The Mysteries of History (March 6 Edition)
Dred Scott; Aspirin; Rosenbergs; The Most Trusted Person in America
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” — Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana, 1905
1857 — Dred Scott Rebuffed, then Freed
public domain images from wikimedia commons (middle: Dred and Harriet; right: their daughters Eliza and Lizzie)
On this date in 1857, just four years before the long-dreaded Civil War was to begin, a slave named Dred Scott lost his supreme court case over his, his wife’s, and their two daughters’ right to be free because he had lived in free States of Illinois (where Abraham Lincoln resided) and Wisconsin. The Supreme Court at the time had more Southerners/friends of slavery than Northerners/abolitionists.
Nevertheless, Scott was manumitted (set free by his “owner”) shortly after the court case. Dred, who had been born in or around 1799, died the following year, 1858. So he was only a free man for a few months, but at least he died such. Scott’s wife Harriet lived until 1876, just a couple of weeks before the nation’s Centenniel on July 4th of that year. As of 2023, at least one of their daughter Eliza’s descendants still resides in St. Louis, Missouri.
The following is what I wrote about the Dred Scott case in my book Still Casting Shadows: A Shared Mosaic of U.S. History — Volume 1: 1620-1913:
“Our Civil War was a blot on our history, but not as great as the buying and selling of Negro souls.”—Mark Twain
“It is impossible for us to suppose these creatures to be men, because, allowing them to be men, a suspicion would follow that we ourselves are not Christian.”—Baron Montesquieu
“Emerson has said that consistency is a virtue of an ass. No thinking human being can be tied down to a view once expressed in the name of consistency. More impor tant than consistency is responsibility. A responsible person must learn to unlearn what he has learned. A responsible person must have the courage to rethink and change his thoughts. Of course there must be good and sufficient reason for unlearn ing what he has learned and for recasting his thoughts. There can be no finality in rethinking.”—B. R. Ambedkar
The controversy caused by the Dred Scott case edged the nation a step closer to war. Dred was a slave who had been taken to the non-slave States of Illinois and Wisconsin by his captor, an army surgeon named John Emerson, before being brought back to Missouri. Mr. Scott sued for his freedom, on the basis of having lived in those free States. The Supreme Court did not see things Dred’s way, though. In fact, Chief Justice Roger Taney went so far as to say that blacks were not citizens, and were “so inferior that they had no rights which a white man was bound to respect.” Mr. Scott lived in Illinois at the time the Kollenborns [my mother’s family] were there, and they no doubt knew about his (both literal and figurative) trials. Although most German-Americans were anti-slavery (in fact, some historians claim that the German population in Missouri were responsible for preventing that State from seceding from the union, which may have made the difference in the war), it is impossible to know from this distance of time what the Kollenborns’ exact thoughts were on the issue in general or the Dred Scott case in particular. Besides the travesty of justice imposed on Mr. Scott himself, the court’s unconscionable decision could have been the leading edge of a wedge that would expand slavery to the north. For, if one could take slaves along to non slave states, and retain them as such, what would prevent people from taking numbers of slaves north for stays of indefinite periods, thus making the whole country, in effect, enslaver-friendly?
Questions: Why did Scott’s owners free him after the Supreme Court decided against him? From what did Scott die just a few months after being freed? How did his family fare following his death? Where is Scott buried?
1899 — Aspirin is Patented
public domain image from wikimedia commons
From time immemorial (or at least from a “long, long, time ago”) people used willow tree bark to alleviate pain and fever. Its downside was the nasty taste and the fact that it could cause stomach problems.
In the late 1800s, the Bayer company in Germany came up with a way to circumvent those problems to some extent (few would say regular — not children’s — aspirin tastes good). On this date in 1899 they patented their formula.
At first you needed a doctor’s prescription for it, but starting in 1915 it could be purchased over the counter.
Questions: Do you have aspirin in your medicine cabinet? When was the last time you took an aspirin? Did it help? What is the difference between aspirin and products such as Excedrin, Advil, and Tylenol, et al?
1951 — Rosenberg Trial Begins
public domain image from wikimedia commons
Julius (1918-1953), his wife Ethel (1915-1953), and others, such as David Greenglass (1992-2014) and Morton Sobell (1917-2018), were accused of espionage for selling nuclear secrets to Russia. Because of the technicality that America and Russia were not at war with each other at the time, they could not be charged with treason. The trial began on this date in 1951.
Among the prosecutors was Roy Cohn, an associate of the disgraced, delusional, truth-challenged alcoholic Joseph McCarthy. The Rosenbergs were found guilty and sentenced to death.
But were the Rosenbergs guilty? At the time of the trial, the only direct evidence that they were involved in the passing of secrets to the Russians was the confession of Ethel’s brother David Greenglass, who fingered them as the masterminds of the crime.
But why would Greenglass betray his sister and brother-in-law? Perhaps because he got a much milder sentence for his “cooperation” (15 years instead of death [and he only ended up serving nine-and-a-half of those 15 years])?
The Rosenbergs refused to accept a commutation of their sentence if they provided the names of other spies and admitted their guilt. Their joint statement refusing the terms offered was, “By asking us to repudiate the truth of our innocence, the government admits its own doubts concerning our guilt ... we will not be coerced, even under pain of death, to bear false witness.”
Perhaps the Rosenbergs were simply refusing to “name names” and threw in the claim of being innocent for bad measure; life-long New York resident and co-defendant Morton Sobell, who lived to be 101, admitted late in life that he had been a spy for Russia, and said that the Rosenbergs had been, too.
The Rosenbergs were sentenced to death a month later, on April 5th, 1951, and executed a little over two years after that, on June 19, 1953.
Questions: How many times did Julius need to be shocked before he died? What about Ethel — how many times for her? What did witnesses say they saw coming out of her head when she finally succumbed to the effects of the electric chair? Which U.S. President refused to halt the execution in spite of widespread protests and requests for clemency from many influential people?
1981 — Walter Cronkite Signs Off
public domain images from wikimedia commons
CBS Evening New anchor Walter Cronkite (1916-2009) signed off for the last time on this date in 1981 with his usual, “And that’s the way it is.”
If you watched the news in the 1960s and 1970s, you saw Cronkite and probably remember him well.
You could always trust the charismatic Missourian to give you the straight dope, and not try to twist or manipulate the news or his audience. For that reason he was considered to be the most trusted person in America. This is not conjecture as to the public’s feelings about him, but rather the results of a 1972 poll (the year of the Nixon Watergate scandal).
One of the reasons people trusted Cronkite, and certainly more than the politicians of the day, was his straightforward take on how the war in Vietnam was going (victory is not in sight, a negotiated peace will be needed).
Cronkite retired from CBS in 1981, not because he was tired or tired of the job or because of a contract dispute, but because CBS mandated 65 as the retirement age for its employees. Cronkite stayed professionally active for many years after that, in fact up until the year of his death, twenty-eight years after his “retirement.”
Questions: Did you ever watch Walter Cronkite report the news live? If not, have you seen archival footage of his reportage? Do you “get” why he was voted the most trusted person in America? What is the main reason he was viewed so positively, in your opinion?
