Heros of '76!

The Heros of ‘76!’*

By Arthur W. Ritchie

* Believing an iconoclastic work could use an iconoclastic spelling, I chose

Heros without the ‘e’ which is perfectly acceptable, see any dictionary.

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2023 Arthur W. Ritchie

ISBN:

Smashwords Edition, License Notes:

This book is licensed for your enjoyment and you may use it for any purpose other than making money. That right, I reserve for myself.

Looking for Unbridled Patriotism and Valor?

Read on.

Looking for Saints? Your holding the wrong book.

• It was Washington and Washington alone that kept an unpaid, underfed, and nearly naked army convinced that they—amidst a land of plenty¹—should defend those too cheap to pay, feed, or cloth them during a war lasting eight and a half years.

¹ While Washington’s army starved at Valley Forge, pacifist Quaker farmers living but miles from his encampment were selling their produce in Philadelphia to the British for hard money. And they did this believing they were just following their faith’s creed of peace.

And while every soldier knew he might die penniless, he also knew countless bureaucrats living comfortably in their homes were being paid with militaristic precision. These are the historic truths schools avoid because they’re perceived as being politically incorrect—and exactly why this book was written: To give you material to re-think some of the questionable history you’ve most likely been taught. As French cynic, Voltaire, (1694-1778) put it,

"History is but a fable we’ve agreed upon,"

——- Voltaire

and he was right. The hero of one book is often the villain of the next meaning that whether someone is touted as a hero or condemned as a pariah often depends on little more than who’s writing about them—and why.

• Arthur Lee was one of our revolutionary period’s more prominent diplomats. Educated in England in both medicine and law, and a southern aristocrat to the core, yet where have you read that this seemingly perfect man was such a miserable back-stabbing pain in the ass no self-respecting woman would speak to him? Like fellow hate monger, Thomas Paine, with the tenaciousness of a pit bull, Lee mercilessly assailed his self-proclaimed enemies until his death. (Dec. 12,1792) His hatred of Robert Morris, the man who paid for our revolution, was legendary—yet, seems to have been based on nothing more than his belief that, if a simple merchant could become immensely richer than a southern aristocrat, it could only be because he was a thief. (You’ll love Lee’s comments when Morris resigned as our Superintendent of Finance.) Likewise, Lee’s hatred of Franklin seems to have been based on nothing more than Franklin’s fame. As you’ve probably guessed, he never married.

• Returning to Europe after our revolution, Thomas Paine, managed to get himself tried for treason and sentenced to hang in England. Escaping to France, in no time flat he was tried for treason and came within a gnat’s whisker of being beheaded there. Then there’s our ever-lying press.

"The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them, inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors."

_____ Thomas Jefferson

Founder of the lying

National Gazette,

Don’t read newspapers and you are Un-informed;

read the newspapers and you are MIS-informed.

______ Mark Twain

• Washington commanded the army winning our independence, chaired the committee creating the greatest testament to free government our planet has ever known, The Constitution of the United States, became the president getting that government up and running, and in that capacity without an army, navy, or the means to create either, guided our new government through the treacherous waters of the French Revolution while keeping our vital economic trade link with England open, only to then retire asking for nothing more than to left in peace. Yet his historically unparalleled achievements were held in such contempt by the eternally ignorant, arrogant, and lying press that, on the day of his retirement, Benjamin Franklin’s 27-year-old grandson, B.F. Bache, wrote in his rag, the Philadelphia AURORA,

"... this day ought to be a JUBILEE in the United States, for the man who is the source of all the misfortunes of our country is this day reduced to the level with his fellow citizens."

_____ B.F. Bache

Editor in chief of the

Philadelphia AURORA

In fact, the Washington’s were so disenchanted with power that the instant John Adams’ hand came down after reciting the oath of office as our second president, the Washington’s fled the capitol so hurriedly that Martha forgot her pet parrot, Polly² and George forgot his dog.

What’s his name? He had so many through the years it’s hard to keep track but my guess is it was Sweet Lips.

² Dolley Madison also had a pet parrot she named Polly.

It seems that B.F. Bache’s sobriquet, Lightening Rod Jr., was society’s facetious way of letting the tyro know that he’d been born with none of his grandfather’s brains, talent or tact. From his first grasping a composing stick to the day he died, his hatred of everyone disagreeing with him was made evident in every word he set in type.

• The brain behind our government’s creation was that of our first Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton. Yet, Hamilton was blackmailed by his mistress’ husband and, when others, including future president Monroe, found out about it, they deliberately spilled the beans to destroy him. And when Hamilton was shot dead in a duel with sitting Vice President, Aaron Burr, both New York and New Jersey very quickly and publicly indicted Burr for murder—then let their charges die by default. Later, the former vice president was tried for treason, but as a politician, got off Scott free half a century before that phrase entered our nation’s lexicon.

• Ethan Allen illegally cobbled, Vermont, from the states of New York and New Hampshire where off fighting a revolution. And when the Continental Congress refused to recognize his theft by admitting Vermont as a state, Allen beseeched England to take Vermont on as a brand-new hardly used colony. And when that failed, he suggested that his colony would be a fine annexation to Canada. Allen had to die (Feb. 12, 1789) before the independent, nation of Vermont, allow it itself to be admitted to the union. (Mar. 4, 17 91)

• And while Thomas Jefferson’s eternal fame was assured by his writing our Declaration of Independence, his despicable treatment of his slave / mistress Sally Hemmings is deliberately ignored by historians.

Jefferson freed exactly four of his hundreds of slaves during his lifetime: Sally Hemmings’ two older brothers who bought their freedom,³ and his eldest son and daughter by her. But Sally bore him seven children, four of whom survived to adulthood, and their last two sons and his lover he kept as slaves in his slave quarters to the day he died.

³ Slaves frequently had Sunday off and many with skills such as black smiths, wheelwrights, roofers, carpenters. seamstresses etc. rented their services out for cash to eventually buy their freedom, but the two most prized slave jobs were cook and seamstress. When Washington’s chief cook, Jupiter, ran off to New York, he did particularly well as a free man. Life wise, he left his seamstress go after she had the political power to stay put where he was.

Then, after squandering his massive inheritance on trivia—hundreds of books he’d never read, thousands of bottles of wine he’d never drink,⁴ countless works of art he could never afford—he died penniless knowing all he had would soon be auctioned off to pay down his staggering debts. And among the assets he left for the auctioneer’s gavel was? His mistress and the mother of seven of his children, Sally Hemmings. Oh, he freed her two sons of his blood in his will, but Sally herself he left to be sold as just another slave. Did I mention that this bankrupt, spend-thrift, backstabbing prick also founded what is now the Democrat party?

⁴ So much wine was left in his cellar at his death, that on December 5, 1985—159 years after he died—it was still being auctioned off with Forbes magazine paying a world record $157,500 for a bottle of his cellar’s red wine.

• And while England’s George III and France’s Louis XVI were the first of their lines not having mistresses, our beloved Benjamin Franklin managed to sire several children without ever saying those magic words, I do! He eventually settled down with a common-law⁵ wife (Sept. 1, 1730) who raised his illegitimate son William, but he never lost his knack of chatting with the ladies.

⁵ Re his common law marriage: It was the best they could do under the circumstances. Deborah Read married John Rogers (Oct. 5, 1725) who soon fled to avoid debtors’ prison and you can’t divorce someone you can’t serve with legal papers. (lawyers have to make a living too you know!) Oh, and the punishment for bigamy in Pennsylvania at that time was 39 lashes followed by life in prison at hard labor.

And on at least three occasions Ben mentioned how lucky he’d been not to have caught anything from the loose women acquaintances of his youth.

• General, (Count) Casimir Pulaski, the Polish volunteer known as the Father of the American Cavalry and savior of Washington’s life and army at the Battle of Brandywine, was cut down by grape-shot during the siege of Savannah and buried at Greenwich Plantation near Savannah. (Oct. 11, 1779) When his remains were exhumed (1996) and examined, it was found that Pulaski was an intersexual with XX chromosomes. It seems the 5’2" 90 odd pound tiger in the saddle saving Washington’s life—was a lady! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_Pulaski

• Eighty-three days after the Bastille fell, (Jul. 14, 1789) —and against all the protection an armed guard offered him—he literally refused to allow them to fire on the mob leading to their death—and armed mob forced Louis XVI and his family from the traditional monarchal palace at Versailles to live in the Tuileries palace in Paris where they could keep a better eye on them. (Oct. 5, 1789) But one night, (June 20, 1791) they snuck off by themselves to a reserve unit of the army who could have saved them. But on that trip, they stopped to have their horses changed and in the crowed was a man who knew the king and sent word ahead to hold them until help arrived. And it was the Marquis de Lafayette who commanded the national guard that was sent to bring him to be tried, and no one was sure which side he was on.

⁶ Whose side these troops would have been on had the king gotten there remains an open historical question.

Lafayette had a once-in-a-lifetime decision: Would he guard the king and his family to safety at Montmédy? Or turn traitor to his class and return the royals to Paris to be tried and beheaded? Ordering the King’s coach turned about—Louis lamented:

"LA FRANCE N’A PLUS DE NI!"

_____ Louis XVI

"France no longer has a king!" —And now, like Benedict Arnold, Lafayette was a turncoat no one trusted.

It was Napoléon that, turned away vandals approaching with cannon fire, said he’d still be Lewis XVI if he had done so.

• James Madison, died so broke that, before congress bought his manuscript, Notes on the Constitutional Convention, his wife, Dolley was destitute to the point of accepting cash from her former slave, Paul Jennings, for food money.

• Did I mention that during the Revolution, (1781) Washington’s bitchy mother, Mary Ball Washington, went out of her way to humiliate him? Even while being well fixed for cash, she petitioned the Virginia legislature for a pension because she was so poor and her son had done so much for his county while doing so little for her and ... Although I guess I should mention that many thought the old bat was a Tory so ...

• Europe’s most competent leaders, Catharine the Great of Russia and Frederick the Great of Prussia, had several unusual things in common. Both were only about 5’2" tall, and had coffee fetishes and sex problems, and both considered our revolution beneath them.

The nymphomaniac Catharine—with no legal claim to reign over anything—simply took over Russia after her husband, Peter I, the legitimate czar, was murdered. And Fred owed his life to the Holy Roman Emperor’s overturning his father’s order to have him beheaded for his homosexuality.

• And sort of to prove that fame and power are fleeting, who would have thought that the most powerful monarch of his time, the mighty Louis XIV, would die to have his mummified heart eaten by a weird Englishman?

https://www.bing.com/search?q=man+who+are+Louis+XIV%27s+mummified+heart&search=&form=QBLH&sp=-1&pq=man+who+are+louis+xiv%27s+mummified+heart&sc=4-39&qs=n&sk=&cvid=19226D2599DA49E89B796ABD6A42DC6D&ghsh=0&ghacc=0

• But on a lighter note, the very rich, highly intelligent, and very witty Gouverneur Morris (first name pronounced Governeer) threw a Christmas bash for friends where his maid outdid herself in tending to their every need. Until—and while still in her maid’s apron—he married her! (Dec. 25, 1809)

Many believe the wooden leg he sported as a fashion accessory was the result of his leaping from a lady’s second-floor bedroom window to avoid meeting her husband. He insisted a carriage accident caused its loss but, as nothing more than anecdotal evidence supports either story ...

• And as curious factoids: Of our first five presidents: While Washington died of medical malpractice (Dec. 19,1799 he was bled to death by overzealous physicians) the next four all either died on July 4th or less than a week from it.

John Adams died on July 4th 1826

Thomas Jefferson died on July 4th 1826

James Madison died on June 28, 1836 missing July 4th by six days.

James Monroe: died on July 4th, 1831

The next July 4th Presidential event was the birth of Calvin Coolidge on July 4, 1872.

And of our first four Presidents, Washington, Jefferson and Madison were all from Virginia, all married widows, and were all 57 at their inauguration. Anyway, here’s the Founding of America as seen through some of history’s lesser known facts. By the way,

WHAT IS A FACT?

As books, plays, movies, etc. are often created for fame and fortune rather than truth, it should come as no surprise that, without something interesting happening ever so often, the creators improvise to make their stories more compelling and therefore, more profitable. For example, let’s look at a movie or two:

Patton: During the Sicilian campaign, Patton’s entering the cities of Palermo and Messina are presented as extravaganzas: The kissing of a prelate’s ring at Palermo, a parade upstaging General Montgomery at Messina, etc. In fact, he went through both cities in a jeep at high speed without stopping.

1776! In both the play and movie Ben Franklin has a long chat pleading with Pennsylvania delegate, Judge James Wilson, to vote for independence—and all in front of congress. This is a complete fabrication. Wilson always voted for independence. John Morton was Pennsylvania’s pivotal vote changer after a sit-down with Benjamin Franklin and he did it in the middle of the night before the final vote was taken without any fanfare on or off the floor of congress. Did the playwright find the name Wilson more euphonious than Morton for his fabrication?

During the long trial of wording the document, Adams disagrees with Jefferson over the meaning of the words to separate and they go about where they went to college etc. This was settled by Franklin in a letter to Jefferson saying the word unalienable Rights be free to use as well.

The Bridge on the River Kwai: If the film’s purpose was to tell the tale of British POWs being forced to build a bridge in a jungle under ghastly conditions, it was a hit. But as to its being historically accurate? Not so much. The bridge is made of iron, not wood, and is still in use today as compared to having been destroyed by its builders in the film.

A Beautiful Mind, ends with its subject, Dr. John Forbes Nash Jr., giving an eloquent acceptance speech for his Nobel Prize. The truth is sadly different. Nash was an unpredictable schizophrenic, and while he did win the Nobel Prize for economics, (While his theory is mathematical, there is no Nobel Prize for mathematics)⁷ he was forbidden to utter a single word at the ceremony.

⁷ The lack of a Nobel Prize for Mathematics is thought to be because an early Nobel lady love jilted him for a mathematician and he came to dislike them.

This same problem besets history. Reading a book gives you a mindset on its subject, while reading further can cause serious factual conflicts to develop. For instance, what do all the following world-famous quotes have in common?

"So help me God." (Apr. 30, 1789) The last words of the oath of office at George Washington’s inaugurations.

"Give me Liberty, or give me Death!" (Mar. 23, 1775) Patrick Henry speaking before Virginia’s House of Burgesses

"Let them eat cake." Marie Antoinette. First found in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s book Confessions (1765) 25 years before they were supposed to have been spoken

"Après moi, le deluge (1757) After us, the deluge" Attributed to both Louis XV and his mistress, Madame de Pompadour,

"L'État, c'est moi I am the state!" Attributed to Louis XIV by Thomas Carlyle in his book, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History. (1841)

Their commonality is that all are of questionable authenticity as none can be verified.

Take the addendum to Washington’s constitutionally mandated oath of office which has since become a tradition. Yet, French foreign minister Comte de Moustier attended Washington’s first inauguration (May 30, 1789) and, writing home, repeated the oath verbatim—without the addendum. Likewise, we know presidents two and three: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, did not end their oath with those words. So, where did they come from?

They first appear in Rufus Griswold’s book, The Republican Court. (1854) Written 65 years after that first inauguration, Griswold justifies the addendum as being a childhood memory of Washington Irving’s. (Apr. 3, 1783 – Nov. 28, 1859) That’s problematic in that Washington Irving was six-years-old on the day of that first inauguration. The first president known to end his constitutionally mandated oath with these words was Chester A. Arthur who was sworn in (Sept. 19, 1881) following the assassination of President James Garfield—27 years after Griswold’s book and 92 years after Washington’s first inauguration. Then there’s the problem of deliberate obfuscation.

BUT IS IT THE TRUTH?

Columbus’ biographers almost universally agree he was born in Genoa—then, an independent nation, now a part of Italy—about 1451. He’d even been known to say he’d been born there himself. So why would anyone suggest there might be a question here? Because every word he ever wrote was in Spanish, Portuguese, Latin or Catalan. In fact, there isn’t a shard of evidence he knew even a single word of Italian. And, as he never wrote in that language, I raise the question. You see, a fabulous reason exists as to why Cristóbal might have lied about his nationality: Money. Spain and Catalonia were at sword points in the 1490s, and were it known that he was a Catalan, there’s no way in hell he could’ve talked the Spanish monarchs into coughing up a dime for his explorations. But as a Genoese ... Then there’s the good story beating the truth out of the books for no reason other than it’s a good story.

Returning from his European jaunt, (1697-98) Peter chose the title Emperor over Czar and was so addressed during his lifetime. His argument was that if the Europeans in lands conquered by Rome never use a title based on Caesar’s name, why should Russia which was never a province of Rome?

It also seems a bit quaint that only countries never conquered by Rome used titles based on the word, Caesar. Czar, in Russia, and Kaiser in Germany after its founding in 1871. And neither the German or Russian languages are based on Latin.

A casual reader of Russian history might come across the tale of how Peter the Great (1672 – 1725) died heroically! Yes, a writer or two has loved telling of how the 6’8" 52-year-old Emperor⁹ dove into freezing water to save a drowning man—caught pneumonia, and died. (Feb. 8, 1725) What a beautiful way to end a tale! But it’s problematic in that there’s another version of his death that’s quite well documented, and a bit different.

It seems that during the summer of 1724, an enlarged prostate caused the emperor problems such that, eventually, half a gallon of urine was surgically removed from his bladder. And, believe it or not, he recovered from this invasive surgery⁸ without dying of an infection. But just months later, (Jan. 28, 1725) he developed uremia and died. And at his autopsy, his bladder was found to be gangrenous. See the problem? Isn’t a heroic death more interesting than he had trouble peeing and it killed him?

⁸ And surgery as the urinary catheter wouldn’t be invented until Ben Franklin sent a diagram of his idea to Paul Revere (1752) to have one made in silver for his brother, James who lived near Revere in Boston.

Then there’s the internet: Is it an ever-expanding font of wondrous knowledge? Or erudition and sewage so artfully blended that you can never be sure of anything found there until you’ve sniffed it?

Let’s say you’re doing a sketch on someone and want it to include their height: Plug any famous name into the universal indicator of people’s heights and, in most cases, it will tell you how tall that person is or was. Well—sort of:

https://www.astrotheme.com/heights/

A few years ago, it said General Douglas MacArthur had been 6’7". They’ve since shrunk him to 6’ even. (Actually, he was 5’11¹/²" but who’s counting?) I am, however, pleased to report that Jesus of Nazareth remains six feet tall, although I dare them to cite a source for it.

Unfortunately, the only thing that might give them a clue is the Shroud of Turin, but the shroud contains two insurmountable problems: It Carbon dates to the 15th century AD, more than a thousand years too young, and displays a man 5’9", so ....

Take Benjamin Franklin for example: The height of a man this historically significant shouldn’t be hard to find should it? It is. You see, while only one of his biographers have been in the least shy about offering a height for him, none have cited a source for their number.

Benjamin Franklin, by Nelson Beecher Keyes, (1956) he tells us Ben was just a shade under six feet tall. Carl Van Doren’s Pulitzer Prize winning biography of the same name (1938) says he was an inch or two under six feet, while our electronic sludge farm says definitively that Ben was 5’9". Okay, so where did all of these alleged authorities conjure up their facts? You see, after coming across numerous other heights for him—and without a single writer citing a source, I found The South Atlantic Quarterly (Vol 15, 1916 pgs. 18-24) containing an article by Dr. J.F. Rogers titled, The Physical Franklin¹¹ where we’re told that Ben was, five feet even. Although again, without citing a source. So here we are: Ben was either tall for his era, or a shrimp—your choice—but all hearsay. Personally, I used to think he was adjustable. But all this leads to the question: Should we involve ourselves in a statement’s exact wording in attempting to determine its truth if it was offered without a source? For instance, are flat out declarative statements such as five feet even to be considered weightier than those parasitically embalmed in adjectives such as, and inch or two under or about xxx, or almost yyy? You see, all of this involves ignoring a simple historic problem: While hundreds of letters, diary notes and newspaper accounts of the fact that Washington practically never smiled, no contemporary comments on Franklin’s height had ever been found and cited. But in 1968 I found the source Dr. J.F. Rogers used for his height on Franklin at 5’ even. And while I’ve promised not to reveal its location, I believe I can safely say that some of London’s tailors never seem to throw anything away.

¹¹ As a simple child of a candlemaker with no special food to bring him up, he as was kept in the suspenseful small state of such people.

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=chi.55217548&view=1up&seq=1

It also explains why so many of Franklin prints with the lades around him show his real height. Anyway, this adjective-laden-uncertainty pervades every facet of anything published and especially the information highway. Let’s look at the question of intelligence.

My first peek at King George III’s Wikipedia entry—and I guess I should note that all of Wikipedia’s articles can be notoriously unreliable—said he could read and write in both English and German when only four years old! WOW! We’re talking about a real genius here! But mere weeks later, this same website was changed to read he was eight when he learned these skills. (Stay tuned, it will probably change again.) But that’s still good right? Well, now we have a problem in that, two of his more prominent biographers say he learned to read about age ten and when he was ten—and there are three encyclopedias saying he learned to read at age 11 with the Encyclopedias Britannica adding the word, "to read properly." Now do you see the intelligence problem?

And to end this section: Today’s internet parrots most of Washington’s biographers in saying he was 6’2". Why do they all ignore the only document from his era with an actual number in it other than a soldier’s guess? A letter he wrote to his London tailor (1761 when he was 29) states,

"... my stature is six feet otherwise rather slender than corpulent."?

_____ George Washington

And trust me on this one, while monumentally modest, we he even a twitch taller, he’d have mentioned it.

While our French legate, Franklin, warned their military of Washington’s towering dignity and almost pathological dislike of familiarity and begged those heading our way to avoid any of their almost obligatory greetings like kissing him on both cheeks etc. Well, France’s 6’2 fun-loving Admiral de Grasse, met the 6’0 Washington, fondly grabbed hold of him, kissed him on both cheeks, and staring down at him from but inches away uttered the immortal line, Ah, mon petit général!

And while Washington’s step grandson, John Custis, never wrote of his step grandfather’s height, of the above he wrote that all within earshot, including himself, Lafayette, Knox, Hamilton etc. nearly died laughing. Washington and de Grasse became friends corresponding until the admiral’s death. (Jan. 11, 1788)

And to finish this section, Alexander Hamilton said he was born on January 11, 1757—his mother’s will put his birthdate in 1755. It’s getting so you can’t trust anybody anymore.

I

The Times

The 17th Century

The Times

Weighing in at 108 tons, the Manta Maria¹ was Columbus’s pride and joy as he began his first four trips to the New World, and what kind of world was it? It was believed that all the universe revolved around out sun, and Galileo wouldn’t be tried for believing in a sun-based universe for over a century.

¹ This was a sizable ship for his voyage as by 1776, the average vessel was only about 200 tons.

Leonardo had just finished the painting of supper of Christ’s last Supper. Michelangelo had just finished his Pieta with Mother and child. It was a say like any other day, except that Columbus got to sail the others blue by heading west against all prevailing logic.

IN THE BEGINNING—That’s during the first days of October, 1492, Columbus relaxed. He’d been sailing west to go east for weeks and his crew was getting touchy as they feared the possibility of running aground on moonless nights, or running out of water if they turned back too late. And no matter what you’ve heard, ocean going sailors have always known the earth is round for from their earliest days at sea they’d seen ship’s hull-down over the horizon. And since about 240 BC, the educated knew Eratosthenes had calculated the earth’s circumference with astonishing accuracy, approximately 29,000 miles.²

² He calculated the earth’s meridian—a circumference from north to south—was 252,000 stadia. Leaving us with the question: What length did he use for the stadia? Assuming a value of between 155-160 meters (465 and 480 feet) his calculation’s result was between 24,500 and 29,000 miles. Not bad when you consider that the currently accepted number is 24,901 miles and he was calculating it from a distance of about seven percent of the earth’s surface. We were short of distance then, it was less than seven percent of the distance from the equator.

The educated knew you could get to Asia by sailing west—but 14,000 miles west! So why did this fool Columbus think it was two traffic lights past the Azores? Anyway, he knew he was nearing land—birds were flying around the masts and oh, did that cheer him up! You see, three days earlier, on their 65th day at sea, a near mutiny forced him to concede that, were land not found in three days, they’d head for home—and this was day three. (Oct. 12, 1492) Just hours later, the cry went up, Land Ho!³ (Although some say land was sighted at sunrise)

³. It was a Spainish aboard the La Pinta who claimed the prize money for discovery, but Columbus on the Santa Maria said he’d seen it first and refused to pay up.

His admiral’s gig beached (Oct. 12, 1492) on a Caribbean island the natives called Guanahani, he named it San Salvadore, and we say, ‘which of these countless islands might it be?’ Anyway, from then on, his life was all downhill.⁴

⁴ He died (May 20, 1506) and was buried in Ciudad Trujillo, Genoa, Seville, and several other places. And while I have absolutely no idea why some of his tombs are empty, they are. And the reason this continent isn’t known as Cristoforo or Columbia is because he insisted it was Asia.

Five months and three days after his Caribbean landfall he was back in Spain (Mar. 15, 1493) presenting his sponsors, with corn, bananas, tobacco, yams, Caribbean Indians, and what all, and they kept saying things like, ‘Very nice! Very snice! —But where are the spices? Where’s the gold?’

Technically, the voyage was a flop as nothing of value was found. No gold, no silver, no spices, no silk, and his biggest ship, the Santa Maria, ran aground and was lost. Then, a few weeks after his return, syphilis broke out in Europe. It was the yams. But being a great talker, Columbus overcame all obstacles to set up the financing for voyage #2.

The New World was discovered and colonized on borrowed money, and everything was going just fine until we showed a profit and that started trouble. It was on April 19, 1775—in Massachusetts, naturally, and our adolescence was spent fighting that long boring thing called the American Revolution where British and German peasants⁵ were sent over to chastise us for being disrespectful to our Liege Lord, the on and off mentally defective, King George III

⁵ And why, while Prince-Elector of Hanover—king in all but name—George III chose to rent Hessians, rather than use his own Hanoverians is not known.

Unfortunately, it was then that we discovered our first natural product: Historians. And any historian writing something about any hardly-used name from the past is assured a place on library shelves because that’s what’s always on library shelves. But this often leads to as much fiction as erudition. For example: How many times can a revolutionary army mutiny and still deserve to be called brave, loyal and patriotic? There were lots of mutinies. The Pennsylvanians did it twice, and even considered surrendering General Greene to the English. And as the war was ending, troops from the Philadelphia barracks chased the Continental Congress all over the place. But it least