A First Draft of History: May 7

1775 - William Legge, 2nd earl of Dartmouth and secretary of state for the colonies for British King George III, instructed colonial Governor Josiah Martin of North Carolina to organize an association of Loyalists and raise militias on this day in 1775. Exactly one year later, British Commodore Hyde Parker and General Charles Cornwallis were to arrive in North Carolina with 20 transport ships. 

Martin directed Loyalist efforts from his ship Cruiser anchored in the Cape Fear River following a Patriot attack on his home in April 1775. When the residents of Mecklenburg County effectively declared their independence from the crown later in May, Martin sent a copy of their resolves to Britain, requested military supplies from British General Thomas Gage in Boston and plotted to arm the slaves of North Carolina to help put down any Patriot uprising. With that, the Revolution in North Carolina, which we might more properly think of as America’s first civil war, was officially underway.

Ultimately, William Legge, earl Dartmouth could not sustain the British empire in North America, but he did lend his name to one of its oldest and most highly regarded institutions of higher learning: Dartmouth College, founded in Hanover, New Hampshire, in 1769.

1863 - On this week in 1863, the Battle of Chancellorsville began in Virginia. Earlier in the year, General Joseph Hooker led the Army of the Potomac into Virginia to confront Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Hooker had recently replaced Ambrose Burnside, who presided over the Army of the Potomac for one calamitous campaign the previous December: the Battle of Fredericksburg. At that conflict, the Yankees amassed over 14,000 casualties while the Rebels suffered some 5,000 casualties.

After spending the spring retooling his army and boosting its morale, Hooker advanced toward the Confederate army, possessing perhaps the greatest advantage over Lee that any Union commander had during the war. His force numbered some 115,000 men, while Lee had just 60,000 troops present for service. Hooker had a sound plan. He intended to avoid the Confederate trenches that protected a long stretch of the Rappahannock River around Fredericksburg. Placing two-thirds of his forces in front of Fredericksburg to feign a frontal assault and keep the Confederates occupied, he marched the rest of his army up the river, crossed the Rappahannock, and began to move behind Lee's army. The well-executed plan placed the Army of Northern Virginia in grave danger.

But Lee's tactical brilliance and gambler's intuition saved him. He split his force, leaving 10,000 troops under Jubal Early to hold the Federals at bay in Fredericksburg, and then marching the rest of his army west to meet the bulk of Hooker's force. Conflict erupted on May 1 when the two armies met in an open area beyond the Wilderness, the tangled forest just west of the tiny burgh of Chancellorsville. Surprisingly, Hooker ordered his forces to fall back into defensive positions after only limited combat, effectively giving the initiative to Lee. Despite the fact that his army far outnumbered Lee's, and had the Confederates clamped between two substantial forces, Hooker went on the defensive, a tendency that hampered virtually all Union generals until men like Grant and Sherman came on the scene. In the following days, Lee executed his most daring battle plan. He split his army again, sending Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson further west around the Union's right flank. The crushing attack snapped the Union army and sent Hooker in retreat to Washington, D.C., and, perhaps more than any other event during the war, cemented Lee's invincibility in the eyes of both sides. So this was a good week for Lee and the Confederates back in 1863, but their victories came at a high cost, for it was also during the battle of Chancellorsville that Confederate Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson was accidentally wounded by his own men. He died eight days later. Even without subscribing to the “great man” theory of history, we can safely say that Jackson’s death was devastating to the Confederate cause. Without his tactical brilliance, Lee was never again able to implement his strategies quite so effectively.

1896 - Dr. H. H. Holmes, one of America's first well-known serial killers, was hanged in Philadelphia. Although his criminal exploits were far more extensive and occurred during the same time period as Jack the Ripper, Holmes has not endured in the public's memory the way the Ripper has.

Born Herman Mudgett in New Hampshire, Holmes began torturing animals as a child. (Apparently, that’s an excellent indicator of later psychopathic behavior, so keep an eye on your kids.) Still, he was a smart guy who later graduated from the University of Michigan with a medical degree. Holmes financed his education with a series of insurance scams whereby he requested coverage for nonexistent people and then presented corpses as the insured. Later, he would take out policies on people whom he would then murder.

In 1886, Holmes moved to Chicago to work as a pharmacist. A few months later, he bought the pharmacy from the owner's widow after his death. She then mysteriously disappeared. With a new series of cons, Holmes raised enough money to build a giant, elaborate home across from the store.

The home, which Holmes called "The Castle," had secret passageways, fake walls, and trapdoors. Some of the rooms were soundproof and connected by pipes to a gas tank in the basement. His bedroom had controls that could fill these rooms with gas. Holmes' basement also contained a lab with equipment he used for dissections and a crematorium.

Young women in the area, along with tourists who had come to see the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, and had rented out rooms in Holmes' castle, suddenly began disappearing. Medical schools purchased many human skeletons from Dr. Holmes during this period but never asked how he obtained the specimens. Holmes was finally caught after attempting to use another corpse in an insurance scam. He confessed, saying, "I was born with the devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than a poet can help the inspiration to sing."

Reportedly, authorities discovered the remains of over 200 victims on his property. To this day, no one knows how many people he killed.

1931 - On this day in 1931, President Herbert Hoover officially dedicated New York City's Empire State Building, pressing a button from the White House that supposedly turned on the building's lights. Hoover's gesture, of course, was symbolic; while the president remained in Washington, D.C., someone else flicked the switches in New York.

The idea for the Empire State Building is said to have been born of a competition between Walter Chrysler of the Chrysler Corporation and John Jakob Raskob of General Motors, to see who could build the taller building. Chrysler had already begun work on the famous Chrysler Building, the 1,046-foot skyscraper in midtown Manhattan. Not to be bested, Raskob assembled a group of well-known investors, including former New York Governor Alfred E. Smith. The group chose the architecture firm Shreve, Lamb and Harmon Associates to design the building. The Art-Deco plans, said to have been based in large part on the look of a pencil, were also builder-friendly: The entire building went up in just over a year, under budget (at $40 million) and well ahead of schedule. During certain periods of building, the frame grew an astonishing four-and-a-half stories a week.

At the time of its completion, the Empire State Building, at 102 stories and 1,250 feet high (1,454 feet to the top of the lightning rod), was the world's tallest skyscraper. The Depression-era construction employed as many as 3,400 workers on any given day. The grip of the Depression on New York's economy was still evident a year later, however, when only 25 percent of the Empire State's offices had been rented.

In 1972, the Empire State Building lost its title as world's tallest building to New York's World Trade Center, which itself lost the title only a year later. Today the honor belongs to Dubai’s Burj Khalifa tower, which soars 2,717 feet high.

2011 - Pope Benedict XVI beatified Pope John Paul II, moving his predecessor a step closer to sainthood. And speaking of Blessed John Paul II, on this week in 2001 he became the first pope to enter a mosque when he entered the Umayyad Great Mosque in Damascus, Syria, which is, according to tradition, the burial place of John the Baptist. 

International News:

I spoke at length a few weeks ago about the coup in Mali – and remember, Mali is not the same as Malawi, don’t make that mistake. Well there were more developments in that story this week, when soldiers from the ruling junta foiled a counter-coup bid by presidential guardsmen overrunning their base in the capital and fending off their assaults on the airport and the state broadcaster.

Members of the red beret presidential guard unit attacked important sites in and around the capital Bamako late on Monday and into Tuesday in an apparent attempt to unseat the junta that has been in power since it ousted President Amadou Toumani Toure.

At least 27 people have been killed in the fighting, which centered on the state television broadcaster, the airport and the main camps of the rival military factions, according to medical sources and Reuters witnesses.

Fighting died down Tuesday afternoon after the junta took control of the presidential guard barracks in Bamako.

The clashes in the West African state - a posterchild of African democracy before a March 22 putsch and a Tuareg rebellion thrust it into chaos - came as a setback to early international efforts to restore constitutional order.

Junta leader Captain Amadou Sanogo overthrew Toure after an army mutiny driven by frustration over the government's handling of a Tuareg rebellion in the vast desert north that has since split the country in two.

The coup derailed an April election meant to replace Toure, and has been internationally condemned. West African regional bloc ECOWAS has said it plans to deploy more than 3,000 troops to oversee a transition back to democratic rule.

President Obama made a surprise visit to Afghanistan this week, coincidentally enough on the one-year anniversary of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. The president took the opportunity to casually remind everyone that he, HE – NOBODY ELSE, ordered the raid, and to announce the signing of a new security pact with Afghan dictator, excuse me, Afghan “president” Hamid Karzai. Under the terms of the pact, US forces will withdraw from Afghanistan by 2014, which isn’t too far away. However, some soldiers will remain in the country to help train the Afghan security forces for another decade, until 2024. Well, that’s a relief – I was worried my grandchildren might not get a chance to fight in Afghanistan. In exchange for all this support, the US asked Karzai to try to traffic a bit less heroin and maybe say “no” to a bribe every now and then…but he refused. 

And big news from France this week, where Francois Hollande unseated Nicholas Sarkozy as president, becoming only the second socialist to take the French presidency, and the first in over 30 years. Hollande’s supporters celebrated by getting drunk and making a huge mess in Bastille square, while a large group of Sarkozy supporters chanted “Now we are screwed.” Ah, the French – magnanimous in victory, gracious in defeat.

Well, Hollande is going to have his work cut out for him. There was more bad economic news from Europe this week where unemployment in the European Union has hit an all-time high. The collective unemployment rate for the 17 EU nations reached 10.9 percent in March, up a full percent from a year ago and the highest level since the political bloc was founded in 1999. This news has of course delighted Paul Krugman and those of his ilk, who have argued that more government spending, not austerity measures, are the way to deal with recessions. Now, I’m no economist (although I was just one class shy of an econ minor in college), and it could be that Krugman, obnoxious as he is, is also right. But there are also some obvious flaws in his logic. First of all, European unemployment rates have been high, at least by US standards, for decades. The Europeans have generally preferred high taxes and a strong social safety net to robust employment. Second, there’s no way to know that unemployment would be lower if European governments had spent more to stimulate their economies. And lastly, the employment issue is far less important than the issue of long-term government debt. True, the Europeans could perhaps lower unemployment a bit now by borrowing and spending even more money, but if all that debt causes their economies to implode a few years down the road, it won’t have been worth it. Better higher unemployment now in exchange for fiscal solvency in the future. And that’s why I’m smarter than Paul Krugman.

And why I’m on this theme, it’s not like the US, with all the billions our government has spent on economic stimulus, is doing all that great in terms of employment either. This week the Labor Department reported very disappointing job creation last month. The unemployment rate actually dropped a bit, but that’s only because thousands of people became so discouraged that they simply stopped looking for work altogether, which means they no count as unemployed. That’s why, in addition to the unemployment rate, it’s important to look at the percentage of the population involved in the labor force. And that number is the lowest it’s been in 30 years. 

National News:

I mentioned this is the anniversary of the dedication of the Empire State building and this week marked another milestone in the history of the New York City skyline as well. Last Monday, One World Trade Center, the so-called Freedom Tower currently under construction in Lower Manhattan, technically became New York City's tallest building, as workers erected steel columns on the 100th floor, 1,271 feet above the street, to make it stand 21 feet higher than the Empire State Building's observation deck.

The Freedom Tower, which is being built to replace the twin towers that fell during the 9/11 terror attacks, won't be completed until 2014. When it is, it will be 104 stories and likely declared the tallest building in America—surpassing Chicago's 1,451-foot Willis Tower at 1,776 feet.

State News:

North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis said Tuesday that he has asked a second staff member to resign because the person had inappropriate romantic relationship with a lobbyist. Asked if he believed any laws were broken, he said, “Absolutely not. To me, this is nothing more than a very sad story of bad personal choices.”

Tillis’ office was roiled last week when reports surfaced that his chief of staff, Charles Thomas, had been romantically involved with Jessica Hayes, a lobbyist for the North Carolina Home Builders Association, one of the most influential industry groups in the state. Tillis said he conducted interviews with staff members on Sunday and found that a second staff member had also been involved with a lobbyist. He would not name the staff member by name, but described her as a policy adviser. Tillis has only one policy adviser at the moment, Amy Hobbs, so there’s no great mystery as to who we’re talking about. 

As House speaker, Tillis controls the flow of legislation through the chamber, so the fact that his house is in such disarray should concern all of us. The lobbyist in this latest scandal apparently worked for Equality NC, the home and hospice industry, and the game fishing industry.

More testimony this week in the ongoing train-wreck that is the life of former NC Senator John Edwards. Last week, we heard from former Edwards BFF Andrew Young, who testified that Edwards knew full well about what the prosecution contends were illegal campaign contributions used to hide Edwards’s pregnant mistress and their child. Edwards is charged with conspiracy, filing false campaign reports and four counts of accepting illegal campaign contributions. This week, we heard from Andrew Young’s wife, the equally-likable Cheri Young. Over the course of the week, Ms. Young sobbed, complained of a migraine, and got a bit belligerent with the defense, which of course tried to undermine her credibility. Defense attorney Alan Duncan questioned Cheri Young about her husband's truthfulness, suggesting that she once told someone that Andrew Young is such an accomplished liar that even she cannot tell whether he's telling the truth or not. She said she couldn't recall ever saying that.

Nonetheless, like her husband, Cheri Young testified that Edwards was aware of the secret payments – Cheri Young said he even ordered them on the phone to "get the money in" – and assured them that they were legal. She also said Edwards hatched the plan to have Andrew Young claim to be the father of Hunter's baby to keep media inquiries about an extramarital affair from sinking his campaign.

So that was early in the week. On Wednesday, things got really uncomfortable. 

John Edwards's daughter left the courtroom crying during testimony on Wednesday about a confrontation between her father and deceased mother over the onetime presidential candidate's extramarital affair. Former Edwards aide Christina Reynolds testified about an argument Elizabeth Edwards had with her husband on the day in October 2007 that a tabloid published a story about his affair. As Reynolds was beginning the account about what happened at the Raleigh airport, Edwards’ daughter Cate left the courtroom in tears.

Reynolds told the court that Elizabeth Edwards asked her over to the family's Chapel Hill home in the summer of 2007 and revealed that her husband had confessed to an affair the previous year. The following October, Reynolds testified, she observed a very upset Elizabeth Edwards confront her husband at Raleigh-Durham International Airport on the morning that The National Enquirer published a story about the affair. She stormed off and then collapsed in the parking lot, Reynolds said, and the aide and another staff member helped her into the bathroom of a private hangar. After collecting herself, Elizabeth Edwards came back into the hangar, found her husband and began yelling. She then pulled off her shirt and bra, leaving herself bare-chested, Reynolds said. Reynolds said Edwards didn't show emotion, but that he called his wife's doctor and asked for help.

Now, you may guess from my account of this trial, that I take a certain amount of pleasure in Edwards’s public humiliation. That may not be commendable of me, but there it is. Frankly, I wish everyone involved in the case could be sent to prison, and that they could all be sentenced to serve their time locked in a cell together. I think Dante would have to add a few more circles to the inferno just to hold this miserable bunch. But the point at which this trial stops being fun to watch and instead becomes very, very sad is when it comes to Elizabeth Edwards.

Anyway, the hits kept coming for Edwards throughout the week. Wednesday's hearing also included an account from another aide who testified that he repeatedly voiced concerns about the mistress, Rielle Hunter, and later left the Edwards staff after an expletive-laced tirade from the candidate. The former aide, Josh Brumberger, discussed topics ranging from the night the candidate met his mistress to how he charmed the wealthy donor whose money would be used to cover up the affair.

Another former close aide to Edwards, John Davis, testified Thursday about bungled efforts to keep the former presidential candidate's affair hidden from staff members, including an awkward encounter when Edwards's mistress showed up at a hotel weeks after her work filming for the campaign had ended.

And lastly this week, Alex D. Forger, the lawyer for the wealthy heiress who provided secret payments intended to help Edwards testified Friday that the former presidential candidate acknowledged the money had been given for his benefit. So, the evidence against Edwards keeps mounting.

And in a more uplifting piece of state news, researchers announced this week that they may be close to solving one of the great mysteries in NC history, indeed in all of US history – the fate of the so-called Lost Colony. For over four decades people have wondered what happened to the vanished English colony on Roanoke Island. Well, now it turns out that the survivors of the colony may have moved inland, establishing a new settlement in Bertie County that today lies under a golf course. 

Researchers at the British Museum in London, acting at the request of a group of American historians and archaeologists, have found a symbol hidden on an ancient map that could show where members of the English colony established on Roanoke Island in 1587 moved. 

The elaborate map was created by members of Sir Walter Raleigh’s Roanoke Colony expeditions of 1584-1590, the first attempt to establish an English Colony in the New World. The map, which is unusually accurate for its time, shows the coastal area from the Chesapeake Bay to Cape Lookout, and pinpoints the locations of several native American villages.

Brent Lane, an adjunct professor of Heritage Economics at the UNC Kenan Institute, was studying a map made by the leader of the 1587 colony expedition, John White, when he became intrigued with two patches of paper pasted over small parts of it. One of the patches was in an area that the settlers had explored, and where some historians had theorized was a likely spot for them to have moved.

The patching technique was normal for the time. When artists wanted to make alterations, they’d paste on a patch and draw or paint over it. Still, Lane asked British Museum officials whether they had ever tried to determine what was under the patches. They hadn’t. And to me, that’s kind of odd – this map has been around for hundreds of years, but no one thought to look under the patch? Are they that busy at the British Museum?

Anyway, when researchers put the map on a simple light table, which shown through the paper, they discovered that under one patch was a large symbol that appeared show the location of a fort. The site appears to be at or near what is now the Scotch Hall Preserve, a golf course and residential community just across the Albemarle Sound from Edenton.

Researchers are now planning new scholarly and archaeological research to explore the clue about the Bertie site. So we’ll see what comes of that. Perhaps the Lost Colony will yet be found. 

Cosmic News:

This week marked the appearance of the so-called Super Moon, the time when our faithful satellite reaches its perigee relative to the Earth. In great anticipation of this event, I dragged my family down to the beach Saturday evening, but all we saw were clouds, and swarms of hungry mosquitoes. So I’ll say no more about the moon this week.

There is some other cosmic news to report, however. 

This week astronomers announced that they have collected the most direct evidence yet of a supermassive black hole shredding a star that wandered too close. NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer, a space-based observatory, and the Pan-STARRS1 telescope on the summit of a mountain in Hawaii, were among the first to help identify the stellar remains. 

Supermassive black holes, weighing millions to billions times more than the sun, lurk in the centers of most galaxies. They lay quietly until an unsuspecting victim, such as a star, wanders close enough to get ripped apart by their powerful gravitational clutches.

Astronomers have spotted similar phenomena before, but this is the first time they identified the victim. Using several ground- and space-based telescopes, a team of astronomers identified it as a star rich in helium gas. The star resides in a galaxy 2.7 billion light-years away.

This observation yields insights about the harsh environment around black holes and the types of stars swirling around them. It is not the first time the unlucky star had a brush with the behemoth black hole. The team believes the star's hydrogen-filled envelope surrounding the core was lifted off a long time ago by the same black hole. 

So, there’s one less star in the sky today. Kind of sad, if you think about it…