activist government in favor of the capitalists (i.e. the railroads). The oppressed majority were cow pied out to luck.

Thus was born the Farmer’s Alliance, which morphed into the People’s Independent Party. It was forged in response to decades of railroad corruption, railroad influence selling, and political stagnation - sound familiar? (I'll give you a hint - substitute the word bank or insurance company, oil company for the word railroad)  And then on top of that, a drought not equaled again until the dust bowl of the 1930’s reduced many Nebraska farmers to poverty. According to one mocking Republican observer, the ideal world envisioned by these “hayseeds” was a combination of a Victor Hugo plot and a Baptist revival meeting. But the truth was, all that most of these farmers wanted was for somebody to just acknowledge the railroads were standing on their wind pipe. It was their hoarse cry for justice which had produced the results of the election of November 1890. And when the Nebraska legislature convened in joint session in January of 1891,  things very quickly developed into that Victor Hugo melodrama.

To begin with, the new speaker of the House, Independent Sam Elder, decided he was going to preside over both house of the legislature himself,  bypass the acting President of the Senate....

... Republican Lieutenant-Governor George de Rue Meiklejohn.  That was plainly illegal and extra-constitutional but Sam figured that desperate times called for desperate measures.

However, Elder’s plans for a grand investigation of election fraud and a remaking of state government were derailed when Meiklejohn grabbed the gavel off the podium and refused to return it. There was a shoving, grasping cat fight for the precious totem, which Meiklejohn eventually won. From this point the business of government in Nebraska got very noisy and ground to a complete halt, all over the issue of the certification of the new governor.

As these things were normally counted, the clear election loser was the Republican candidate L.D. Richards, who received just 68,878 votes. The Democrat, James Boyd, had received 71,331 votes, and was, according to county election officials from across the state (who were all either Democrats or Republicans, of course), the winner. But Speaker Elder was certain the actually winner had been John Powers, the candidate of Elder's People’s Independent Party. Officially Powers had received 70,187 votes, making him second by 1,144 votes. But Elder believed with good reason that 2,000 fraudulent Republican votes had been cast for Boyd in Douglas County, centered on Omaha. And Speaker Elder was demanding an immediate investigation.

With the Republicans siding with the Democrats against the Independents, neither side dared to adjourn. Elder presided from the podium, calling on speakers and announcing votes, while Meiklejohn sat at the clerk’s desk, pounding his gavel while doing the same. Nobody got anything done because nobody could hear anybody else. Sometime after midnight, with the Republicans caucusing with their Democratic allies in an anteroom, Speaker Elder ordered the doors of the chamber locked and told the sergeant-at-arms to admit no one without a written pass from him; check.

Meanwhile, the presumed victor, James Boyd, had requested and received an immediate hearing before the State Supreme Court. Boyd was asking for a writ of mandamus (“…a court order that required another court, government official, public body, corporation or individual, to perform a certain legally required act”). Boyd’s attorney argued his case before three judges of the Nebraska state Supreme Court, in a hearing room crowded with armed angry spectators from various political factions. After the hearing it was expected the judges would retire to consider the arguments. Instead the justices held an immediate huddle and after a few moments Chief Justice Cobb announced that the weighty issues of freedom of speech, suffrage, democracy, public order and good government were all irrelevant. The court had decided that certifying election results was simply a clerical duty and not a matter of choice. Cobb signed the writ of mandamus on the spot and then ran for the exit; checkmate.

The spectators were so stunned they were frozen. And that was probably the only reason none of the freshly disenfranchised voters in the room started shooting. The sheriff of Lancaster County (a Democrat), surrounded by deputies (more Democrats), smashed down the locked doors of the legislative chamber, charged to the front of the room and forcefully served the writ upon Speaker Elder. They practically threw it in his face.

And to everyone’s surprise, Speaker Elder did as he was ordered to do. John Boyd was officially declared the official governor of the state of Nebraska. “Thus”, said Judge Bayard Paine forty-five years later, “tragedy was averted in Nebraska statecraft.” Instead, tragedy was converted into low comedy.

At that point in time the most hated man in Nebraska was probably the outgoing governor, Republican John Thayer. It was Thayer’s open kowtowing to the railroads over the previous year which been most responsible for the defeat of the Republican Party in the past election. And he now refused to surrender his office, saying he would “hold on to the chair, the seat, and the office of Governor until the cows come home.” Whatever happens in Nebraskan politics, one way or the other, it always seems to come down to cows.

While the legislature bickered downstairs, Thayer barricaded himself in the governor’s offices upstairs. He called on 25 men of the State militia under the appropriately named Captain Rhody, who was a Republican,  and the Republican dominated Omaha Police Department, to stand guard over his self. Having finally taken the oath, Boyd moved into other offices in the State House and dispatched the Lincoln County sheriff (again) to take procession of the executive suites. But this time the sheriff ran up against an armed militia which refused to surrender. Fist fights again broke out, until Boyd ordered his side to retire.

On 10 January, 1891 it finally occurred to Captain Rhody that he and his little band of men had been maneuvered out on a limb, and if that limb collapsed he was the one most likely to be lynched from it. Rhody announced to Governor Thayer that “I have saluted you for the last time”, and then marched his little army back to their barracks. Abandoned, Thayer surrendered the Governor’s offices, and Boyd moved in.

But Thayer was far from ready to give up. He hired his own attorney and on 13 January, 1891, appealed to the state Supreme Court. His argument was inventive; John Boyd was not qualified to be governor because he was not an American citizen because he had not been born in the United States. And that made John Thayer the original “birther”.

Indeed Boyd had been born in Ireland in 1834. His family had immigrated to America when he was 14. His father had begun the naturalization paperwork in 1849 but events, both personal and political, had intervened. In 1856 the Boyd family had moved to Nebraska territory and had become involved in business and local politics. They were still residents in 1867 when Nebraska had been admitted to the union over President Andrew Johnson’s objection. But Boyd’s father had never completed the naturalization paperwork. Ergo, argued ex-Governor Thayer, John Boyd was not qualified to be the current governor of Nebraska.

And on 5 May, 1891 the State Supreme Court agreed with Thayer. Of course most of the judges had been appointed by Thayer, but Boyd chose not to call the Lincoln County Sheriff again. Boyd was out and ex-governor Thayer was Governor again. The Nebraska governor's office was beginning to resemble the prize in a game of musical chairs, but without the music. But what Thayer had done was a desperate power grab and doomed to failure in the long run, if for no other reason than it assured that any Irish Republicans in Nebraska were not likely to vote Republican again in the near future.

More immediately, Boyd appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Their decision was announced by Chief Justice Fuller: “Manifestly,"  he said, "the nationality of the inhabitants of territory acquired by conquest or cession becomes that of the government under whose dominion they pass…The judgment of the supreme court of Nebraska is reversed…” It was an 8 to 1 judgment, issued on 2 January, 1892. And thus the election of 1890 was finally decided, over a year later. Boyd resumed his office on 3 February of 1892. But, since the Governor of Nebraska served just a two year term, the antics of Governor Thayer and Speaker Elder, had effectively cut Boyd’s term in half.

And that is the kind of political victory that only makes sense when figured by the quarterly profit and loss statements of a corporate board. Politically, the Republicans were still out on that limb, in strong disfavor in Nebraska, and the Democrats made the smart move of courting the Independents.

The frustrated farmers and their leaders had come to the realization that to fight the large railroads would take a national political movement, and the Nebraska Independents, along with similar groups around the nation, found themselves drawn toward the Democratic Party. And in the Presidential election of 1896 they aligned themselves behind Nebraska Democratic Senator William Jennings Bryant, for President. He lost.

And that defeat deflated the Independents. nationally. They never  beat the railroads, which retained a great influence over national politics well into the 1950’s.  But rather than the Democrats absorbing the Independents, in fact the Independents absorbed the Democratic Party. What came out of their joining was a populist Democratic party, a party that saw government as a force to redress grievances, a party which, for all its numerous failings, was a people’s party. And in that small way, the Nebraska populists won. In the long run. The human race is a marathon, dear readers. And none of us will live long enough to win it. But you still have to run.  You might as well at least try to win.  Just to keep it interesting.

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