Without having read the thread I'm going to guess it has something to do with the Loyalists who migrated to Canada after the Revolutionary war. (Including the Ryckmans but they settled in the Hamilton, Ontario area.) When we toured Nova Scotia our guides were all about singing the praises of the Loyalists.
Ok...read the thread...when we took a boat tour of Halifax Harbor they told us all about the explosion...but not about the Christmas tree thing. I still wonder if the "affection" that Boston had for Halifax mentioned in the letter had something to do with family ties to the Loyalists and perhaps having forgiven them.
Jo’Co. Finally watched the documentary about the Mexican revolution that you posted. Thanks for putting this on this site!
Mexico is one of those places that everyone THINKS they know a lot about, but really don't. Mexican-Americans are especially ignorant of Mexican history and culture. I used to amaze my students with my knowledge of their history. A student would walk into class wearing a shirt with a picture of Emiliano Zapata and I would say, "Did you know that he hated Mexico?" Others would walk in wearing shirts that said, "BIMBO" (A popular bakery that advertises on Mexican soccer teams.) I would then inform them that in America, a "bimbo" is a prostitute...
Reading O'Reilly's " Killing Crazy Horse " which is a series of stories about the US expansion through native American lands and the noteworthy confrontations beginning with the Creek Indian uprising in Alabama in the early 1800s. The brutality of both the Indians and the soldiers was indescribable. Many of our most famous military and political figures got their start in this genocide.
Was watching a old Wells Fargo show, the one with Dale Robertson as Jim Hardie. This one was right up JO'CO Alley. Some sort of problem in Eastern New Mexico, and Hardie had to work with William Bonney and The Governor General, General Lew Wallace. I'd never heard of him, but I bet Jim has! Ben Hur?
Lew Wallace was famous for two things: Ben Hur and the Battle of Shiloh. His novel, Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ was the best selling novel of the 19th Century, surpassing even Uncle Tom's Cabin. As a Civil War general at Shiloh, his incompetence almost cost the Union Army a major victory and Gen. Ulysses S. Grant his career. The two day battle was fought along the Tennessee River at a place called Pittsburg Landing. The first day was a major Confederate victory with the Union Army nearly being pushed into the river. The Union won the battle on the second day when Gen. Buell's army arrived from Kentucky in the nick of time to save Grant; who proceeded to drive the Confederates out and chase them all the way to Corinth, Mississippi. Missing in action at this battle was an entire Union army that couldn't find the battle! The troops of Gen. Lew Wallace never did find Shiloh or the 100,000 men who were shooting at each other with everything from from black powder rifles to howitzers; even though they were three miles south of the battle along that same river...
Hey, have any of you military history buffs heard of this place? I wonder how this was funded. Incredible.
Finished the O'Reilly book on the conquering of the West. He was tough on a lot of big names but none more than US Grant whom he holds in disdain. Drunk and disorderly were his good qualities. Smoked 20 cigars a day , lost all of his money on ill conceived investments and spending, broke every treaty he ever authorized with the Indians. Died poor and drunk. Jim, I would love your take on Grant.
U.S. Grant was one of the most mysterious persons in American history. His story reads like a bad Hollywood movie. None of it seems possible and yet it really happened. His story is so unique, it's difficult to even find comparisons. Think of Joan of Arc. It's difficult to imagine the armies of France following the orders of an illiterate, 15 year-old school girl, and yet they did. Napoleon wasn't French. He was an Italian from the island of Corsica who took command of the French army at age 26. Stalin wasn't a Russian and didn't even begin to learn the Russian language until he was 18... At the beginning of the Civil War in 1861, U.S. Grant was the town drunk in Galena, Illinois. People who saw him stumbling down the street felt sorry for him. He couldn't hold a job, so his father hired him to work in his harness shop. His boss was his little brother. Then everything changed. The Civil War saved him. As a West Point graduate, he was suddenly in demand as a soldier. When the nation divided, more than 80% of all army officers were southerners who returned home to fight against the United States. This was because the general commanding the army, Winfield Scott, was himself a southerner from Virginia who only promoted other southerners. This left men like Grant and many others unemployed. Only Sherman was able to hold an army job, because his brother was a senator. The Civil War created a new situation that brought jobs and promotions for all of them. Within four years he would become the commanding general of the largest and most powerful, modern army on planet earth; and within eight years... president of the United States. As the army in the east, (with it's political generals and political interference from Washington) kept losing and losing, Grant kept winning and winning in the west. He would cut his own telegraph lines to avoid advice from Washington, then restore them after the battle to report his victories. Even then, he was fired after Shiloh when his boss (who wasn't there) took credit for the victory, but blamed him for the high number of deaths and casualties. It was his partnership with Sherman that saved both of them again and again, with Senator Sherman acting as their guardian angel in Washington... Long after the war, when he was dying of throat cancer, Grant pulled off one last miracle. He got his friend Mark Twain to give him a huge pile of money for the publishing rights to his autobiography. He was able to finish it just days before he died and it restored his family fortune. I urge all of you to read it, because it explains Grant better than I ever could. He sums up his entire life and upbringing in 20 pages, then dives into his area of expertise...war...and he stays there for the rest of the book. He was a soldier and family man. Nothing else interested him...not even being president... The Complete Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant by Ulysses S. Grant |
As only JO'Co can say it ! I will read the Grant memoirs. A soon as I finish Go Down Together about Bonnie & Clyde.
I had no idea who Haley Harding was...but I read this article and I wonder how I missed him. He must have been quite a guy, esp considering his time frame. He had been a slick-fielding infielder in the Negro Leagues, barnstormed with the forerunner of the Harlem Globetrotters, worked for a movie production company, and promoted Club Alabam, the “swankiest night spot” on bustling Central Avenue. But the one thing Harding couldn’t do was remain silent. The fast-talking city editor and sports columnist for the L.A. Tribune, a weekly Black-owned newspaper, joked that he laced on boxing gloves each morning to battle anyone and anything unjust. In football stadiums and ballparks, he fought for the rights of Black athletes