First Draft of History: Week of January 16-23, 2012
1781 - Brigadier General Daniel Morgan and a rag-tag Patriot force routed infamous British Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton and a group of Redcoats and Loyalists at the Battle of Cowpens in upstate SC.
Commander in chief of the Southern Army, Major General Nathaniel Greene had decided to divide Patriot forces in the Carolinas in order to force the larger British army under General Cornwallis to fight on multiple fronts. Daniel Morgan took 300 riflemen and 740 militiamen with the intention of attacking the British backcountry fort, Ninety-Six.
In response, Cornwallis dispatched Tarleton with 1,100 Redcoats and Loyalists to catch Morgan, whom he feared might instigate a Patriot uprising. Morgan prepared for the encounter with Tarleton by backing his men up to a river at Cowpens, north of Ninety-Six.
As Tarleton's men attacked, Morgan instructed the militia to skirmish with them, but to leave the front line after firing two rounds. The British mistook the Americans’ withdrawel as a rout and ran into an unexpected volley of rifle fire coupled with a Patriot cavalry charge. Tarleton escaped, but Morgan's troops decimated his army. The British lost 110 men with more than 200 wounded, and an additional 500 captured. The American losses totaled only 12 killed and 60 wounded. Cowpens was the first Patriot victory to demonstrate that the American forces could outfight a similar British force without any other factors—such as surprise or geography—to assist them.
1788 - The first English settlers arrived in Botany Bay, Australia, to establish a penal colony. Capt James Cook had 1st landed at Botany Bay in April, 1770, his 1st landfall in Australia.
The idea of establishing a colony at Botany Bay started with the so-called “Matra proposal” in August 1783. James Matra who travelled with Cook to the South Seas in 1770, spoke of New South Wales as having good soil, advantages of flax cultivation, trade with China and others, and timber for ships’ masts. Matra’s idea was that the new colony could be used by Americans who had remained loyal to Britain in the War of Independence such as himself; however, this initial idea was rejected. Matra failed to mention or consider convicts, but later amended the proposal to “include transportees” (convicts) although he intended for them to be settlers in their own right rather than as forced labor. This idea, of establishing a new colony with convicts, was the one that caught on.
The British wanted to use Australia to alleviate pressure on their overburdened correctional facilities. Due to the so-called Bloody Code, by the 1770s, there were 222 crimes in Britain that carried the death penalty, almost all of them for crimes against property. The Bloody Code died out in the 1800s because judges and juries thought that punishments were too harsh. Since the law makers still wanted punishments to scare potential criminals, but needed them to become less harsh, transportation – i.e., exile to far-flung colonies - became the more common punishment.
Around 60,000 convicts were transported to the British colonies in North America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. When the American Revolutionary War brought an end to that means of disposal, the British Government was forced to look elsewhere. Australia seemed like a good alternative. So, on 18 August 1786 the decision was made to send a party of convicts, military, and civilian personnel to Botany Bay. There were 775 convicts on board six transport ships, accompanied by officials, members of the crew, marines, the families thereof and their own children who together totaled 645. In all, eleven ships were sent in what became known as the First Fleet. Other than the convict transports, there were two naval escorts and three store ships. The fleet assembled in Portsmouth and set sail on 13 May 1787.
The fleet arrived at Botany Bay on 20 January 1788. It soon became clear that it would not be suitable for the establishment of a colony, and the group relocated to Port Jackson. There they established the first permanent European colony on the Australian continent. The area has since developed into the city of Sydney.
There was initially a high mortality rate amongst the members of the first fleet due mainly to shortages of food. The ships carried only enough food to provide for the settlers until they could establish agriculture in the region. Unfortunately, there were not enough skilled farmers or livestock to do this, and the colony waited on the arrival of the Second Fleet. The second fleet was an unprecedented disaster that provided little in the way of help. It arrived in June 1790 with still more sick and dying convicts, which actually worsened the situation in Port Jackson. Still, the colony survived, as did the practice of transportation. Over 80 years, more than 165,000 convicts were transported to Australia. Transportation to the colony of New South Wales was finally officially abolished on 1 October 1850.
1905 - In Russia, revolution erupted when czarist troops opened fire on a group of workers marching to the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg to petition their grievances to Czar Nicholas II. Some 500 protestors were massacred on "Bloody Sunday," setting off months of protests and violence throughout Russia.
Like most revolutions, this one was a long time coming. By January 1905, discontent with the czar's was close to boiling over in Russia, especially after the crushing and embarrassing January 2 defeat of the Russian navy at Port Arthur during the Russo-Japanese War. In October 1905, czar Nicholas, was forced to grant some civil liberties and establish a representative national body, which would be elected by narrowly limited suffrage. However, this Parliament, known as the Duma, was dissolved after it opposed Nicholas' authority, and the remnants of the revolutionary movement were brutally suppressed by czarist troops.
A decade later, czarist Russia was bogged down in the mire of World War I, prompting the Bolshevik-led Russian Revolution of 1917, which crushed the czar's opposition and installed the Bolsheviks as the nation’s rulers.
1961 - In his farewell address to the nation, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned the American people about he called the "military-industrial complex" that had developed in the years since World War II. Eisenhower had been concerned about rapidly escalating defense spending since he became president in 1953. In his last presidential address to the American people, he expressed those concerns in terms that shocked some of his listeners.
Eisenhower recognized that the realities of the Cold War necessitated a permanent armaments industry and a huge military force. But he worried about "the acquisition of unwarranted influence...by the military-industrial complex." In particular, he asked the American people to guard against the "danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite."
Eisenhower's blunt language stunned some of his supporters who thought that he was too critical of the military-industrial complex that was the backbone of America's defense. Other listeners thought that he was merely stating the obvious. Eisenhower’s warning, that the institutions we rely on for defense can also weaken or destroy the very principles they were designed to protect has proven to be a prophetic utterance, the implications of which are still debated today.
1998 - On this week in 1998, in Sacramento, California, Theodore J. Kaczynski pleaded guilty to all federal charges against him, acknowledging his responsibility for a 17-year campaign of package bombings attributed to the "Unabomber." Born in 1942, Kaczynski attended Harvard University and received a PhD in mathematics from the University of Michigan. He worked as an assistant mathematics professor at the University of California at Berkeley, but abruptly quit in 1969. In the early 1970s, Kaczynski began living as a recluse in western Montana, in a 10-by-12 foot cabin without heat, electricity or running water. From his cabin, he began the bombing campaign that would kill three people and injure more than 20 others. Kaczynski’s primary targets were universities, but he also placed a bomb on an American Airlines flight in 1979 and sent one to the home of the president of United Airlines in 1980. The bombs left little physical evidence, and the only eyewitness found in the case could describe the suspect only as a man in hooded sweatshirt and sunglasses (you’ve probably seen the now-famous 1987 police sketch). In 1995, the Washington Post (in collaboration with the New York Times) published a 35,000-word anti-technology manifesto written by a person claiming to be the Unabomber. Parts of the manifesto were rambling and paranoid, but at its foundation, it gave voice to discomfort w/ modernity felt by many people. Here’s how it began:
The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster
for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of
those of us who live in "advanced" countries, but they have
destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected
human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological
suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have
inflicted severe damage on the natural world.
The manifesto went on to urge a revolution, using violence if necessary, against the technological and economic status quo. Recognizing elements of the writings, David Kaczynski, Ted’s brother, went to authorities with his suspicions, and Ted Kaczynski was arrested in April 1996.
Despite his lawyers' efforts, Kaczynski rejected an insanity plea. After attempting suicide in his jail cell in early 1998, Kaczynski appealed to U.S. District Judge Garland Burrell Jr. to allow him to represent himself, and agreed to undergo psychiatric evaluation. A court-appointed psychiatrist diagnosed paranoid schizophrenia, and Judge Burrell ruled that Kaczynski could not defend himself. The psychiatrist's verdict helped prosecutors and defense reach a plea bargain, which allowed prosecutors to avoid arguing for the death penalty for a mentally ill defendant. On January 22, 1998, Kaczynski accepted a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole in return for a plea of guilty. He later attempted to withdraw his guilty plea, arguing that it had been involuntary, Judge Burrell denied the request, and a federal appeals court upheld the ruling. Kaczynski serving his life sentence at a so-called Super-Max prison in Colorado.
International News:
Interesting demographic news from China this week: New data from the National Bureau of Statistics show that of China’s 1.35 billion people, 51.3% liv
ed in urban areas at the end of 2011. In other words, China’s city-dwellers now outnumber its rural residents, probably for the 1st time in history. This milestone testifies to China’s breathtakingly rapid urbanization. In 1980 less than a fifth of China’s population lived in cities. Over the next ten years the government remained wary of free movement, even as it made its peace with free enterprise. Touting a policy of “leaving the land but not the villages, entering the factories but not cities,” it sought industrialization without urbanization, only to discover it could not have one without the other. Even with the majority of Chinese now living in cities, the country’s ratio of city-dwellers to country-dwellers is, if anything, low for an economy at its stage of development. America reached the 50% mark before 1920. Britain passed it in the 19th century. Today, in the US and western Europe, around 80% of the population lives in urban areas. So China is still well below that mark, but, as in so many other areas, it is gaining rapidly.
National News:
Surprising news from S.C. this week, where Newt Gingrich won the Republican presidential primary, pulling off a huge upset over presumed front-runner Mitt Romney. Just ten days after finishing a distant fifth in the Iowa caucuses, Gingrich won 41 percent of the vote, to Romney's 27 percent. Rick Santorum finished in third place with 17 percent, followed by Ron Paul with 13 percent. Herman Cain, who dropped out before the first contest, somehow still garnered 1 percent. Gingrich’s campaign has been left for dead several times already, but some strong debate performances and pointed attacks on Romney helped him to victory, especially among the evangelical wing of the S.C. Republican Party. And there was more bad news for Romney as well this week – Rick Perry dropped out of the race and endorsed Gingrich, (as did Chuck Norris, by the way) and a recount of the vote in Iowa established that it was actually Rick Santorum, not Romney, who won that state’s caucuses. That means that the first three contests in the Republican nominating process have each yielded a different winner. It also means that, presumably, this nominating process is going to go on for quite awhile…so, YAY?!?
Defeat in S.C. is of course seen as a setback for Romney, who hoped to have the nomination sewn-up by now, but I see two ways in which an extended primary campaign might be good for him, assuming he still wins in the end, as I’m guessing he will (South Carolina Republicans might like Gingrich, but I can’t see him winning as much support in more moderate states.) First, the longer Romney runs against Gingrich, Santorum, and Paul, the more moderate he looks. Moderation may be a liability in a S.C. primary, but it will be an asset in a general election, assuming that sheer dislike of President Obama is enough to mobilize the Republican base. I also mentioned last week that Romney doesn’t want to face several more weeks of attacks from fellow Republicans, but there’s a positive side to that too. These attacks help Romney recognize, and presumably address, weakness that might otherwise hurt him in the general election. Tax returns, for example – that could have been a bit issue for Obama to use against Romney, but now Romney’s dealing with it.
Another big national news story this week:
If you were online at all in the middle of the week, you might have noticed some changes at many popular websites. Several major tech companies launches protests this week against a pair of bills, the Protect Intellectual Property Act under consideration in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House, designed to eliminate online theft and copyright violations. These bills are backed by the motion picture and recording industries, setting Hollywood at odds with Silicon Valley.
The bills would require ISPs to block access to foreign websites that infringe on copyrights. Online piracy from China and elsewhere is a massive problem for the media industry, one that supposedly costs as much as $250 billion per year and costs the industry 750,000 jobs. But how exactly the bills would counter piracy has many up in arms. ISPs and web-based companies don’t feel like they should be required to assume the role of law-enforcement and fear that these laws would create a de facto form of censorship on the web, along with a host of problems from over-regulation.
Wikipedia is leading the charge against the law, and this week it launched a 24-hour "blackout" in protest, beginning at midnight last Tuesday. Many leading websites, including Reddit, Google, Facebook, Amazon and others, also launched protests. Google, for example, put a large black bar across its emblem, although none of them shut down like Wikipedia.
These protests add to a very vocal body of critics who are speaking out against the legislation. The White House raised concerns over the weekend, pledging to work with Congress to battle piracy and counterfeiting while defending free expression, privacy and innovation in the Internet. The administration signaled it might use its veto power, if necessary.
But the bill's many supporters – including the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and News Corp., the parent company of FoxNews.com – argue that those critics simply misunderstand the bill. Chris Dodd, chairman of the MPAA, for example, denounced the blackout as a stunt. Now you may be thinking…Chris Dodd…haven’t I heard that name before? Indeed, he’s a former Senator from Connecticut who left office just ahead of an investigation into some questionable loans he received from a mortgage company. And now, he’s basically a lobbyist, because that’s just the way our political system works. There was a lot of support for the bill in Congress, including one of North Carolina’s senators, Kay Hagan. In the end though, the support wasn’t sufficient. Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid announced Friday that he will postpone a vote on the anti-online piracy bill. He said he's "optimistic" lawmakers can reach a compromise in the coming weeks.
At least a half-dozen senators who sponsored the measure now say they oppose it. All GOP presidential candidates also expressed opposition to the proposal in Thursday night's debate.
In the House, the Judiciary Committee is considering similar legislation, with debate slated for next month.
If you think it’s strange that Congress caved in the face of the internet-based protests, there’s really a very simple explanation – no one in Congress actually knows how to pass a bill. They were planning on looking it up on Wikipedia, and when Wikipedia went black they had no choice but to call the whole thing off.
State News:
There was an important decision by the U.S. Supreme Court this week regarding a case with roots in NC. For five years, the County Commissioners in Forsyth County – that’s Winston-Salem - have been waging a legal battle for the right to begin their meetings with prayer. After several lower courts ruled the practice to be unconstitutional because of its sectarian nature, the county appealed to the Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case, thus implicitly confirming the lower courts’ decisions.
The case began in 2007 after two longtime Forsyth County residents objected to sectarian prayer at commissioner meetings. A number of judges and courts all agreed the practice was unconstitutional, arguing that it violated the First Amendment's prohibition on government endorsement of a particular religion.
The commission said its doors have long been open to religious leaders of many faiths. But an appeals court in Richmond, Va., found that more than three-quarters of the 33 invocations given before meetings between May 2007 and December 2008 referred to "Jesus," ''Jesus Christ," ''Christ" or "Savior." So, because the prayers were overwhelmingly Christian, the courts have concluded that they constituted a government endorsement of religion. Now we’ll have to see whether Forsyth County can continue to function without God’s blessing. Or, maybe it will turn out that God’s blessing isn’t contingent on the majority at a county commissioners meeting deciding to impose their views on everyone else.
And in other NC news, you may recall that around Christmas the sheriff’s department in Hoke County raided a turkey farm after animal-rights activists released an undercover video showing horrific abuse of the birds on the farm. Mercy for Animals, which is based in Chicago, claims one of its activists worked for three weeks in the turkey houses and took hidden-camera video inside the farm, at 4213 N. Shannon Road in Shannon, which shows workers throwing, kicking, dragging and beating turkeys, as well as birds suffering from bloody open wounds and infections. The group sent the undercover videos to Hoke County authorities, who then raided the plant, which raises turkeys for Butterball.
That all happened late last year. Well, this week it turns out that a North Carolina Agriculture Department official tipped off the plant about the sheriff’s department’s investigation. The Fayetteville Observer reported that Dr. Sarah Jean Mason with the agriculture department's poultry division issued a statement that she regrets her notification of a veterinarian who worked for the plant in Shannon. A search warrant released last week accused Mason of tipping off Dr. Eric Gonder, who worked for Butterball, which operated the plant. Sheriff's deputies searched the plan Dec. 28, finding some turkeys that had to be euthanized. No charges have been filed, perhaps because people at the plant were able to destroy the most incriminating evidence. Have you noticed that when plants are raided or shut down for abusing animals, it’s almost always because of the work of animal rights groups and almost never because of the oversight of state or federal departments of agriculture? Here’s a nice example of why that might be: the meat industry and the people charged with regulating the meat industry are often in bed together. And if the state is failing to ensure that animals are treated at all humanely, why would you believe that they’re keeping our food supply safe?
And one final piece of state news on a brighter note: the Roman Catholic Diocese of Raleigh announced this week that it will work to get the first North Carolina native ordained to the priesthood officially declared a saint. The diocese said it will formally begin the canonization process on March 9 on behalf of the Rev. Thomas Price. Price was born in Wilmington in 1860 and worked as a missionary priest in North Carolina before founding the Congregation of Maryknoll with the Rev. James Walsh. He died in 1919 while accompanying the first group of Maryknoll missionaries, who were sent to China. The first step for the diocese is the appointment of a tribunal to investigate Price's life and reputation for holiness.
That’s all the news for this week. Be sure to check in again next week for another edition of “A First Draft of History.”
