George Washington's Cook

Hercules

Hercules, a slave at the Mount Vernon plantation, who had been George Washington’s long time cook was summoned to Philadelphia in November 1790 to become now President George Washington’s personal cook. Hercules was a self taught culinary artist, “as highly accomplished a proficient in the culinary art as could be found in the United States,” according to those who sampled his cooking. Washington was well pleased with Hercules and allowed him to make extra money by selling leftovers from the presidential kitchen. This extra money Hercules spent on expensive luxuries and fine clothing. “…his linen was of unexceptional whiteness and quality, then black silk shorts, ditto waistcoat, ditto stockings, shoes highly polished, with large buckles covering a considerable part of the foot, blue cloth with velvet collar and bright metal buttons, a long watch-chain dangling from his fob, a cocked-hat and gold-headed cane completed the grand costume of the celebrated dandy…of the president's kitchen.”

In November 1796, during a visit of the president and his entourage to Mount Vernon, Hercules’ son was caught stealing. Washington suspected that father and son were planning to runaway. When Washington returned to his presidential duties in Philadelphia, the once renowned Hercules was left behind at Mount Vernon reduced to the status of a common laborer on the farm. On February 22, 1797, George Washington’s sixty fifth birthday, Hercules made his bid for freedom, escaping from Mount Vernon forever.

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George Armstrong Custer: Hero or Half Wit?

History while it purports to tell the truth is, in fact, just an interpretive story of chronological events, a made up story that we have agreed to accept. This is why history so often changes. When General George Armstrong Custer was killed by the Sioux in 1876 he was heralded by newspapers as a “Christian knight martyred in the cause of civilization”. Today, many believe that Custer would be facing a war crimes trial for genocide. As would his commanding officer, General Philip, ‘The only good Indian is a dead Indian’ Sheridan. History is a kaleidoscope, the view changes with the values of each succeeding generation.

Hero?

or Half Wit?

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The Great Depression and the Great Recession

Unemployment During the Great Depression

Average rate of unemployment
in 1929: 3.2%
in 1930: 8.9%
in 1931: 16.3%
in 1932: 24.1%
in 1933: 24.9%
in 1934: 21.7%
in 1935: 20.1%
in 1936: 16.9%
in 1937: 14.3%
in 1938: 19.0%
in 1939: 17.2%

The highest national unemployment rate since the Great Depression was recorded in 1982 at 9.7%. The current national unemployment rate is 9.5 % and is projected to rise to 9.9% by the end of 2010.

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"Wall Street: Share the Wealth"

"It is impossible for the United States to preserve itself as a republic or as a democracy when 600 families own more of this nation's wealth--in fact, twice as much--as all the balance of the people put together....Here is the whole sum and substance of the share-our-wealth movement:

Every family to be furnished by the government a homestead allowance, free of debt, of not less than one-third the average family wealth of the country....No person to have a fortune of more than l00 to 300 times the average family fortune....

The yearly income of every family shall be not less than one-third of the average family income....No yearly income shall be allowed to any person larger than from l00 to 300 times the size of the average family income....

Education and training for all children to be equal in opportunity in all schools, colleges, universities, and other institutions for training in the professions and vocations of life; to be regulated on the capacity of children to learn, and not on the ability of parents to pay the costs.”

Huey P. Long



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The Chinese Exclusion Act and American Labor

By 1870, the Chinese were the largest ethnic component of the foreign-born workforce in California, constituted some nine percent of the state’s total population, and made up fourteen percent of the total work force. The Chinese were viewed as workers who would work for meager wages and would accept any conditions of work no matter how minimal or oppressive they might be.

Most Chinese immigrants were men who had borrowed money to come to the United States and who were barred from becoming naturalized U.S. citizens. They sent money back to China regularly to repay their debts and to support their families.

Chinese immigration did have a negative economic impact on American workers. By 1870, the Chinese were a highly visible segment of the San Francisco labor force (13.2 percent). The immediate consequence of this labor influx was a reduction of wages and the extension of the working day. Of all trades in San Francisco, cigar manufacturing was the most affected by Chinese labor. Ninety one percent of all cigar makers in San Francisco were Chinese. Cigar makers in California, because of cheap Chinese labor, averaged wages ten per cent lower than in twenty other states. Wages for Chinese workers averaged half those of white workers in the shoe and clothing industries. White workers blamed the Chinese for falling wages.

Chinese immigration became a national issue culminating in the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 which forbade any additional Chinese immigrants for ten years. The law was regularly extended each decade until it was repealed in 1943 when China was given a small annual quota of 105 immigrants which continued in effect until 1965.



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Greed and Slavery in Virginia

The development of slavery in Virginia set the pattern for the development of slavery throughout the South and laid the foundations for the development of race relations in America.

The population of England rose from three million in 1500 to four-and-one half million in 1650 without any corresponding growth in the capacity of the island’s economy to support the people. Colonization efforts were, among other things, an effort to alleviate demographic pressures in England.

At first, Virginia absorbed the new immigrants and appeared to be successfully creating a New World community on the English model. An emerging planter class, speculating in land, however, constrained access to good land in Virginia by the many.

The high price of free labor was incompatible with the profitable running of large plantations. The great landowners turned to slave labor, encouraging the first massive introduction of slaves from Africa. There was no precedence in England for enslaving a class of people for life and making that status inevitable, but non-Christian Africans were not thought to be naturally guaranteed the “rights of Englishmen”. A slave labor force without rights could be more easily controlled by brute force than a free labor force which was raised to believe it had “rights”

In pre-Civil War America two competing models for economic development emerged: (1) the plantation economy in which a few wealthy men and a mass of slaves produced raw materials for Europe, and (2) the independent producer mode with many small, independent farmers and artisans, all of whom were generally self-sufficient.


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The Spoils of War: The Daiquiri - Cocktail History

In 1909 the USS Minnesota called at Guantanamo, Cuba. The skipper took the ship’s junior medical officer, Lt. Johnson, on a tour of Spanish American War battlefields. At the town of Daiquiri they met Jennings Cox, an American engineer, who treated them to a drink he had developed to temper the local rum. Cox called the drink a “daiquiri” in honor of the town.

On his return to the United States, Johnson immediately introduced the drink at the Army and Navy Club in Washington D.C. It was an immediate hit with officers who had served in the Spanish American War. When Johnson retired as a rear admiral he presented the Club with what is now one of its prized possessions, an account of how Jennings Cox made the drink: “He mixed in each glass a jigger of rum, the juice of half a lime, and a teaspoonful of sugar. He then filled the glass with a finely shaved ice and stirred it well. In that hot, humid weather the ice melted rapidly and the glass quickly became frosted.”


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