A late Inauguration

As the semester winds down and the days get longer, I find that I’m not as motivated to do the end of the year projects I have due for school. This also translates into not writing my blog, and after saying I’ll catch up from my missed week three weeks ago, I now find I’m behind even more. So, for the sake of school, I will put these two off until this summer, and will make up for them then.

So, with that being said, I will continue on for this week. As I was scanning my possibilities I found several from the Civil War (West Virginia seceded from Virginia in 1861 and six years later Louisiana was the last Southern country to complete Reconstruction), but since I did that subject for my last post I think I need to do something from a different time period.

There are also the possibilities from WWI and WWII, but I’m not feeling that either. I think I wanted something from the Middle Ages, but I guess those didn’t appeal to me either. Thus, I’ve decided on something from early American history.

On April 30, 1789 George Washington was inaugurated as the first American President. Washington not only served as the first U.S. President, but also as the Commander in Chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War.

In 1781 when the British surrendered the United States was created under the Articles of Confederation, the first U.S. government. The Articles of Confederation did not last long because of several weaknesses associated with it, mainly a weak federal government without the power to tax or print money, and 13 separate state governments acting like 13 individual countries. In addition for any laws to pass nine of the 13 states needed to pass the law, which proved to be very difficult.

The problems with the Articles of Confederation did not go away, and eventually the Founding Fathers decided a new government was necessary, one with a strong central government.

In 1787 Washington met with other state delegates at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. At the convention the Constitution was drafted and signed, forming the government that is still in place in the U.S.

Washington was voted president unanimously by the Electoral College and served two terms as president, setting the informal president for presidents through Franklin D. Roosevelt who served four terms.



April 30 seems to be a late date to inaugurate a president, and it was. March 4 was the inauguration date of Washington’s second term, and March 4 remained the inauguration date until F.D. Roosevelt’s second term in 1937. The two exceptions were the inaugurations of James Monroe (March 5 because March 4 fell on a Sunday) and Rutheford B. Hays (March 3 because March 4 was again on Sunday).

However in 1937 the Twentieth Amendment to the Constitution was passed, changing the inauguration date to January 20. In the early years of the nation the four-month waiting period was justified because of the communication lag and difficult transportation. However, as technology advanced the lengthy “lame Duck” period was not as necessary, so the Twentieth Amendment changed the inauguration date to January 20.

So, there is a bit of history about inauguration in the U.S. and the early political landscape. And now, I fear I must return to those end of the year papers. Only two weeks until summer! Happy history all.

The Beginning

On Friday I saw the 9 of April is the anniversary of the peace agreement between General Lee and General Grant. This peace settlement ended the Civil War in 1865 after five years of fighting.

I noticed this too late, and decided instead of producing a thrown together post, I would prefer to post one good post, and try to fit in two this week making up for my missed week. So, instead of doing more reading tonight I was researching what would be happening this week so I could begin to select my post topic for this week.

I hit the jackpot this week. April 12, 1861 Confederate troops began firing on Fort Sumter in Charleston South Carolina, beginning the Civil War. Within four days we have the beginning and end of the Civil War. I took a class last semester about the Civil War, so I will reference my notes for this subject; if I didn’t take advantage of this opportunity I’d be crazy. So lets set the stage for the event.

Abraham Lincoln was voted President in 1860, causing many in the South to become alarmed. During his campaign Lincoln said repeatedly he wanted to contain slavery to the states that already had it, preventing future spread. Many Southern states thought by limiting slavery Lincoln would trample on the states rights. Actually, there were a lot of factors leading into the war, but states rights and slavery were the two main reasons.

South Carolina was the first state to secede from the country on December 20, 1860. By February of 1861 Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas had seceded. The secessionists met in Montgomery to establish the Confederate States of America, created a provisional government and asked the slave states to join it. They appointed leaders of the government from the states, and sent delegates to the Border States to try to persuade them to join the CSA.

By March the CSA was in trouble because there was no unity, no money and not a lot of man power if war was to come. In the mean time, Lincoln was sworn into office (because at this time the President did not resume office until March) and tried to ease tensions by promising he would not attack any of the southern states.

The costal forts became very important. Most were in the south because of the fear of an attack from Mexico, and the union controlled the forts. These forts were a symbol of Union presence, since the federal government of the U.S.A. still had possession of these forts. However the South believed these forts were their territory.

Fort Sumter was one of the forts, located in the Charleston Bay. After time the fort needed supplies, and Lincoln sent a ship with supplies to the Union troops stationed there. He also sent a warning to the Confederate States telling them he was only sending supplies, not troops. Lincoln did not want to anger the boarder states, which had yet to secede. Despite the warning, the Confederate Government decided to fire on the ship.

Once this happened a war started between Fort Sumter and the rest of the Charleston Bay. Eventually, the soldiers stationed at the fort did surrender. Lincoln responded by asking for volunteers to help put down the rebellion in the South, and in response Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina and Arkansas secede.

Almost four years later three days shy of the four year anniversary of the firing on Fort Sumter General Lee would surrender to General Grant ending the Confederate States of America.

I was fortunate enough to visit Fort Sumter while I was visiting the South. It is one of the best tours I’ve taken and I definitely learned a lot about Fort Sumter and the beginning of the war. With that I say happy history for now, and hopefully I can get another post up this week!

Chocolate

I realize that I did not post last week. There really is no excuse, but in my slight defense it was Passover and I was crazy busy with that. So, I am going to try and catch up by doing two blogs this week. Whether that will actually happen or not is the true question, one which time and my motivation levels later this week will determine. But for now, it is a good goal; one I have every intension on fulfilling.

With that being said I would like to say both Happy Passover and Happy Easter for this week. There is an interesting situation in my house because my mom is Jewish and my dad is Catholic (made easier since we are not religious). I try to give both an equal weight, and participated in Lent, and also attempted to give up bread for the week for Passover.

This being said, today is Easter and I’m munching on a chocolate bunny which I got for my Easter basket. This made me wonder how a chocolate rabbit became synonymous for Easter, and even more broadly what the history is of chocolate. It has long been revered as one of the greatest pleasures in life. Perhaps I hold this opinion because I am a girl and we live off the stuff. Regardless, I think I’ll turn my attention to chocolate for my first blog this week.

Chocolate originated in the Amazon about 4,000 years ago. The Aztec took the beans from the trees to process into a drink called “xocoatl” or “chocoati.” This basically means foam water, and the chocolate was consumed only in the liquid form, which was usually highly spiced. The Aztecs believed chocolate was consumed by the Gods and the cocoa seed was brought to earth as a blessing from the God of Air.

Once the Spanish visited (or rather invaded) the area they carried these seeds back to Spain to expand the use from only a drink to a more solid form. Chocolate remained a secret in Spain for the next hundred years; only monks were allowed to process the beans into chocolate in hopes of keeping the process a secret. With the decline of Spain’s power the secret leaked out to other European nations.

A fun fact to store away for later: apparently the Quakers participated in making chocolate, in hopes the poor would give up drinking alcohol for a healthier drink made of chocolate. One famous Quaker was Milton Hershey who later became one of the most important chocolate manufacturers.

But how did chocolate take the form of a rabbit for Easter? Rabbits have been considered the symbol of fertility because of how prolific they are in the reproductive area. In fact, the name Easter derived from the Goddess of Fertility, Eostre. Thus, the association of fertility is important to the holiday because it marks the beginning of spring, and this has translated to candy in the shape of rabbits.

The synchronism of many old pagan holidays and ideas is beneath the surface of many holidays, and Easter is simply one example.

So, that is a brief history of chocolate, and the chocolate rabbit for Easter. I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday (which ever you celebrate) and as always happy history!

I welcome comments, so if you have suggestions post them below!

Pancakes Anyone?

It was spring break for me last week, so when I got back up here for school on Sunday evening, I realized that there was nothing to eat in my apartment. Ok, there were things to eat, however since most of the stuff left in the fridge were food items that wouldn’t go bad, there wasn’t a lot of food I could piece together to make a meal with. So my roommate and I went to the supermarket to stock our fridge with food, which always makes me happy.

Now, one item we had used up before the break was pancake mix. Now, for as long as I can remember my family has been a Bisquick house, so naturally I went looking for the Bisquick when we finally found the pancake mix. However, we soon realized there was no dry pancake mix.

So instead, I wanted to try Aunt Jemima’s Pancake Mix. And that is what we bought. I’m assuming most people are familiar with Aunt Jemima’s Pancake Mix, it has been around since 1888, a long time.

But what most don’t know is the reason I wanted Aunt Jemima’s Pancake Mix was because I read an article on it in one of my history classes. Yes, I am enough of a nerd to seek out specific brands because of their historical appeal.

This article explained the entire history of Aunt Jemima’s Pancake Mix, over the last 100 years it has been around. It first explained how the mix got its name. The original founders, Chris L. Rutt and Charles G. Underwood created a mix, and needed a brand name to go along with it. After seeing a show Rutt stumbled on the name Aunt Jemima after seeing a show featuring a character with the same name.

The Aunt Jemima character was a staple for comedy shows in the South after the Civil War. She was a character in the same way Uncle Tom was, usually being the butt of a joke. However, she was unparalleled in the kitchen, an amazing cook. She was similar to the mammy character, which is basically the well-treated content happy slave character Southerners created to help justify slavery. That’s right, when you buy Aunt Jemima’s Pancake Mix, you’re really buying into a long held stereotype.

Aunt Jemima went through a transformation, and an elaborate story was placed behind her character. Crafty marketers shaped her into a real woman, one who witnessed the Civil War, and whose pancakes were known throughout the South. After the war, the story went, she sold her recipe so people at home could enjoy the same wonderful pancakes she had made before. Though the sales pitch, and the colorful women found to portray Aunt Jemima, the pancakes began to sell quickly, and became a hit in the U.S. It was a simple illusion, the working class woman could have the luxurious pancakes featured in a Plantation in the South. And it worked.

Most of my information I received from an article I had to read for a class, “Aunt Jemima Explained: The Old South, the Absent Mistress, and the Slave in a Box” by Maurice M. Manring. Therefore, it is only right to credit him for his research, and for the information I gained from it. As always, if you want to learn more about the subject, read the material. Also while searching I found that Manring also published a book titled: “Slave in a Box: the Strange Career of Aunt Jemima.”

I must admit: Aunt Jemima makes a good pancake. So go break open the box of pancake mix, and stir up a little history.

What makes St. Patrick's Day Specail?

This Wednesday, March 17th is a special day. It is St. Patrick’s Day, an Irish holiday which traveled to the U.S. probably with the Irish immigrants at the end of the 19th Century.

There are two larger questions regarding this holiday. The first was who is St. Patrick? According to the historychannel.com, St. Patrick was originally British, and came to Ireland after the fall of the Roman Empire when the Irish began raiding Britain for slaves. He was enslaved in Ireland for 10 years before he finally escaped to the continent, where be became a priest. He returned to Ireland and successfully converted the entire country from a pagan society to a Catholic one. Thus, the story about St. Patrick banishing all the snakes from Ireland is half true. A snake in Christianity is someone who deals with the devil, someone who does not believe in the same religion, someone like, oh I don’t know… a pagan perhaps.

The other question to ask at this point is the one posed on my subject title for this week: what makes St. Patrick’s Day special? The answer is pretty obvious (at least for me, a college student)… it is a massive party. And what makes this party so much fun? Mass amounts of drinking of course.

Today, I’m going to do something a little different. In conjunction with the holiday, I am going to blog about a commodity, a good in today’s society. A certain beverage that has been in our society for ages. This beverage is one many know, and love… beer.

I think every person has his or her preferred beer, I like mine dark. But what I don’t think a lot of people know is the history of beer, which is a really long one. I found a really wonderful article giving some background information in early history about beer and how it was consumed around the world. I only have the space to summarize it, but it really is fascinating, so if you have the time, click the link to check it out.

Fermented beverages (yes that includes beer) have been consumed for centuries. Some have even been made out of rice as well as grains. These fermented drinks played an important role in the early religious life in China; they believed the Gods prescribed the use of alcohol in moderation. These drinks were used throughout society for hospitality. Fermented drinks made of grapes (i.e. wine) were not as well known in the east.

In South America “chicha” is the term that referred to native beer, which contained a slight amount of alcohol. Maize was usually used to create this beer, although other materials could be used, like potatoes (which originated in South America, not Ireland).

In fact, only the Aborigines people of Australia and the Eskimos lived without consuming alcohol in their diet!

It was in Mesopotamia where beer was born, because it was there where barley could be grown. In addition to the other grains which were grown in the area, the Mesopotamians were able to produce a wide variety of beers, although they were not strong by today’s standards. These beers were also drank with straws so the drinker did not consume the sediment left at the bottom of the glass (gross mental image). Beer was a popular drink in Ancient Egypt, enjoyed by all classes of society.

Wine has always been the preferred beverage of the wealthy, and it seems the only claim the drink had was its stronger alcohol content than beer. Wine was also consumed widely through the ancient Middle East. This eventually spread to the ancient Greeks and Romans, who preferred wine over beer. Beer was consumed in the Roman Empire, especially along the boarder areas. This makes sense: the tribes around the Roman Empire preferred beer, especially the Celts in Britain, France and Germany. It was at high Celt festivals where mead was preferred to beer. It is also believed it was the people of Celtic origin who kept the practice of brewing beer alive all through Europe.

Now, to the Middle Ages. Again, if anyone is interested, I found several references to a book titled: Beer in the Middle Ages and Renaissance by Richard Unger. So, want to do a little light reading about beer in the Middle Ages, check out the book.

I have learned in a previous class (Medieval England) that brewing was predominantly a woman’s job. During this time period, sanitation was not existent, so beer was the safer bet than the water supply was. For this reason, mead, or beer was the better choice, and almost every family produced their own supply of beer. This caused many Kings, including one King of England to create an Assize of Ale. This meant that if you did not follow a precise recipe to produce your beer, you would be taxed. The catch, this recipe created a very weak beer. People did not follow the Assize, and when they were caught they were taxed.

However ale is not the same as beer, since it consists of malt, water and yeast. At the start of the 15th Century beer came into existence when the recipe was important to England from Flanders. Hops was added to the mixture, making the beer bitter. Beer was readily available to every person, from the queen and her court, to the common person. It was even common at the work place, again because the water supply was still unsafe and unfit for consumption comparatively.

Americans were introduced to beer through our European roots, and it has taken off today. There is a long history of beer in America, but today beer serves a different purpose than during the Middle Ages. Water is safe to drink, and beer is not just of religious rituals anymore. However, it does serve as a good beverage to celebrate just about anything, a holiday, a good test grade, or making it through a hard day. Today, beer is just as important as it was in the past, and it has survived the test of time. So next time you grab a beer realize it has an interesting history, and thousands of years have gone into producing that beer you are about to enjoy.

Feel free to post on my blog, your favorite beers, or maybe what you use it to celebrate, or any other feedback you want me to know. I’m open to just about everything. I think I’ll celebrate this blog by grabbing myself a beer. Until next week, as always, happy history!

Hockey

As I was searching for something to blog about this week, I realized that nothing happened this week. Ok, not true, things did happen; despite common knowledge something happens every day. But I could not find something really riveting that I wanted to blog about this week. March 8th marks the anniversary of the first Russian Revolution, but I already blogged about the event marking the February date corresponding to the Russian calendar.

So I find myself in a predicament; I really want to find a good topic to blog about this week since I didn’t really do anything too historical last week.

So, as I’ve been searching, for something, anything really interesting not only for me to learn about (Because surprisingly I actually learn quite a lot about random history by doing this blog) but also something interesting for my readers.

And the best I found under the circumstances were a lot of hockey events happening this week. So I’ll take the bate, and look a little closer at hockey this week and how it came to be a major sport not only in the U.S. but around the world.

Personally, hockey is not one of my favorite sports, and beyond watching the game between the U.S. and Canada at the Olympics, don’t really follow the sport. However, just like football which I blogged about earlier, Hockey has a long interesting history.

In my search through websites Hockey began to be played as far back as 4000 years ago, and it was known as the “ball and stick game.” That does make sense, you try to hit a ball with a stick, I do know that much about the sport (I really do know more than I’m letting on). Hockey was played in Egypt, Rome, Scotland and South America, although it was referenced differently in each location. The Irish dubbed the name “Hockie” and the term stuck. I see the similarity, hockie to hockey… pretty crafty.

In the 17th and 18th Centuries in England the game became fierce, with nearly 100 players on one team, and some games lasting as long as half a month. Eventually hockey was organized more and rules were introduced to the sport from Eton College in England, and in the year 1875 the Hockey Association was formed.

The sport really began to grow in North America, where it spread first to Canada then the United States. In 1875 the first game of ice hockey was played, and the origins of the sport are credited to J.G. Creighton. The first rink for ice hockey was used for curling, and initially there were as many 30 players on each team and the goals were two stones frozen on one side of the ice.

The game eventually traveled to America by 1893 and traveled to Europe by the 1900’s.

Speaking of the latest Olympic games, once the game was introduced to the Olympic games in 1924 that the sport grew in popularity. Back then only male teams were allowed to play.

The NHL was formed in 1917, with 30 teams, 24 that are in the U.S. and the others in Canada.

Once again, I do not frequently watch Hockey, I only watched a couple games in middle school because everyone loved hockey. Back then Colorado had a great team, and then there was the walk out, and the game got changed dramatically. Even so, today Ice Hockey is one of the most popular sports in the U.S.

I am sorry if my knowledge of hockey is not up to par, but more than anything I hope that after reading this you know a little more about where the game came from and the sports long history. Next week I have a very interesting blog planned. Until then I wish everyone a great week, and as always happy history!

Holocaust

Once again, another week, another blog, and I do always look forward to writing. Although instead of looking for a historical event, I’m going to blog about the Holocaust. Now, the Holocaust is one specific genocide in a list that is longer than most people would care to acknowledge, or even worse, a list than is longer than some people know.

I am at taking the opportunity to blog about the Holocaust this particular week because for the second year I am a part of a Colorado State University group known as Students for Holocaust Awareness. Our main goal as a student org is to put on a Holocaust Awareness Week every year, a week that has different events every evening. There is the Survivors Panel on Monday night, a move on Tuesday, a Key Note presentation Wednesday, and a genocide evening Thursday.

The Holocaust is something that hits home with me on a personal level, which is why I decided to join the group. My mother is Jewish. My grandmother worked in a work camp, and was able to survive the war. Some of her family was not so lucky. But after having to deal with people’s bullshit for the second year in a row, the impact the week has on people has been lost to me. I’ve been funning around, and barely had any time to myself, while others simply took my hard work for themselves to make themselves look good.

There is surprisingly, a person behind the blog after all, and I suppose I am allowed one bitchy blog at least once a year. Being sick, tired and emotionally drained, I think I’ll take advantage.

There is nothing I could say about the Holocaust that would surprise anyone (at least I hope not). Every time I hear a survivor speak I hear something new, and while I have been exposed to the stories since a young age, there are still things that shock me, although not much. The universal life suffering events are the same, but the stories of hope and survival are all unique.

I think one thing people need to realize is the Holocaust is one specific genocide. We strive to teach people so it will not happen again. Yet even though the knowledge of the past is there, genocide is still happening.

My goal is to try and apply history to today so perhaps people can understand its relevance. I think this is one of the most relevant pieces of history to today.