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The Spirited Alice Roosevelt Longworth – Teddy’s Oldest Daughter

**Alice Roosevelt, oldest daughter of Theodore Roosevelt, 1902**

Alice Roosevelt Longworth was the oldest daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt. She grew up to become just as outspoken and strong-willed as her father. Alice was the most unconventional first daughter ever to live in the White House. She became a Washington socialite and political power broker with a keen intellect and a razor-sharp tongue.

Her boldly independent, free-spirit breathed a new life into the concept of womanhood in the early 20th century, just as the Suffrage movement was gaining momentum. She would be involved in both woman’s rights and later, the sexual revolution of the 1960’s. Even her iron-willed father admitted he could not control his free-willed daughter.

Alice Roosevelt was the only daughter of a young Theodore Roosevelt and his first wife, Alice Lee, whom he loved deeply. Two days after giving birth in 1884, Alice Lee tragically died of Bright’s Disease. That same day, Teddy’s mother Martha died just hours earlier of typhoid fever, downstairs in the same house.

A distraught, 25-year-old Theodore named his new little girl for his late wife. He was so overcome with grief, that he would never call his daughter by her name, and instead referred to her as Baby Lee. Not only would Roosevelt never say the name “Alice” again, but he would not let anyone else say it around him either.

To deal with his crippling grief, Teddy Roosevelt left New York City and started a ranch in the wild Badlands of North Dakota. He left his daughter under the care of his sister Anna (Bamie) in New York. While away, Teddy worked through his grief far from baby Alice. He raised cattle. He hunted buffalo. He even boxed with a gunfighter in a saloon.

Meanwhile, Alice Lee remained in New York City with her Aunt Anna.

Bamie would have a huge influence on Alice due to her own strong and independent nature. When Teddy returned to Alice two years later in 1886, he married his high school sweetheart, Edith Carow. The new family moved to Oyster Bay, Long Island, and Teddy and Edith had five more children. But tensions formed between Teddy’s second wife and his oldest daughter.

Her step-mother Edith was jealous of Roosevelt’s past relationship with his first wife and took out these insecurities on young Alice. Edith once told the girl that if her ‘dull’ mother had lived, she would have bored her father Teddy to death. Matters only worsened as Alice Lee grew into an attractive young woman.

Alice Roosevelt became both strong-willed and fiercely independent. Edith could not control her and implored Teddy to send the girl to a private boarding school. The fiery young girl replied, “If you send me away, I will humiliate you. I will do something that will shame you. I tell you, I will!” To Edith’s dismay, Teddy relented. They sent Alice Roosevelt back to her Aunt Bamie instead to be tutored.

In 1901, the Roosevelt family’s life changed forever when Teddy became President on the death of William McKinley. He was now in the public eye more than ever. Alice was now 17. When Roosevelt took office, he brought his wife and six young children into the White House, whose playful antics charmed the country.

It was the lively Alice who quickly became the focus of the press’ adulation and scrutiny. Glowing reports were printed about her society debut at the White House in 1902. Soon, the color “Alice Blue,” based on the dress she wore, was a sought-after fashion staple. Songs were even named after the first daughter.

“Princess Alice,” as the press called her, had become an instant sensation. She smoked cigarettes in public (her father forbid her to smoke under his roof). She stayed out late partying and rode back in cars with men unchaperoned. She was even seen placing sports bets with a bookie.

Once asked by the press about his daughter’s wild exploits, Teddy Roosevelt replied with exasperation, “I can either run the country, or I can attend to Alice, but I cannot possibly do both.” Alice grew distant from her father as she was angered by his refusal to still not call her by her name.

Teddy Roosevelt admitted to being mortified by his daughter’s behavior.

She had become the opposite for what a “young lady” of her time was supposed to be. She was cheered at Mardi Gras in New Orleans, welcomed by fireworks during a visit to Cuba, and greeted by fans at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. Edith Roosevelt chided Alice for waving to her fans during Teddy’s 1905 inauguration.

Her free spirit caused much of the public to fall in love with her. “She has become one of the most regarded women in the world,” the NY Tribune wrote of her. The press was present when she became the first woman to drive alone in a car, when she raced up and down the streets of Washington. She smoked publicly, chewed gum, played poker, often wore pants, partied all night, and slept till noon.

Alice kept a dagger and a pet garter snake in her purse. She often phoned in tips of her whereabouts to reporters so that she could collect the cash rewards offered for info about her. The New York Herald printed a running score of her social life over the course of one 15-month period, which included 407 dinners, 350 balls, 300 parties, and 680 teas.

Despite their battle of wills, Roosevelt was shrewd enough to capitalize on his daughter’s popularity. In 1905, he sent her on a high-visibility trip – a month’s long diplomatic mission to Asia, with stops in Japan, China, Korea and the Philippines. Members of the mission included Secretary of War William Taft, 7 senators, 23 congressmen, and other diplomats.

True to form, Alice made headlines at every stop of the journey.

She was welcomed by the Emperor Meiji of Japan and Empress Dowager Cixi of China—a testament to her role as her father’s emissary. She did not abandon her fun entirely, making news by jumping into the ship’s pool fully clothed, then urging members of the delegation to join her. Many young women viewed Alice Roosevelt as the future of womanhood and cheered her on.

Alice was equal amounts competitive with her father and fiercely loyal to him. “Being the offspring of a very conspicuous parent, I wasn’t going to let him get the better of me.” She once pointed out that her extroverted father was “the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral, and the child at every baptism.

Every time she was spotted out with a man, people speculated that she’d marry him. While on the Asia tour, Alice met her future husband, Congressman Nicholas Longworth. When she returned from China, they announced their engagement. He was a debonair bachelor and Washington socialite — who also resembled Theodore Roosevelt.

News of Alice’s engagement to a politician 15 years older unleashed a media frenzy. The public gathered outside the White House on February 17, 1906, in hopes of glimpsing the political wedding of the century. The event was so festive the press likened it to a national holiday. Well-wishers lined the streets hoping for a glimpse of the famous couple.

**Nicholas Longworth & Alice Roosevelt with Theodore Roosevelt 1906**

Inside the East Room, dignitaries and emissaries watched the bride slice the wedding cake, not with a knife but with a sword. “Miss Roosevelt looked as pretty as she ever did in her life, and that is saying a good deal,” the New York Times gushed. “The best pictures that have been printed do not do justice.”

Princess Alice received ornate gifts befitting royalty – a gold box from England’s King Edward VII, a diamond bracelet from Germany’s Wilhelm II and jewelry from the dowager empress of China. Of the marriage that followed, Alice later admitted, “I hardly reveled in it.” Both of them partied often and had various affairs, though they remained married.

In the election of 1912, Taft once a close friend of her father, was now a bitter rival. Roosevelt was trying for a third term in his newly formed Progressive Bull Moose Party, which split the Republican vote. Alice’s public insults of Mrs. Taft caused her to be banned from White House events. After her father lost, Alice buried a voodoo doll of first lady Nellie Taft in the White House garden.

Alice had become a prominent, if unofficial, political figure.

Woodrow Wilson emerged victorious over both her father and Taft. She vocally opposed Wilson’s League of Nations at the end of World War I. She was banned from the White House again by the Wilsons. When Teddy died in 1919, Alice Roosevelt took up her father’s political causes. She became known as the “Other Washington Monument.”

In 1925, Longworth and Alice purchased 2009 Massachusetts Avenue. What attracted them to the property was its location. Dupont Circle and Massachusetts Avenue was where Washington’s power elite and millionaire industrialists owned mansions. It was an imposing five-story, limestone house, consisting of 20 rooms and 6 baths.

Alice began a lifetime of influence in Washington circles. She was a formidable friend—or foe—of every president who followed her father. Even relatives were not spared. Longworth publicly opposed her Democratic cousin Franklin Roosevelt for President in 1932. She said of him, “The same surname is about all we have in common…. I am a Republican…. I am going to vote for Hoover.“

Alice was a harsh and outspoken critic of her cousin Franklin’s New Deal during the Great Depression. Alice once declared that her cousin Franklin was “one-third sap and two-thirds Eleanor.” Eleanor Roosevelt countered that Alice Longworth led a life that was “one long pursuit of pleasure and excitement, and rather little real happiness.”

Her marriage was rocky throughout the years. Alice had a long affair with Senator William Borah in the 1920’s. By her own later admission, Borah was the father of her only child, a daughter, Paulina Longworth. She was born shortly after Alice’s 41st birthday in 1925.

When Nicholas died in 1931, her family fortune was nearly exhausted. Alice needed to find a source of income. In 1933, she published her autobiography “Crowded Hours,” full of tales and reminiscences of her father, family, and public life. She even posed for cold cream and a cigarette advertisements.

“Mrs. L.” managed to rein over Washington social and political scene for decades to come. Politicians sought Alice’s advice and opinions at her famous dinner parties. Alice frequently brought power brokers together in her home. She could either aid or hinder candidates and Congressional bills. She denied influencing floor votes, but regular visits to congressional hearings suggest otherwise.

Alice was close friends with Richard Nixon when he was vice president.

**Alice Roosevelt Longworth and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, 1962**

She encouraged Nixon to run for president and continued to invite him to her famous dinners. Although a staunch Republican, Alice later became smitten with the Kennedys. She assisted First Lady Jacqueline in restoring the White House. She changed parties after the assassination and supported Bobby Kennedy in 1968.

When Nixon became president, he invited Alice to his formal White House dinners. That same year, Nixon threw an 87th birthday party for her at the White House. In true form, she said of the occasion, “It was so gruesome. Everyone looks at you and wonders if she’ll last another year.” Her friendship with Nixon ended with the Watergate Scandal.

Her social sphere was not limited to just presidents and lawmakers. She always appeared when foreign dignitaries were in town: Alice met Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip in 1976, during their visit for America’s bicentennial celebration. She also stayed active in feminist causes important to American woman, calling Gloria Steinem “one of my heroes.”

In the 1960s and 1970s, Dupont Circle became home to hippies, and the so-called “Duchess of Dupont Circle,” continued to live there. One night during the Vietnam War protests, she stuck her head out a window during a demonstration and got a whiff of police tear gas, which she said, “cleared my sinuses.”

Her house was cluttered with animal skins and stuffed heads from her father’s many hunting expeditions, and filled with a lifetime collection of books and photographs. “After reading all night, I like a day that begins at 11 am.” Alice slept in a bedroom with a refrigerator stocked with late night snacks to accompany her reading.

Her only daughter, Paulina, would struggle with depression and addiction her entire life. Paulina’s husband had died in 1951 and she died of an overdose of sleeping pills in 1957. This left Alice to care for her now-orphaned granddaughter, Joanna Sturm alone. Joanna would go on to have a daughter herself, who she named Alice.

In her final years, as Alice Roosevelt Longworth began showing signs of senility. Her granddaughter would call Alice’s friends and urge them to come to visit. “I don’t think I am cruel or insensitive. I laugh, I have a sense of humor,” Alice Roosevelt Longworth said in an interview, “I like to tease … Isn’t it strange how that upsets some people?” When Alice recalled her young life, “I must admit a sense of mischief does get hold of me from time to time. I had an appetite for being entertained.”

Although Alice was Theodore Roosevelt’s firstborn child, she was the last of his children to die. She died at age 96 in 1980. President Carter’s official statement said, “She had style, she had grace, and she had a sense of humor that kept generations of Washington politicians wondering which was worse—to be skewered by her or be ignored by her.” At her own request, her granddaughter buried her without fanfare in Washington’s Rock Creek Cemetery next to her husband.

Alice Roosevelt was well known for her famous quips, “The secret of eternal youth is arrested development.” Another was, “My specialty is detached malevolence.” She stated that her philosophy in life was quite simple. “Fill what’s empty, empty what’s full, and scratch where it itches.” Perhaps her most famous quote was during a White House dinner in 1965, “If you haven’t got anything good to say about anybody, come sit next to me.”

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How Saint Paul spread Christianity in the Roman Empire

Saint Paul (Saul of Tarsus) statue in front of St. Peters Basilica in the Vatican

Saint Paul is one of the most central figures in the religious history of the western world. Following his conversion from Judaism to Christianity, he travelled tens of thousands of miles around the Mediterranean Sea. During four, long missionary journeys, he spread the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It was Saint Paul who planted the seeds and turned Christianity from a small Palestinian sect into a worldwide faith, open to all people.

His written works are some of the earliest Christian documents, 13 of the 27 books of the New Testament. What we know about Saint Paul comes mainly from two Biblical sources, the Acts of the Apostles, written after Paul’s death, likely by the same author as Luke’s gospel. The second source is Saint Paul’s own letters (Epistles) to his followers. But who was this man who first persecuted Christians, then would become one its greatest disciples?

Paul was born Saul somewhere between 5 BC and 5 AD in Tarsus, on the coast of modern-day southern Turkey. Though a Jew, Saul was also born a Roman citizen, which came with certain privileges in the vast empire. Like his father, he became a successful tent maker by trade. Saul was born to a staunchly Jewish family well known in their community. His family was well off as they could send him off to be educated in Jerusalem. There he became an avid student. Saul later described himself before his conversion as “of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor.” (Philippians 3).

As a Roman citizen, he knew both Greek and Latin. Like many Jews of that time, he had a second Greco-Latin name, Paul. Stubborn and bold, Saul became a skilled debater. As a Pharisee, he was among the first Jews to widely persecute Christians. He considered them a dangerous, subversive sect needing to be overthrown. Saul “sought to destroy the Church: he went into the houses, took men and women, and put them in prison” (Acts 8).

In the Acts of the Apostles, he is mentioned for the first time during the stoning of the disciple Stephen in Jerusalem – the first Christian martyr. As a persecutor of the church, Saul had authority over and approval of the stoning. His intense zeal for this work was widely known, so he was reviled by the early Christians. The disciples of Jesus also feared and ran from him.

The early followers of Jesus were still devout Jews who continued to observe Jewish Law. But they were still a small sect within Judaism. So Paul attempted to snuff out this fledgling movement before it could spread and do much damage. After the stoning of Stephen, Saul was authorized by the high priest to execute the fugitives in Jerusalem. He would travel wherever he could to stomp out the young Christian religion.

It took divine intervention for Saul to convert to Christianity.

He had never listened to or met Jesus while was alive. Around 37 AD, Saul was on his way to Damascus on an assignment to persecute Christians there. Suddenly, a heavenly light shone on him. Falling to the ground, he heard a voice from above saying, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ Saul responded, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ The voice answered, ‘I am Jesus, whom you persecute. Now get up and go into the city.’ (Acts 9). Saul looked up and saw a vision of the risen Jesus in the light.

Saul was temporarily blinded and the event would change his life completely. He was escorted by his fellow travelers to Damascus blind, where for three days, he neither ate nor drank. A disciple in Damascus named Arnanias baptized Saul as Paul, and his vision was immediately restored.

Paul then met with the small Christian community in the city and testified to what happened to him on the road. He stayed with the disciples in Damascus and began to preach with enthusiasm in the synagogues. Instead of flushing out Christians, he had now become one! Pharisees now sought out to kill Paul for preaching Christianity instead of persecuting it. He had to flee Damascus and went to Jerusalem.

There, he met Simon Peter and the other Apostles, who looked upon him with great skepticism and mistrust. In the end though, Peter accepted this new zeal as bestowed by Christ and welcomed him. Paul listened to the Apostles and learned the teachings of Jesus. He left Jerusalem a fervent disciple and returned to Tarsus. There he devoted himself to evangelizing both Jews and pagans, referred to in the Bible as ‘Gentiles.’

Saul’s earlier passion for persecuting Christians turned into an even greater fervence to spread the gospel across the Mediterranean. Paul earned his own living wherever he went. Luke says that he was a tentmaker and Paul often talks about how he combined his preaching with working with his hands.

Paul would make four great missionary journeys.

Around 46 AD, the Christian church in Syrian Antioch chose Paul and another disciple, Barnabas, to proclaim the gospel throughout Galatia (modern Turkey). This would become Paul 1^st great missionary Journey.

The pair sailed to the island of Cyprus, where the Bible notes that he confronted a sorcerer preaching the devil’s work, one of many confrontations to follow. They then sailed to the mainland and travelled to Pisidian Antioch, in present day central Turkey, preaching the gospel of Jesus. The pair travelled to Iconium and Lystra, where Paul performed a miracle, healing a man crippled since birth. They then returned to Syrian Antioch via Perga. The journey would last two years.

When they stopped in each city, Paul went to the synagogues to preach the teachings of Jesus to Jews, proclaiming him the Messiah and the fulfillment of the Old Testament. In each location he also converted Gentiles to followers of Christianity and founded small churches in each community. The people there were typically Greco-Romans or pagan-druids who worshiped multiple gods. He returned to Jerusalem excited to discuss their journey with Peter and the Apostles.

Paul’s second journey begins around 51 AD. Barnabas and Paul had a falling out over which disciple should accompany them, and the men parted ways. Paul travels on foot across Galatia with the disciple Silas (Silvanus), revisiting the churches he founded in Lystra and Iconium. On this trip, Paul has a dream where Jesus calls to him to go even further and bring the gospel to Macedonia and Greece. So they sailed across the Aegean Sea next.

Here the pair traveled down the east coast of Greece, preaching about Jesus in Thessalonia and Phillipi, where they were briefly imprisoned in chains. Paul attempted to proclaim the gospel in Athens, but was rebuffed by the Greeks. He then went to Corinth where they stayed for a year, establishing a larger church there. He traveling back through Ephesus on the Turkish coast, before sailing back to Jerusalem, then returning to Syrian Antioch. This second, longer journey would last three years.

Paul began his third great journey around 54 AD, this time with a young apprentice Timothy.

This was a pastoral journey revisiting the small churches he had founded to strengthen them, grow their congregations, and give them further instruction. He retraced his prior land trip across Galatia, spending three years establishing a church at Ephesus. While in Ephesus, Paul heard a prophecy that should he return to Jerusalem, he would be imprisoned by the Jews. His Ephesian followers pleaded with him not to go. Peter would not be dissuaded.

From there they crossed the Aegean Sea once again, returning to Macedonia, Thessalonia and Corinth, visiting the communities that had previously welcomed him. It was during this 3^rd missionary journey that Paul cemented many of the churches he would later write epistles to. He returned again to Jerusalem four years later.

**The four missionary journeys of Saint Paul.**

While he was gone, tensions had developed between the Gentile-Christians he had founded and the Judeo-Christians of Palestine following Peter. Peter, who at first freely ate with Gentiles, later withdrew from contact with them. Paul did not shy away from taking Peter to task for it. They two men disagreed face to face over the demands that Gentiles follow certain rules of Jewish law. Paul argued with Peter about the foolishness of not accepting the Gentiles because of this.

“I opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong. If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile (by following Jesus), how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?” (Galatians 2).

Paul’s ministry was particularly punishing on him and marked with other conflicts and several imprisonments in the cities he traveled and preached to. He argued with Gentiles who opposed the impact his preaching their business trade. Paul also had conflicts with new Christian leaders who neglected to abide by ALL Christian principles and only cherry-picked the ones that pleased them.

Paul fell back on his Roman citizenship on several occasions to alleviate his most dire situations. The first was when Paul and Silas were beaten for preaching as Christians in Philippi. The second was in Jerusalem, where Paul was to be flogged by Roman soldiers after daring to preach in the temple. The third time was in Caesarea, when Paul was on trial before the Roman governor Festus. He was accused by the Jews of preaching against Jewish law. They had him arrested (as prophesized in Ephesus) and held in prison for 2 years in Caesarea.

Facing trial, Paul as a Roman citizen, boldly appealed directly to Emperor Claudius.

The emperor had him transferred to Rome, thus beginning his 4^th great journey. Along the way, he healed the father of the governor of Malta who was suffering from fever. In Rome, he was placed under house arrest for 2 more years. It was in the Roman capitol, where church leaders say Peter found him, and Paul met the fledgling Christian community there. The charges against him were dismissed, after which Paul continued his 4^th missionary journey in Rome itself.

Paul was arrested one final time by the infamous Emperor Nero. This time, for converting Romans to Christianity and daring to proclaim Christ king, not the emperor. Nero blamed the burning of Rome on the Christians and a Roman court condemned Paul to execution. The Bible does not record Paul’s death, but tradition holds that he was executed on the Aqueas Salviae sometime around 68 AD. As a Roman citizen, he was beheaded rather than crucified.

Though there is no mention in the Bible of Paul and Peter meeting in Rome, Christian tradition holds that they were imprisoned together and embraced on the Via Osteinse before being led to their respective executions. One can only imagine their last poignant words together. Legend has it that the Apostle Peter was crucified, upside down at his own request, on Vatican Hill. The Basilica of St. Peter and the Basilica of St. Paul stand over what is believed to be their respective tombs.

During his later journeys, Saint Paul wrote some of the most eloquent passages in the Bible (1 Corinthians 13). He became the first great Christian theologian, establishing some of the building blocks of the church that Christians now take for granted. Paul contributed much to how Christianity understands the relationship between the Old and New Testament.

In his letters, Saint Paul frets about who will defend the status of his converts. Paul also often berates his followers for backsliding and doubting Jesus. Theologians have come up with a picture of Paul as a zealous preacher who was quick to defend the honor of Christians, but who also demanded loyalty to the faith. “Patiently correct, rebuke and encourage your people with good teachings.” (Timothy 2)

There is little doubt that Saint Paul’s four missionary journeys changed the course of Christianity. Paul expanded the church far and wide, reinforcing it amongst Jews, opening doors to Gentiles, all the while fighting zealously for his conviction that the gospel was for ALL peoples and that NO barriers should be put in their way.

Considering that he was not one of the twelve apostles, and therefore not an eyewitness to Jesus’ ministry on Earth, it is amazing that Saint Paul made the permanent mark on Christianity that he did. His life, letters, and legacy certainly suggest divine intervention that reverberates through the millennia to this day.

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Smallpox and the American Revolution

Continental Army defeat at Quebec during the Revolutionary War Smallpox epidemic, 1776 — Continental Army’s defeat at Quebec during the Revolutionary War smallpox epidemic, 1776

During the 1700’s, smallpox epidemics raged throughout the American colonies. They would severely impact the new Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. The first signs came during the early battles of the American Revolution in 1775-1776 – at the siege of Boston, the siege of Quebec, and Britain’s Virginia regiments. These deadly outbreaks pushed Washington and his medical staff to make crucial decisions regarding smallpox control. He ordered all Continental soldiers to be inoculated in 1777. Historians credit this mandate with the colonists’ ultimate victory in the Revolutionary War for Independence.

Throughout history, smallpox epidemics sparked panic amongst the population. Before vaccinations began in 1796, people had very few ways to protect themselves. For many, the disease proved fatal. Small pox is caused by the contagious variola virus. It typically spread by infection of the respiratory tract. The initial signs came 12 days after exposure. Early symptoms were flu-like with fever, headache, body aches, vomiting and malaise. By Day 4, the face flushed and the first painful pox appeared – not on the skin, but in the mouth and throat. Eating and drinking became painful. The next day, the dreaded skin rash began.

In the worst cases, patients died early from hemorrhaging.

Pustules then erupted on the skin in a pox. If the pustules became confluent, 60% of patients died. Around Day 10, the pustules turned blistery and cracked open, releasing a foul stench. For survivors, near the end of the second week, scabs formed. If you survived to week 3, the fever subsided and patients were left with unsightly scars replacing the poxes. Survivors were now strangely blessed though. Having endured the disease, they were now immune.

With every outbreak, those who survived the disease rarely got smallpox again. This observation led to the advent of inoculation, the process of contracting smallpox on purpose to induce future immunity. A doctor removed pus from an active pox of an infected person and inserted it into the hand skin of a non-infected person. The insertion resulted in the inoculated person contracting smallpox but with only mild symptoms.

Smallpox was rampant in crowded European cities. Most people did not make it through childhood without contracting the disease. Thanks to widespread inoculation, most gained immunity, including the British military. The disease spread across Europe and into America, thanks to English and Spanish colonization. Because most American colonists lived in isolated villages, few were inoculated, so the colonies experienced sporadic epidemics. It would devastate the Native American populations as well

Doctors could employ only two weapons: quarantine and inoculation.

Inoculated individuals did contract smallpox, and were fully capable of infecting others. So they should be quarantined lest they spread the disease. For this reason, inoculation was highly controversial in the colonies. Many believed the procedure was more deadly than the disease. In England, where smallpox had long been endemic, the procedure was widely accepted. This meant that at the beginning of the American Revolution, the British forces had the advantage.

This brings us to the War for Independence. During the 1760s, Dr. Joseph Warren operated a smallpox inoculation clinic on Castle Island in Boston Harbor. There he inoculated future President John Adams, amongst other Sons of Liberty. Abigail Adams later inoculated herself and her children against the disease.

Despite inoculations, a smallpox epidemic seized Boston in 1775. After the Battle of Bunker Hill, smallpox was gripping the citizens of Boston and General Howe’s Redcoats. The Continental Army was entrenched around the city. General George Washington knew from his medical advisors that his Continental soldiers were not immune to smallpox and would be devastated by the outbreak.

Washington also had to contend with a sizeable exodus of refugees from the stricken city. Colonial spies reported that General Howe was deliberately infecting fleeing refugees with an intent to spread the disease among the rebels. Washington banned the refugees entering from the American army camps. He ordered any soldier showing ‘the least symptoms of Smallpox’ to be immediately quarantined.

In March 1776, General Howe and the British army abandoned Boston. Despite this victory for the colonists, Washington forbade his troops from entering the city because of the epidemic. He permitted only one thousand men who had previously contracted smallpox to enter and retake the city. Washington ordered that no one susceptible could enter; no one with visible symptoms could leave. Finally, by autumn, the epidemic waned.

Smallpox also raged on the Canadian front.

In 1775, Continental soldiers, led by Colonel Benedict Arnold, marched towards Quebec to prevent the British from taking the city. In December, the first case of smallpox was reported among his soldiers. It crippled the American forces in Canada, preventing them from launching an attack. Many soldiers told their superiors they would NOT re-enlist due to fear of the disease. They would rather desert the revolutionary cause than risk death by the dreaded smallpox.

This forced General Richard Montgomery to attempt an assault on Quebec in the winter. Only about 800 men were able to fight, as the rest were sick with the pox, resulting in a crushing failure. British forces killed Montgomery, wounded Arnold, and captured hundreds of rebels. Benedict Arnold managed to maintain forces around Quebec, however, the lack of reinforcements due to smallpox prevented any future attack.

Wanting protection from the disease, fearful soldiers began inoculating themselves! These men failed to quarantine however, and instead spread the disease further amongst their fellow soldiers. Arnold forbade self-inoculation by penalty of death to prevent its rampant spread.

In March 1776, Major General John Thomas took control of the forces in Canada. Thomas refused to allow any inoculations. He felt the soldiers would not have enough time to recuperate in quarantine for a British attack. Thomas also refused to be inoculated himself to show solidarity with the his men. He contracted the disease and died from it.

“It was apparent that smallpox, rather than British might or Continental Army inadequacy, was the reason for the Army’s defeat in Canada.” – John Adams

After a miserable, five-month siege of Quebec, 1,500 Americans retreated up the St Lawrence River. The men struggled through knee-deep snow. While quarantine had worked at Boston, it failed at Quebec. Half of the retreating troops were sick with the pox. One soldier wrote: ‘My pocks had become so sore and troublesome, that my clothes stuck fast to my body, especially my feet; and it became a severe trial to my fortitude to bear my disorder.’

When reinforcements finally arrived, they were terrifying by the scenes that greeted them, and quickly succumbed as well. ‘My eyes never before beheld such a seen’, wrote John Lacey of Pennsylvania, ‘nor do I ever desire to see such another – I did not look into a tent in which I did not find either a dead or dying man.’ Two mass graves consumed thirty to forty bodies a day.

General Philip Schuyler wrote to George Washington, warning him that further reinforcements would rather weaken than strengthen their Army unless inoculated. It is likely that smallpox killed roughly a thousand men during the Canadian campaign. Returning soldiers then instigated further outbreaks in New England, New York, and Pennsylvania.

Washington feared every day of the spread of smallpox amongst his soldiers.

“Finding the smallpox to be spreading much, I have determined that the Troops shall be inoculated. For should the disorder rage with its usual Virulence, we should have more to dread from it, than from the sword of the enemy.” – George Washington.

With this order, Washington enacted the first medical mandate in American history. Washington ordered that all troops and all new recruits must be inoculated. The military used private homes and churches as isolation centers to control spread of the disease during their quarantine.

Washington took a huge risk with these mass inoculations. If the British found out, they could have launched an attack on the weakened Continental Army. Therefore, it had to be kept secret. Though gaining support across each colony was difficult, as fear of smallpox ran rampant, mandated inoculations proved successful.

Revolutionary War Continental Army during the winter of 1777. — **Revolutionary War Continental Army during the winter of 177**7

By 1777, the procedure was established in the Continental Army, and prevalence of the disease was greatly reduced. With smallpox diminished, the Continental Army even saw a surge of new recruits in 1777.

To the south, in the colony of Virginia, the royal governor, Lord John Murray, had promised freedom to all “slaves belonging to Rebels” who would fight for the king. At least 900 African-Americans joined Dunmore, donning uniforms and fighting in several skirmishes. But smallpox would turn out to to be their worst enemy. In February 1776, smallpox appeared in Dunmore’s troops near Portsmouth, Virginia. By May, over 300 had died and he lost more of his black regiment every day.

Lord Dunmore set up an inoculation camp at Gwynn’s Island in Chesapeake Bay.

In July, now under attack by Virginia rebels, Dunmore was forced to give up the island. Virginians who arrived were appalled at the scene. “We were struck with horrour at the number of dead slave bodies, in a state of putrefaction, strewed all the way from their battery to the point, about two miles in length.“

They found others gasping for life. Some had crawled to the water’s edge to cool their fevers. In all, some 500 slaves died on the island. As in Canada, rebel soldiers carried smallpox with them, sparking more outbreaks in Virginia and Maryland. In 1778, the disease seemed to have faded away in the army thanks to Washington’s orders. Continuing through the year, the American forces went through inoculation and quarantine at West Point, Valley Forge, Alexandria, and Fairfax.

In 1779, as the theatre of war moved further south, so did smallpox. In early 1779, a British force of Hessian troops carried it through the southern colonies. Smallpox erupted in Charleston and Savannah and plagued the south for two more years. Particularly hard hit were the slaves who fled to promised freedom in General Cornwallis’ Redcoat army. This time, the British turned on the infected African Americans and forced them to return to their masters, in an attempt to spread smallpox to the American army.

As the Revolutionary War reshaped colonial America on the east coast, a very different upheaval shook the entire North American continent. In 1779, the virus moved westwards from the colonies, finding vast susceptible populations of frontier colonists and Native Americans. Trade and colonial expansion joined the army in transporting the disease. In 1779, smallpox had travelled via the Spanish Catholic missions and struck Mexico City, afflicting 44,000 and killing 18,000.

Smallpox arrived in the frontier province of Texas in 1780, where it killed over 5,025.

In a description of smallpox among the Narragansetts ‘They lie on their hard matts, the pox breaking and running one into another, their skin cleaving to the matts they lie on; when they turn them, a whole side of skin will fall off at once.‘

Smallpox launched a simultaneous attack on the plains territory by way of the Comanches, who engaged in trade with the Shoshone in Wyoming and Montana. Before long the disease appeared among the Iroquois, Cree and Blackfeet. The Shoshones transmitted the plague to the tribes of the upper Missouri River. The Sioux marauders contracted it during their assaults on those Missouri villages. The disease decimated the indigenous tribes.

While smallpox on the southern and northern plains began to wane, the epidemic, did not. Smallpox reached the northwest Pacific coast, most likely from Shoshone nomads following native trade routes down the Columbia River to the ocean. References to abandoned villages and smallpox-scarred natives can be found on different British voyages to the Pacific northwest.

From 1775 to 1782, revolutionary upheaval rocked the east coast, while smallpox wreaked its havoc from the colonies to the plains to the Pacific. From Mexico to Hudson Bay, the continent was alive with trade and tribes, and the smallpox virus followed them all and left decimated populations behind.

Cruising the northwest coastline of America in 1792, Captain George Vancouver wondered, where were all the natives? The land and sea were abundant with an unlimited supply of food, but there were few people. Instead, they found abandoned villages scattered with human skulls and bones. The conclusion was inescapable: ‘By some event, this country has been considerably depopulated!’

Nevertheless, despite the smallpox surge and the pandemic tragedy, America survived. Without the bravery and determination of 18th century doctors, inoculation and quarantines may have never gained widespread acceptance in the new United States. And without General George Washington’s decisive and unpopular inoculations, the American colonists may never have won the Revolutionary War against Britain and achieved their independence.

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The Great Bengal Famine and the Boston Tea Party

Sketch of of Bengali family during the Great Bengal Famine, 1770 — **Depiction of a starving family during the Great Bengal Famine**.

The Indian Famine of 1770 is one of the greatest disasters in human history. Over ten million people, a third of the population of Bengal, died. A drought lasting 5 years, bad harvests, and cruel British rule all contributed. The British East India Company compounded the famine with heavy taxation, leading to millions of Bengalis unable to buy food and starving to death. The Bengal Famine had a ripple effect far beyond India. When accounts of the terrible famine reached the American colonies, they helped instigate the Boston Tea Party.

There was, in fact, more to the Boston Tea Party than just anger over tea taxes. News of the Bengal Famine fostered distrust and outrage towards the British Parliament and the East India Company. Boston’s reaction was particularly acute, escalating rebel anger and culminating in the Boston Tea Party of 1773.

The East India Company was a private British firm that ruled most of India from 1757 to 1858, when control was transferred to the British government. In 1764, after a military victory over the Mughals, the Company won control of Bengal (including present-day Bangladesh). This included the right to levy taxes on the Indian population. The East India Company attained the right to collect the peasant’s tribute (diwani) formally given to the Mughal Emperor. This tribute had been about 10-15% of the output of the peasant farmers.

The Company profited off land revenue taxes collected through local tax collectors.

These collectors were rewarded with handsome percentages and bonuses for meeting their goals. The Company raised that rate to 40 to 50%. In addition, they outlawed the storage of rice and other foods. India regularly experienced droughts, so storage of reserves was a standard practice amongst villages and families. The Company however wanted to their maximize profits, so they outlawed this “peasant hoarding.”

When drought began in 1769, it produced famine conditions, risking starvation amongst the Bengal population. What was the governing Company’s response? The East India Company, chaired by Sir George Colebrooke, was not satisfied with merely maintaining revenues from the Indian peasants with millions facing starvation. They wanted more.

It raised the taxes again to 60%, and resorted to violence to collect them. The Company imposed a yearly quota that tax collectors must reach—no matter what. This placed an impossible burden on the poor Bengali population. Now Bengali families no longer had money to pay for food when their crops failed with reserves outlawed. Famine-related starvation began.

Tax collectors, not wanting to loose their bonuses, employed violence on the population, curtesy of the occupying British Redcoats, to “compel” the Bengalis to pay. As a result, most families, after having been forced to pay the taxes at gunpoint, had dry farmland unable to grow food, and no money left to buy it. Starvation of men, women, children, elderly – it mattered not to the Company directors.

The most died of starvation in 1770 when the worst of the taxes reigned. Indians knew that the root cause was not the drought, but the cruel taxation of the British occupiers, and deep hated was planted. With each Indian death came less tax revenue for the Company sucked from the Bengali population. This economic shortfall would have an unexpected ripple effect in of all places – the American colonies.

In 1771, a number American newspapers ran excerpts of a “Letter from a Gentleman in India”

“On our arrival here, we found a river full of dead human carcasses floating downstream. The streets crowded with the dead and dying, without anyone attempting to give them relief. So horribly has the famine raged here, that those who were able to procure food were so accustomed to see their fellow creatures perish, that it did not even create a painful emotion. The numbers that have perished in Calcutta alone amounted to 10,000 to 12,000 a week.

Every morning the dead were just gathered together in a heap and thrown into the river. I have myself passed by and seen 20 or 30 lain down to die in the length of one street. It was no uncommon sight to see dogs running about with human limbs in their jaws. I have beheld the hapless infant tugging at the empty breast of its mother just expiring, without being capable of affording them the smallest aid. ”

The now financially-struggling Company influenced the British Parliament to pass the Tea Act in 1773, allowing direct shipment of its Indian tea to the American colonies. The company could now bring tea to America duty-free, with the taxes paid by the colonists. Its design was to grant the company an American monopoly on tea, and enable it to gain greater profits from the trade.

A series of angry pamphlets, entitled “The Alarm,” were circulated in Boston in 1773. They told of the Bengal Famine and called for refusing to accept the tea brought by the Company. “Rusticus” writes,

“Are we to be given up to the East India Company to step forth in Aid of the Prime Minister, to execute his Plan, of enslaving America? Their Conduct in Asia for some Years past, has given simple Proof, how little they regard the Rights, Liberties or Lives of Men for the Sake of Gain. And these not being sufficient to glut their Avarice, they have, by the most unparalleled Barbarities and Extortions, reduced whole Provinces to Ruin.

Fifteen hundred Thousand perished by Famine in one Year, not because the Earth denied its Fruits; but because this Company engulfed their Necessaries of Life, and set taxes so high that the poor could not purchase them. Thus having drained the Sources of the immense Wealth from India they now cast their Eyes on America.”

“Rusticus” put the issue before his fellow Americans: the East India Company had just starved to death millions in Indian people for the sake of profit and greed. They controlled the British government with repeated bribes, and now they have their sights set on America. This injustice led to the Boston Tea Party in December 1773.

The Sons of Liberty, led by Samuel Adams, rallied meetings against the British Parliament.

**Depiction of the Boston Tea Party, December 1773**

In December 1773, several Company ships carrying tea arrived in Boston harbor. The colonists refused to pay taxes or allow the tea to be unloaded. The British Governor ordered the tea tariff to be paid regardless. That night, over 100 colonists emptied 45 tons of Company tea into Boston Harbor. The first Continental Congress was convened the next year in 1774. The American Revolution began at Lexington and Concord in 1775, and the Declaration of Independence a year later in Philadelphia.

As for the Indian Bengal Famine, below is an excerpt of a letter with a rather gruesome account from someone present at the time, published in the New-York Literary Magazine.

“Great dearth has desolated the provinces of this beautiful country. Hardly any rain has fallen during four years. In consequence the crops have failed, and the poor starved. From my enquiries, I find half of the inhabitants of the Duab have perished. Every ditch, road, brook, pond, and street were strewed with dead bodies of men, women, and children. Where the wretch expires, there he lies, till his flesh is stripped off by the dogs. No one tends to the dead; for their friends are starved wretches as well.

The Hindoos do not bury their dead, but burn them. We have been often obliged to shift our camp on account of the stench, arising from the putrefaction of so many bodies. Men and women, with their children in their hands, flocked to camp, offering themselves for sale for a quart of corn. Mothers sold their children for the fourth part of a rupee. I could have purchased a thousand children at this price.

These poor wretches were reduced to this hard alternative. You, in England are astonished, no doubt, to hear of dogs devouring dead bodies. Wise nature has so ordered, that this hot country abounds with these dogs, called parriars. They go up and down the streets seeking dead carcasses, which they devour, whether of horses, sheep, or men. I have seen hundreds of bodies with two or three dogs tugging the limbs to pieces.”

Company accounts reported that nearly 10 million died in the 5 year famine, 1/3 of the population.

The exact number is unknown since counting in rural and remote areas was ignored. What is known from accounts of British administrators is that the social upheavals were widespread. A Kali religious revival followed, reaffirming a religious identity suppressed by the Company. The terrifying Goddess Kali became a symbol of Indian, anti-British resistance well into the 19^th and 20th centuries. Kali had become the Goddess of Indian protest against the cruel British rule.

Famines are preventable if there is a serious societal effort to confront them, lead by a democratic government with an independent press. Not surprisingly, while India continued to have droughts and famines under its oppressive British colonial rule, widespread famines stopped after it achieved independence 180 years later, in 1947.

What caused the 1770 famine? The continued raising of taxes by the Company, together with the drought and indifference of the British occupiers, resulted in the deaths of ten million Bengalis. Some historians call it a genocide, though not one cause by guns or gases. The Great Bengal Famine reminds us that unequitable treatment and unchecked greed can have destructive societal power when used to deny basic freedoms and access to justice … and incite others to rebellion and revolution.

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The Downfall of New York’s Boss Tweed

William "Boss" Tweed, New York City, 1870 — **William “Boss” Tweed, New York City, 1870**

William Tweed, aka “Boss Tweed,” was a ruthless 19th-century New York City politician. He is known for his powerful influence within the NY Democratic political machine (Tammany Hall), and well as for flaunting his over-the-top corruption, fraud, and greed for over two decades.

After the Civil War, more than a million people crowded into New York City’s unpaved, manure-filled streets; many in dilapidated slums. Poverty, disease, pollution, and crime were rampant for the poor Irish and German immigrants who made up half the population. The city government offered very few basic services. Boss Tweed discovered how to provide these services and line his pockets at the same time. He personified government corruption in The Gilded Age.

William Magear Tweed was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1823, the son of a Quaker furniture maker. Young William left school at eleven to apprentice with his father. Bored with carpentry, he left and became a junior clerk at a New York mercantile firm, then advanced to bookkeeper at a small brush factory. At twenty-one, he married Mary Jane Skaden, the daughter of the factory’s owner.

William found brush making dull as well, but discovered an outlet for his restlessness in volunteer firefighting. By then, Tweed was a ruddy-faced, boisterous, man, six feet tall and nearly three hundred pounds. By 1850, at 27, he was foreman of a new fire company, Americus No. 611, “Big 611,” with a Bengal tiger on its fire engine.

From an early age, Tweed discovered he had a knack for politics.

He ran for 7^th Ward Alderman under the Democratic Party. Though he lost by a small margin, but he won his next race in 1852 by bribing a 3^rd party candidate to split the Republican vote. William Tweed was learning how to manipulate New York politics. He was a fast learner and learned from the best—the New York City Common Council, better known as The Forty Thieves. He was now in his element and became a rising star. Tweed rapidly became one of the city’s leading politicians and one of the most corrupt.

In 1856, he was drawn into the Tammany Hall faction in opposition to Mayor Fernando Wood. He was picked to be head of a new Board of Supervisors, formed to combat election fraud. He made his headquarters at Tammany Hall, located on East 14th Street. The board soon became an avenue for Tammany graft and corruption instead. Tweed willing and enthusiastically embraced it all.

Other powerful positions came to him – commissioner of schools, deputy street commissioner, New York state senator, and Finance Committee chairman. In Tammany Hall, he was now the most influential man in the organization. They selected him to head the city’s political machine, an authoritarian “BOSS” who would essentially would run the city. In 1861, his political enemy, Fernando Wood, was defeated in the mayoral race, giving the new “Tweed Ring” free reign of the city.

Tweed extorted large payoffs from companies desiring to do, or maintain, business in New York.

In 1864, he bought the New York Printing Company, which then became the official printer for the city. “Boss Tweed” now wore a diamond in his necktie, orchestrated city elections, controlled the new mayor, and rewarded his political supporters. His primary source of funds came from the bribes and kickbacks he demanded in exchange for city contracts and favors.

In 1867, Tweed and his wife moved into a large mansion on Fifth Avenue and 44th Street and maintained a large stable of horses. Soon, Tweed owned a regal summer estate on the Connecticut shore as well. He gobbled up key real estate in Manhattan. Now a millionaire, Boss Tweed began to move in high society circles. He was now hobnobbing with the likes of wealthy banker J. P. Morgan. He threw lavish parties, and owned gold and diamonds worth tens of thousands of dollars.

By 1870, he had been named to the boards of the Harlem Gas Company, the Brooklyn Bridge Company, Third Avenue Railway Company and the Guardian Savings Bank, which controlled city monies. The robber barons paid him off handsomely for allowing him to make lucrative deals in both their favors. Incredibly, a number of New York City’s most respected leaders were duped for years by Tweed, unaware of his criminal side.

In 1870, he manipulated the state legislature in Albany to grant New York City a new charter that gave local officials, rather than those in Albany, power over local political offices. It became known as the “Tweed Charter” because Tweed paid tens of thousands of dollars in bribes to state politicians for its passage.

The Tweed Ring did help the poor immigrants in New York, albeit for their own political gain.

Thousands of immigrants in New York were naturalized American citizens being able to vote. Tweed made sure the immigrants had jobs, a place to live, enough food and clothing, received medical care, and even coal to warm their flats during winter. He contributed millions to neighborhood churches, schools, hospitals, orphanages, and charities that cared for immigrants. Immigrants in the city were grateful and voted in overwhelming numbers for Tammany Hall Democrats.

The most notorious example of his corruption was the construction of the New York County Courthouse (later called Tweed Courthouse). The city built it with stone and marble from a Massachusetts quarry owned by Tweed. The courthouse, expected to cost $500,000, wound up costing taxpayers $13 million, most of it winding up in Tweed’s pockets. The corruption was shocking in its breadth and boldness. His greed for wealth and power apparently knew no boundaries.

A carpenter was paid $360,751 for one month’s labor. A furniture contractor received $179,729 for 40 chairs. A plasterer, got $133,187 for two days’ work, earning him the nickname “The Prince of Plasterers.” When a city committee investigated why it was taking so long to build, it spent $7,718 to print its report using the printing company owned by Tweed. He paid off dozens of judges for favorable rulings.

Boss Tweed publicly flaunted the rule of law. He hired people to vote multiple times and had deputies protect them while doing so. He stuffed ballot boxes with fake votes and had election inspectors who questioned him arrested. As Tweed said, “The ballots make no result; the counters make the result.” At times, the Tweed Ring simply ignored the ballots and falsified election results.

Tweed’s candidates often received more votes than there were eligible voters.

An editorial cartoon shows Boss Tweed leaning on a voting booth. The caption reads: “ As long as I count the votes, what are you going to do about it?” By 1870, his power in New York was absolute – the ruler of all he surveyed. The ebullient Tweed shared his ill-gotten gains with his ring, the city comptroller, the county commissioners, and the mayor. In total, the Tweed Ring brought in an estimated $200 million in corrupt money over its lifetime.

In the end, however, Boss Tweed’s greed was too great and his exploitation too shameless. By July 1871, two lower-level city officials with a grudge against the Tweed Ring, James O’Brien and Matthew O’Rouke, provided The New York Times publisher with reams of documents detailing the corruption with city projects. The newspaper published a string of damaging articles. Political cartoonist Thomas Nast launched his first volley of a series of caricatures in Harper’s Weekly—“Let Us Prey,” which depicted Tweed as a fat vulture feeding off the city.

Editorial Cartoon of Boss Tweed and his ill-gotten gains, 1871

A furious Boss Tweed offered bribes then threats to the editor of the New York Times to stop their reporting, but neither worked. The political cartoons created public outrage and a national scandal. Even illiterate immigrants could understand the cartoons. Soon Tweed and many of his cronies were facing criminal charges. Nevertheless, due to his popularity amongst his base, he was reelected a state senator!

By December, 1871, Tweed’s luck had run out, and he was finally arrested and indicted. Others in his ring had fled abroad like rats on a sinking ship. It took two trials and two years to convict Tweed. The first trial resulted in a hung jury, but in a second trial, he was found guilty of more than 200 crimes. In 1873, he was sentenced to twelve years in prison and fined $12,750.

He managed to get his sentence reduced on appeals to just one year and paid only $250 in fines. Democratic state chairman Samuel Jones Tilden vowed to take back New York City. ‘No one is above the law,’ he declared. He filed an affidavit citing Tweed and his ring’s misdeeds, which became the basis of a civil suit for recovery of the city’s money. Tweed was rearrested in early 1875 in a civil action to recover $6 million of what had been stolen. Unable to secure the $3 million in bail set by the state, he was sent to jail yet again in New York City.

This time, Tweed’s supporters finally abandoned him.

While in jail, Tweed’s lawyer’s were able to get him regular leave to visit his family, while guards waited at his doorstep. At one of these meals, he escaped out a rear door disguised as a servant and fled across the Hudson River to New Jersey. Then he took a boat to Florida, from there to Cuba, and finally to Spain. Because Spain’s government wanted the U.S to end its support for Cuban rebels, it agreed to apprehend Tweed.

The warrant issued in New York for his arrest described him:

Fifty-five years of age, about five-feet eleven inches high, weight about two hundred and eighty pounds. Very portly, ruddy complexion, has rather large, coarse, prominent features and large prominent nose; rather small grey eyes, grey hair, head nearly bald on top from forehead back to crown. His beard may be removed or dyed, and he may wear a wig or be otherwise disguised.…

Another Thomas Nast cartoon, printed in Harper’s Weekly in 1876, led to his arrest in Spain and extradition back to New York City. Unable to pay the $6 million judgment levied against him in the civil action, in which he was convicted of 204 out of 240 counts, he remained in jail. This time, he was granted no home visits as his wife had left him after he fled the U.S.

In an attempt to be pardoned, he gave detailed testimony, confessing his guilt and naming all his many cohorts and cronies. It did not work. Samuel Tilden, now governor of New York, refused his pardon. Boss Tweed died of pneumonia two years later in the Ludlow Street Prison on April 12, 1878. Everyone else, including his family, had long since deserted him. On his death, New York City mayor Smith Ely refused to fly the City Hall flag at half-staff.

Boss Tweed was one of the 19th century’s most reprehensible figures and has come to stand for all that is bad in American politics. His story serves as a reminder of the interplay between political ambition and narcissism. Tweed’s legacy endures as a cautionary tale of the dangers of unchecked political power by a single individual in government. Nevertheless he helped to spawn further authoritarian political bosses over the years—again and again – on the local, state, and national scene … all the way to the present day.

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The Ignored and Forgotten Lake Nyos Disaster

**Cattle asphyxiated by the Lake Nyos Disaster in Cameroon, 1986.**

The 1986 Lake Nyos Disaster occurred when volcanic carbon dioxide (CO2) gas erupted from beneath an African lake in Cameroon, bubbling to the surface, forming a deadly cloud. There was no huge eruption, no great boom or blast that evening. What resulted was like a scene from a horror movie. The deadly gas flowed down valleys and into villages, asphyxiating 1,746 people and 3,500 livestock. By morning, villagers and animals within 25 kilometers of the lake lay dead in homes and fields. How did such a tragedy come about?

The republic of Cameroon, situated in equatorial Africa on the Gulf of Guinea, was a former German colony, then a French and British colony, that gained its independence in 1960. Lake Nyos is a small, 2 km long, 200 m deep crater lake located in northwestern Cameroon near the border with Nigeria. The region is known for its occasional volcanic activity, but nothing like this disaster.

Most of the people in rural Cameroon are farmers or herders, this included the villages and farms on the slopes of the crater lake. Residents knew the lake as blue and usually still. August 21, 1986 began as a typical summer day. Men and women labored from dawn till dusk in the fields. Children attended their schools. By late evening, they had completed their dinners and parents put children to bed. The summer evening air was still hot with relatively little breeze.

Sometime between 9 and 10 pm, villagers in the valley heard a strange rumbling noise, much like thunder, but without any lightning. Those people closest to the Lake Nyos described hearing a distant bubbling noise. A frothy spray emerged from the lake, with a whitish cloud developing on the entire surface. Lake Nyos is surrounded mostly by bluffs, some up to 100 m high. The cloud mushroomed in size until it overflowed the crater rim and began to flow down into nearby valleys.

When farmers near the lake left their houses to investigate, they suddenly lost consciousness.

There was no warning, no time to scream or run. Most were dead in a few breaths. People and animals all around them began losing consciousness and collapsing to the ground. It a few minutes, most had suffocated. In Nyos and Kam, the first villages hit by the cloud, all but four people on higher ground died. The valley split and the deadly cloud followed each path, killing people up to 25 kilometers away from the lake.

Some survivors overtaken by the deadly cloud smelled a sulfurous, rotten egg odor and feeling a warm sensation on their skin before losing consciousness. After rescue, some remained unconscious in a coma for up to 36 hours. They woke up to a scene of mass death.

Such a cloud is called a mazuku, a deadly blanket of carbon dioxide mixed with air. Magma pockets under the lake had leaked CO2 into the water in high concentrations. Then some activity caused it bubble up to the surface. The large cloud of deadly gas is estimated to have grown to 100 meters (330 feet) tall before flowing over the rim and down into the valley.

The next day, pockets of gas lingered in low lying areas, causing new fatalities when people unwittingly walked into the gas pockets. Over the next two days, people from surrounding areas rushed to the valley. They found thousands of corpses, both human and animal, lying on the ground where they had dropped. Cattle, sheep, goats, pets, birds, and even insects were all killed. It was as if time had stopped. A putrid smell of rotting eggs would cling to the earth for months.

A government rescue team did not arrive until 36 hours later.

Assisted by the Cameroon military, everyone wore full face masks, protective gear and oxygen tanks on their backs. The approximately 5,000 survivors were all in comas that ranged from six to 36 hours in length. They reported falling unconscious and waking up dazed. The lucky ones had escaped death because they lived on higher ground.

“I could not speak. I could not open my mouth because of the terrible smell. When crossing to my daughter’s bed, I collapsed and fell. I was there till nine o’clock in the morning until a friend came. I wanted to speak, but my breath would not come out. My body was completely weak. I managed to go over to my neighbors’ house. They were all dead.” – survivor account.

By August 23rd, the cloud had blown away. After being unconscious for up to a day and a half, some survivors revived only to find that their family members, neighbors, and livestock were dead. Around 1,746 people died in the towns of Nyos, Cha, Fang, Mashi, and Subum. Most residents were farmers.

Sadly, with so many corpses, the dead could not receive individual funerals, so rescuers dug mass graves. Some developed respiratory issues. Pregnant women suffered miscarriages; others had pneumonia. A few committed suicide after seeing the horror of so many dead or losing all family members.

About 3,500 livestock also perished and had to be burned in large pyres. Lake Nyos itself had changed, too. It was now significantly shallower. Dead fish floated on its surface. Its formerly picturesque blue hue had darkened and turned an ugly rust color.

The Cameroonian government in Yaoundé initially suspected an act of terrorism, or the illegal dumping of chemical wastes into the lake. More traditional villagers in Njindoun believed legends that evil spirits periodically left the lake and killed neighboring people. These legends likely came about because of past gas bursts.

All evidence pointed towards death from CO2 asphyxiation.

Concentrations of just 10 percent lead to rapid unconsciousness and coma. Forty percent concentrations are almost immediately lethal within minutes. Many of the victims seemed to have died very quickly, suggesting very high CO2 concentrations.

Carbon dioxide kills by first shutting off people’s consciousness, then their breathing. Where the CO2 concentration was 15 percent or less, people fell into a coma but later revived. Individuals who inhaled more than 15 percent CO2 stopped breathing in minutes and suffocated. The sulfurous odor was attributed to small amounts of hydrogen sulfide mixed with the CO2.

Geologically, the Lake Nyos disaster was a limnic or gas eruption. This happens when a volcanic crater lake suddenly releases a large amount of dissolved gases in the water. Gas releases occur when pressure builds up from geothermal activity at the lake’s bottom. When the pressure becomes too great, gas rapidly escapes to the surface and forms a heavy, toxic cloud. The cloud blankets the ground, displacing oxygen and quickly asphyxiating people and animals.

Geologists reasoned that CO2 had been trapped in the bottom of Lake Nyos for a long time, held down by 208 meters (682 feet) of water. On the day of the gas eruption, something external triggered the release of gas. Most likely the vibration a simple rockslide from one of the lake’s steep walls.

The gas release was not a volcanic eruption.

The lake water was not unusually warm and the bottom was undisturbed. Magma beneath the earth seeped carbon dioxide into the deep lake waters, where it dissolved. When the CO2 content became supersaturated, CO2 erupted to the atmosphere. About one cubic kilometer of gas escaped, enough to lower the entire lake level by more than one meter.

Lake Nyos is in the Oku Volcanic Field, part of a 1,600 km-long chain of volcanoes that runs from Nigeria and Cameroon into the mainland. Lake Nyos sits on the edge of an inactive volcano and a magma pocket. The lake changed colors when the escaping gas carried oxygen-poor, deep lake water with it. When this water reached the surface, dissolved iron reacted with oxygen in the air, creating iron hydroxide that stained the lake yellow-brown for several month.

**Lake Nyos following the gas eruption that killed over 1,700 in Cameroon, 1986**

Once the cause was determined, the Cameroonian government acted accordingly. Teams installed CO2 monitors on the lakeshore, hooked to sirens that would sound if too much gas entered the air. People knew the alarms meant they should go immediately to higher ground. The government relocated several communities and discouraged residents from returning to the lake.

A refugee camp for villagers, situated 25 kilometers from the lake, became a permanent home to many. Most of the survivors still alive have fresh memories of what happened to them that horrible night. They lost family, their land, and their herds. The Cameroon government promised to assist them by building new houses and giving them funds to start agriculture again elsewhere. The victims say they still have not received the promised compensation.

The survivors say since then, they have been forgotten and abandoned.

To prevent a recurrence, measures were implemented to manage Lake Nyos. Geologists opted for a gradual degassing of the lake, but this took decades to enact. Money and decent roads into Nyos weren’t plentiful. In 2001, French engineers sunk a 6-inch (15-cm) plastic pipe 666 feet (203 meters) into the lake until it reached the gas layer. Frothy CO2 shot out the top like a shaken champagne bottle. Authorities installed two more pipes in 2011.

It has always been the wish of the survivors to return to their ancestral villages. But Cameroon’s Ministry of Territorial Administration, says it is still too dangerous, even with the degassing of the lake. Even so, some are ignoring warnings from the government and have returned to live and farm close to the lake once again. Today, Lake Nyos is degassed to about 80 percent of the level after the 1986 explosion. While the lake is significantly safer today, it still carries a hazardous risk level for those who dare venture near it.

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The Forgotten Sinking of the Empress of Ireland

**Depiction of the sinking of the Empress of Ireland, 1914.**

Just two years after the Titanic, and a year before Lusitania, another passenger ship sank with an even greater loss of life, yet few remember the tragic tale. The Empress of Ireland sank in Canada’s St. Lawrence River in the spring of 1914 after colliding with another ship in a dense fog bank in the dead of night. Sadly, the outbreak of World War I a few months later overshadowed its tragic fate. How did this catastrophe unfold?

Although not as grand as the Titanic, the Empress of Ireland was the pride of the Canadian Pacific Steamship Company. Built by Fairfield Shipbuilding in Glasgow, Scotland, the Empress was christened and launched in 1906. For the next eight years, it would safely carry tens of thousands of passengers across the Atlantic Ocean.

The Empress of Ireland accommodated 1,542 passengers in four class sections on seven decks and was operated by a crew of 373. She was 570 feet long and could carry 310 First Class, 468 Second Class, 494 Third Class, and 270 Steerage.

At 4:27 PM on May 28th, 1914, the Empress departed from Quebec City for a six-day voyage to Liverpool, England starting down the St. Lawrence River with 1,477 passengers and crew. British families who had established themselves in the Americas, frequently booked return passages to the UK to visit loved ones and show off new children and grandchildren.

The Empress was under the command of a newly appointed Captain, Henry George Kendall.

It was a pleasant spring afternoon as Capt. Kendall gave the orders to depart. As a new Captain, this was a day he worked his whole life to achieve. Having risen through the ranks, this was to be his first voyage as master of his own ship. He set a course downriver to the mouth of the St. Lawrence and the Atlantic beyond.

Unlike Titanic, there were few famous people on board, just the actor Laurence Irving and his wife, actress Mabel Hackney, returning to Britian from a successful Canadian tour. Many of the passengers, including 170 members of the Canadian Salvation Army Band, were excited to be heading to a large musical convention in London.

Passengers milled about on deck in the long daylight hours or in the gangways, learning their way around the ship. Parents allowed older children to roam freely. Diners enjoyed the late sunset coming in through windows, then some fresh air in an after-dinner stroll on deck. As night closed in, passengers and crew settled in to their staterooms and cabins for their first night underway.

Like a harbor, the St. Lawrence River requires pilots to operate from the bridge. Pilots were taken on and off at Point-au-Père, Quebec, near Rimouski. One of the Empress’s last tasks that night before heading into the open water of the Gulf of St. Lawrence was to disembark its river pilot. Having done so, she was still close to southern shore of the river.

Also on the St. Lawrence that night was the Norwegian freighter Storstad inbound from Sidney, Nova Scotia. She was carrying a full load of black coal to Montreal and sat low in the water. The Storstad was heading upriver, about to pick up her pilot for the voyage to Montreal, so also hugged the southern coastline.

The ships first sighted each other’s mast lights near 2:00 AM on May 29th.

Till now, it had been a calm, clear night near on the river near Point-au-Père. On the bridge of the Empress of Ireland, Captain Henry Kendall estimated the approaching ship was roughly eight miles away, off his port bow. If the Empress held its course, the ships would pass each other port to port.

But this would take the Empress closer to shore and off his intended course towards the gulf. He still had ample time for a turn to port, cross the Storstad’s bow, and set his course for open water. The two ships should pass starboard to starboard, still comfortably apart.

Within moments of adjusting course though, a creeping bank of FOG formed on the river, swallowing both the Empress and the approaching ship. Heavy fog was common on the St. Lawrence when warm, moist air encountered the frigid river water, producing a thick fog so dense that visibility was near zero.

Worried by the fog and the other ship, Captain Kendall gave three blasts on his ship’ smoke stack whistle. This indicated to the other ship that he was ordering his engines full astern, slowing the ocean liner to a crawl. Kendall kept her bow pointing on its course up the river and waited for a sign the other ship was safely past.

Onboard the Storstad, the captain was asleep and First Mate Alfred Toftenes was in command of the bridge. He saw the large ocean liner before the fog rolled in and was also concerned with its proximity. Not realizing the Empress intended a starboard-to-starboard passing, and believing they would be passing port to port, he ordered a turn to starboard, unknowingly taking it directly into the Empress’s path. When the fog rolled in, he woke his captain.

Back on the Empress or Ireland, tense minutes passed on the bridge.

The next thing the crew saw were two masthead lights appearing out of the fog. They were only a hundred feet away to starboard and heading straight at them on a collision course! Captain Kendall shouted his next order, “Hard to starboard!” attempting to swing his stern away from the approaching ship. The move was not successful. At this point, the two ships were too close to avoid impact.

**Depiction of the Empress of Ireland and Storstad, 1914.**

The Storstad’s bow cleaved into the Empress hull midship between the liner’s steel ribs, below the waterline, leaving a gaping hole 16 feet wide. The Storstad’s bracing was designed to break through ice, making her bow a lethal weapon. The fact that she was fully loaded with coal meant she was deep in the water and punctured the Empress well below the waterline. She penetrated Empress of Ireland a fatal depth of 25 feet.

The river’s current and the Storstad’s momentum pulled it away from the doomed Empress. Sixty thousand gallons of icy water a second began pouring through the huge gash. The Empress’ list to starboard was almost immediate, with the quickly-submerging hull forcing even more water into the jagged opening.

The Empress of Ireland had watertight doors in its bulkheads below decks, but they required manual operation by the crew. Captain Kendall quickly ordered them closed, but the incoming water rapidly overwhelmed the crew and they had no time to seal them properly.

Water poured into the starboard side so fast that most of the people sleeping in starboard cabins did not stand a chance. Many passengers had their port holes open for a fresh night breeze. This unfortunately allowed their cabins to flood when the port holes suddenly dipped below the icy water. If there was any mercy for the starboard side passengers, it was that their drowning deaths came quickly.

At around 6 minutes following the strike, the power failed, plunging the ship into darkness.

The gangways were now filled with panicked, screaming passengers. There was also no time to muster women and children first. Following the Titanic’s sinking, the Empress was equipped with enough lifeboats for all. However with the fast and severe list to starboard, only a few were able to launch. The listing quickly became so extreme that only five boats could be successfully launched off the starboard side. A few attempts of the port side boats resulted in them skidding down the side of ship and capsizing, toppling passengers in the dark, icy river.

After 10 minutes, the liner had lurched completely over and now lay on her side. Some 700 passengers managed to climbed out port side doors and portholes, crouching precariously on her port side hull. As the stern rose, those survivors were thrown into the freezing water. A mere 14 minutes after the collision, the Empress of Ireland sank beneath the St. Lawrence River.

The captain of the Storstad had immediately ordered his ship to lower its lifeboats to rescue survivors. By the time the last of the nearly-frozen survivors had been fished from the dark river, the death toll was staggering. Of the 1,477 on board, 1,012 died, including 840 passengers, eight more than the Titanic. The 170 members of a Salvation Army Band all perished. Captain Kendall was thrown from the bridge and survived the sinking. He was rescued by a lifeboat.

Young William Clark worked as a fireman aboard the Empress. He was in the engine room stoking the steam boilers with chunks of black coal when the Storstad struck. Clarke somehow managed to climb up to the decks. The events of that night were all too familiar to Clark, as he worked as a stoker on the Titanic’s maiden voyage and survived that historic sinking as well. He later gave up on his life at sea.

Word spread quickly on the river that a ship had gone down and survivors were being brought ashore. In the port of Rimouski, Quebec, no one could have imagined it was the Empress of Ireland that had sunk. The few survivors able to withstand the frigid river waters were brought to Rimouski, but many later died of pneumonia.

Comparisons to the Titanic were inevitable, but there is no winner in a game of disaster.

The Titanic lost 832 passengers and 635 crew; the Empress lost 840 passengers and 172 crew, 134 children. The Titanic took 2 hours, 40 minutes to sink. The Empress of Ireland went down in just 14 minutes. Coming so soon after the Titanic, the Empress underscored the difficulty of building a ship guaranteed to sink slowly enough to completely abandon it.

While as great of a tragedy as the Titanic, the sinking of the Empress of Ireland never garnered the press or international attention the Titanic received. The Empress of Ireland was not a particularly famous or fashionable ship. Soon after the Empress sank, the world’s attention was drawn to the early beginnings of World War I in Europe.

What had happened? For certain, fog had proved to be a treacherous conspirator. Captain Kendall blamed the Norwegian captain for the disaster. “You have sunk my ship!” were the first words he uttered when he was pulled on board the Storstad. Had the two ships simply kept their courses and speeds, they would have passed each other without colliding.

The Canadian government wanted answers and commissioned an Inquiry which met on on 16 June 1914 in Quebec City. Lord Mersey, who had presided over the Titanic Inquiry in 1912 (and would preside over the Lusitania Inquiry in 1915), lead the Empress Inquiry.

Captain Kendall testified he was going to pass the Norwegian ship cleanly starboard to starboard with no risk of collision. As the fog rolled in, the captain stopped the engines and blew the ships whistle’s three short blasts, indicating that the engines were now at full speed astern. The fog worsened and the Storstad’s masthead lights reappeared when the ship was only a hundred feet away coming at them broadside.

Storstad Captain Thomas Anderson was awakened by Chief Officer Toftenes, when he slowed the ship down. Toftenes thought they were going to pass port to port. He ordered a turn to starboard, away from what he thought was the other ship’s course. In reality, he was turning into the Empress’s side. Captain Anderson testified he ordered full speed astern moments before the two ships collided.

The Commission found that the Storstad had changed course during the fog and was at fault.

There were three factors that led to the rapid sinking of the Empress of Ireland: 1) the location of the impact, midship, 2) failure to close the watertight doors, and 3) the open portholes. The Norwegians then held their own inquiry and found the Empress of Ireland at fault. They said the standard protocol of passing port to port was not followed.

Just weeks after the disaster, Canadian Pacific hired a salvage company to retrieve the first-class mail, the purser’s safe and $150,000 in silver bullion ($2 million today). From June through August, numerous dives were made to retrieve its valuables and some of the bodies. Unfortunately, only a small number of bodies were retrieved. Most were trapped beyond the divers’ reach inside the wreck.

Following the investigation into the accident, Captain Kendall was cleared of all charges in the disaster. He went on to serve aboard other ships and had a long life at sea. He passed away in 1965 at the age of 91. His obituary in The London Times made no mention of the his role in the sinking of the Empress of Ireland.

The Empress would lie in its watery grave for another 50 years before it was rediscovered by modern scuba divers in 1964, lying in 130 feet of water. But because the St. Lawrence is around 40F/4C even in summer, and has strong tidal currents that limit visibility, this is a dive for experts only. Nevertheless, the Empress has been visited hundreds of times since, including one by Dr. Robert Ballard, discoverer of the Titanic wreck.

**Depiction of the Empress of Ireland on the bottom of the St. Lawrence River.**

Some divers have treated the wreck with respect while others have ravaged its remains. The insides of the Empress of Ireland are half-hidden by the silt steadily deposited by the St. Lawrence River over the years. Because the ship rests at so sharply on an angle, the starboard side is buried.

In the ship’s dining salon, chairs and tables appear to float in the silt like driftwood. The remains of light fixtures dangle from the steeply angled ceiling. In the adjoining pantry, most of the first-class china has been taken by divers, as is the ship’s bell, one of its propellers, and the main bridge telegraph.

Sadly, some divers have even taken the bones of the more than 1,000 people who drowned inside. Divers continued to explore the wreck until 1998, when it was classified as a historic site by the Quebec government, protecting it from any further plundering.

A monument stands over a mass grave on a coastal road near Pointe-au-Père in Rimouski, inscribed with the names of those lost in the disaster. Ships passing by will see a white buoy which permanently marks the location of the wreck. Ironically, the lessons from the Empress of Ireland would have to be relearned 40 years later during the sinking of the Andrea Doria in 1956 following a another collision, when once again fog proved more than a match, for even modern radar.

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Devil’s Island, the French Guiana Penal Colony

Devil's Island, Ile du Diable, In French Guiana — **Devil’s Island, Ile du Diable, In French Guiana**

Long before Alcatraz Prison there was Devil’s Island. It was a living hell, not just a violent, tropical prison, but also rampant with malaria, cholera and yellow fever. From 1852 to 1953, Devil’s Island operated as part of the Îles du Salut Penal Colony in French Guiana. Up to 90% of prisoners perished there due to its harsh and inhumane conditions. Of the 80,000 sent there, only about 2,000 returned to French territory after serving their sentences.

The notorious Devil’s Island was situated in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of French Guiana in South America. The penal colony was in fact three islands called the Îles du Salut, plus a labor camp on the mainland. The ironic name, Salvation Islands, was given to it by a group of missionaries who escaped an outbreak of plague on the mainland by hiding there.

By the 18th century, French Guiana was home to some 500 Europeans and 5,000 slaves. For half a century, the colony stagnated under the administration of three French governors and the deadly reputation of its dense, inhospitable jungles. Thickly humid and full of diseases, an idea was formulated in Paris to convert the islands and part of the mainland into a prison and labor camp for the worst criminals in the French territories.

In 1852, Emperor Napoleon III formally established the penal colony.

France send both political and career prisoners were to the Îles du Salut. Prisoners with sentences under eight years had a chance of release. That rule hardly mattered since most would not live long enough. The vast majority never returned to France. About forty percent of those who arrived would be dead within a year. Those with eight or more years faced lifelong exile.

Unlike European or American prisons, this was a place where society’s unwanted were sent to disappear. Thousands of alleged criminals—some innocent, most not—were sent to Devil’s Island over the next 90 years. A prisoner’s odds of dying was extremely high, whether by the sadistic treatment by the merciless guards, a tropical disease, or the guillotine.

The largest of the 3 islands, Île Royale, in addition to housing prisoners, served as the administrative center, the reception port for new inmates, and housed the warden, who lived in a grand estate high on the island’s central hill. The worst prisoners were kept in the Crimson Barracks, so called for the vast amounts of blood spilled by prisoner and guard violence. The island’s guillotine was centrally located and used to demonstrate the warden’s absolute rule.

The southernmost island, Île Saint-Joseph, housed Camp Reclusion where prisoners were sent for solitary confinement. The place was called “the devourer of men” for the high numbers of prisoners who lost their minds or died there. The smallest and northern most island, Île du Diable, was for political prisoners. With rocky cliffs and shark-infested waters it was nearly impossible to escape from any of the islands.

Map of Devil's Island off French Guiana — **Map of Devil’s Island off French Guiana**

Devil’s Island became known for the harshest punishment imaginable, a reputation well-earned.

Prisoners endured cruel, hard labor in sweltering conditions, shackled in chain gangs, and forced clear dense jungle. Solitary confinement was common, with inmates locked in tiny, dark, stagnant cells for weeks or even months, often for the most minor infractions.

Life imprisonment on Devil’s Island was a common death sentence-carried out by a “dry guillotine,” a slow death from disease, malnutrition, or insanity. Prisoners faced a daily regime designed to break both their spirits and bodies, with hard labor in the oppressive heat from dawn until dusk, clearing land, building infrastructure, or working in chain gangs.

Their living conditions were appalling. Prisoners were crowded into unsanitary barracks where clean water and proper food were scarce. Physical punishments such as beatings and floggings were handed out with little provocation, reinforcing the sense of hopelessness. Though many attempted escape, very few succeeded due to treacherous waters and hostile jungle terrain.

Despite these harsh conditions, some prisoners did manage to survive – and even escape!

Historically, the most well-known prisoner was Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish French Army captain unjustly convicted in 1895. Suspicious of Dreyfus as a Jew, army officers arrested him as a spy and convicted him of treason. The army then sentenced him to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island. Even when later evidence exonerated him, the French government refused to release him. The French president finally pardoned him in 1899. Dreyfus was finally released and returned to France.

French author Émile Zola wrote a famous editorial about Dreyfus, lambasting the French government for antisemitism and accusing the army of a cover-up. The public attention now pointed an international spotlight on Devil’s Island. The treatment of prisoners drew widespread criticism, both in France and abroad. The island became a symbol of the inhumanity of the French penal system, a place where men were not just punished, but systematically disappeared.

One of only two inmates to successfully escape was Clément Duval, a French anarchist who was arrested in France for robbing a mansion and stabbing a policeman in 1886. His death sentence was commuted to hard labor on Devil’s Island. In 1901, after 20 attempts, he finally made it off the island to Dutch Guiana in a fragile canoe with an improvised sail. Setting up home in New York City, he wrote Outrage: An Anarchist Memoir of the Penal Colony.

Eddie Guerin was a London bank robber, arrested in France and set to Devil’s Island in 1903. After 5 years on the island, he was transferred to the mainland. From there he managed to escape to Dutch Guiana in a boat made from a scooped-out tree trunk. “Whatever I had done, it was not sufficiently bad to condemn me to a poisonous hole where men rotted away and were never heard of for ever more.”

In 1938, René Belbenoît also published his memoir of being a prisoner, entitled Dry Guillotine. Belbenoît arrived in 1920 for an eight-year sentence. His multiple, unsuccessful escape attempts extended his stay to 1934. Once released, Belbenoît found his way to New York City where he too published his memoir.

Perhaps the most famous inmate was Henri “Papillon” Charrière, convicted in 1931 of murdering a pimp, a charge he denied. He was sentenced to ten years of hard labor in the mainland penal colony. His nickname came from the butterfly tattoo on his chest. After an escape attempt, he was transferred to Devils Island and placed in solitary confinement. He spent another 7 years on the island, finally escaping in 1941. Papillon managed to float away in shark infested waters using a bag of coconuts as a raft, riding the tide to the shore. He wrote a famous memoir in 1969, Papillon, and was pardoned in 1970.

The French justice system stopped sending prisoners to Devil’s Island in 1938.

It would take another 15 years before it would be permanently closed in 1953. Today, the penal colony on the mainland became home to the Guiana Space Center a spaceport for France. The remains on the islands are ironically now a macabre tourist attraction. Boats leave Kourou for Île Royale, giving guests a day to visit the warden’s mansion (now a museum), the barracks, hospital, and chapel. Limited travel is available to Île Saint-Joseph. However, Île du Diable remains off limits to this day.

The overgrown remains of the chapel on Devils Island.

Devil’s Island has been the subject of many books and films, most notably in the 1973 movie “Papillon” starring Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman, and its 2017 remake starring actors Charlie Hunnam and Rami Malek. The ruins of Devil’s Island serve as a powerful reminder of the cruel penal colony system of the last century and the misery endured by thousands of its prisoners. The French government has taken steps to preserve the ruins, ensuring that the suffering and endurance of its prisoners are not forgotten.

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The Real Musketeer d’Artagnan, Fact vs Fiction

The real Musketeer Count d'Artagnan — **The real Musketeer Count d’Artagnan**

The Three Musketeers is a classic novel full of intrigue, friendships, adventure and love. The central character is the brave, young hero d’Artagnan. Les Trois Mousquetaires was published in 1844 by French novelist Alexandre Dumas. But d’Artagnan and the Musketeers were real 17th century characters and NOT fiction. Dumas did however take some liberties with d’Artagnan’s courageous life story. What is the difference between fact and fiction?

The Musketeers Regiment was formed in 1622 by French King Louis XIII as his personal guard. They acted as bodyguards for the royal family and defended the Tuileries and Louvre palaces in Paris. Originally just 100 men, it was made up of proven soldiers, gentlemen and noblemen, who had served in the regular army first, so it was an elite group. They were a mounted regiment, armed with swords and muskets.

The Musketeers were a blend of soldier, bodyguard, and enforcer of royal rule. Their dashing uniform was a blue, sleeveless tunic with a white cross on the back and front, worn over a scarlet coat. Their “captain” was the king himself; however, Musketeer command was left to a captain-lieutenant.

Dumas’ novel is based in the 1620s and tells the story of a young, poor d’Artagnan who leaves his small town in Gascony and heads to Paris to join the Musketeers. He is taken in by three famous members, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos. Together they embark on adventures countering the political maneuverings of the ambitious Cardinal Richelieu and his Cardinal’s guard.

The real d’Artagnan’s name was Charles Ogier de Batz de Castelmore, Count d’Artagnan.

He was born around 1611 near the town of Lupiac, Gascony in southwestern France. Unlike Dumas’ novel, Charles did not come from humble roots. His family had noble blood and lived in a modest chateau estate. D’Artagnan himself was a middle child of seven children.

Young Charles grew up learning to hunt, ride, and fence. There were few career prospects at home, so around 1630, he decided to chart a new course in his life and left Gascony for Paris. Like the d’Artagnan in the Dumas novel, Charles had the ambition of joining Louis XIII’s famous Musketeers Guard.

When he arrived in Paris, Charles shrewdly began using his mother’s family name, d’Artagnan. His uncle, Henri de Montesquiou d’Artagnan, was an influential figure in Paris. Unlike the novel, no one could join the Musketeers without having proven themselves in the military, so the real d’Artagnan joined the regular guard. His regiment saw much action, taking part in various successful sieges across western Europe.

D’Artagnan’s reputation for cool-headed bravery in conflicts eventually caught the attention of Cardinal Mazarin, the second most powerful man in France. Mazarin was Richelieu’s successor as First Minister of France. Upon the death of Louis XIII, in 1643, Mazarin became Regent for the new five-year-old king, Louis XIV. As such, Mazarin acquired much power and garnered many enemies.

With Mazarin’s patronage, d’Artagnan finally was able to join the Musketeers in 1644 at age 33.

He was now part of an elite brotherhood of soldiers, answering only to the King, built on discipline and daring. At the time, the Musketeer captain-lieutenant was Captain Troisvilles (Tréville). Other famous members included Armand de Sillègue d’Athos d’Autevielle (Athos), Isaac de Porteau (Porthos) and Henri d’Aramitz (Aramis). D’Artagnan loved being a musketeer and thrived in the Guard.

He became one of the Cardinal’s few trusted agents, carrying out dangerous missions that required intelligence and a cool head. He rose steadily through the ranks, trusted for royal missions where failure was not an acceptable outcome. D’Artagnan’s loyalty and bravery made him useful during the years of The Fronde, a civil war when nobility rebelled against royal authority.

He was steadily promoted in the years that followed. Under Mazarin’s patronage, d’Artagnan became eventually became a lieutenant in the Musketeers. D’Artagnan even acted as a go-between for the Cardinal when Mazarin was exiled from France by the King in 1651.

By the late 1650s, d’Artagnan had also gained the trust of King Louis XIV. The King was still young, barely eighteen. D’Artagnan, now in his forties, had spent years proving himself both in the field and in court. Trust, loyalty, and friendship had grown between the two men. When Louis XIV traveled south in 1659 to marry the Infanta of Spain, d’Artagnan went with him.

Although Dumas’ hero remained a bachelor, in reality d’Artagnan married.

Once settled as a Musketeer officer, in 1659 he married Lady Anne-Charlotte Boyer de Chanlecy, the widowed baronne de Sainte-Croix in Burgundy. They had two sons together in 1660 and 1661, both named Louis – the first after Louis XIV, and the second after Louis, the Dauphin heir. The Sun King even agreed to be godfather for his first born. The Musketeer also succeeded to his mother’s family’s noble title and formally became Count d’Artagnan.

One of d’Artagnan’s most famous missions was in 1661, when Louis XIV removed one of the most powerful figures in France, Nicolas Fouquet, the Superintendent of Finances. Fouquet had spent years amassing wealth and power, building the magnificent Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte. He threw dazzling parties, and forget, or did not care, that that No One outshines the Sun King.

The King had Fouquet arrested quietly after a meeting of the royal court at Nantes. After the council ended, d’Artagnan himself and a small contingent of Musketeers arrested him on charges of embezzlement and high treason. Fouquet was taken completely by surprise with no chance to flee in advance.

The king assigned d’Artagnan as Fouquet’s personal jailer for the next three years during a long trial. D’Artagnan’s duty as gaoler ended in 1665, when Foucquet was convicted and sentenced to the prison-fortress of Pignerol in the Italian Alps. Unfortunately, d’Artagnan marriage suffered from his long and frequent assignments away from home. The couple officially separated in 1665, his wife raising their two sons alone. With the failure of his marriage, he threw himself into his career as a Musketeer.

D’Artagnan fought in sieges at Lancrecies and Saint-Ghislaine. In 1667, he finally earned a promotion to captain-lieutenant of the Musketeers at 55. D’Artagnan had reached the peak of his power. It may have been the second highest Musketeer rank, but since captain, was reserved for the king himself, he was effectively in charge.

By the early 1670s, d’Artagnan was in sixties, quite old for a soldier during that century.

He was semi-retired when in 1672 a new war broke out between France and the Dutch Republic (United Provinces of the Nederlands) and he was called back to duty yet again. D’Artagnan was made a Brigadier and returned to the battlefield. In classic fashion, he threw himself back into action, leading from the front as he always did.

The French invasion of the Netherlands was led by Louis XIV himself and went well as the country was mostly overrun. The fighting centered around Maastricht, a fortress city whose defenses were among the strongest in Europe. In 1673, the city was surrounded and a siege began in earnest. The artillery bombardment lasted for five days. It was followed by an assault which included the King’s Musketeer Guard, led by d’Artagnan himself.

D’Artagnan’s company attacked a fortification protecting the Tongres Gate. Within half an hour of fierce fighting, they had control of it, a flag of the fleur-de-lis planted firmly on the parapet. D’Artagnan then led his men to the ramparts of Maastricht. On 25 June 1673, during a vicious assault, a musket shot struck d’Artagnan in the neck. He died within minutes, at the age of 60.

The mantra of the Musketeers, was “All for one, and one for all!” Two Musketeers dashed forward to retrieve their captain’s body, but were killed and fell at his side. Two more men attempted the same and suffered the exact same fate. The irony is that the Musketeers were assigned rest and recuperation that day. But upon hearing that the French were losing men at the Maastricht wall, d’Artagnan and his men leapt to their rescue.

The Musketeers were grief-stricken over the loss of their beloved captain.

In 17^th century wartime, it was common to bury the dead near the battlefield where they fell. Very few bodies were brought home. It was not practical or even possible. There are no records, no marked grave, of where he lies. Somewhere near the walls of Maastricht, the real, valiant d’Artagnan found his final resting place.

Louis XIV wrote to his wife, Maria Theresa, that evening. ‘Madame, I have lost d’Artagnan, in whom I had the utmost confidence and who merited it in all occasions.’ Intelligent, loyal, and brave, d’Artagnan was as much a hero in real-life as on the printed page. Thanks to Alexandre Dumas, his legend not only lives on, but in fact grew.

Over time, various writers picked up the threads of his real life and wove them into fiction that would make him world famous for centuries. Each version added a little more fiction, a little more swashbuckling, but underneath it all, the real D’Artagnan emerged.

A statue of the real Musketeer Count d'Artagnan near the walls of Maastricht where he died. — **Statue of the real Musketeer Count d’Artagnan near the walls of Maastricht where he died.**

In 1700, French novelist, Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras published Mémoires de Monsieur d’Artagnan. It claimed to be a firsthand account of d’Artagnan’s adventures, told in his own voice. It was not exactly a biography, nor pure fiction. Courtilz mixed real historical events with fiction, filling in the gaps with his own imagination.

The Mémoires painted d’Artagnan as brave, clever, and resourceful, the kind of man who could survive both court intrigues and battlefield dangers with a quick wit and sharp sword. A century and a half later, Alexandre Dumas came across Courtilz’s Mémoires and saw their potential for his new adventure novel.

Dumas’s fictional adaptation was likewise not a strict historical one. The events of The Three Musketeers take place in the 1620’s under Louis XIII and Cardinal Richeleau. The real d’Artagnan did not arrive in Paris until the 1630’s and had his career under Louis XIV and Cardinal Mazarin.

In The Three Musketeers, he is young, poor, and quick to fight. He charges into duels and pledges loyalty to the king. The real d’Artagnan was ten years older, wealthier and more seasoned when he became a Musketeer. He lived a life filled with more leadership duties than swashbuckling. But still, Dumas captured his spirit and bravery. With Dumas, d’Artagnan became a symbol of loyalty, friendship, and courage for centuries to come.

Many filmmakers created movies about the Musketeers, putting their own fictional spin on Alexandre Dumas’ novel. One of the earliest versions was the silent film The Three Musketeers in 1921, starring Douglas Fairbanks. Hollywood kept coming back to the popular story with versions in the 1940s, 50s, 70s, 90s, and most recently in 2011. In the end, whether it’s through memoirs, novels, movies or TV series, d’Artagnan’s story and the brave Musketeers manage to live on.

All for one and one for all!

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The Red Summer Race Riots of 1919

White mob accosts a black man during the Red Summer riots of 1919. — **White mob accosts a black man during the Red Summer riots.**

A wave of deadly, anti-black violence swept across the United States in the summer of 1919. The name Red Summer was coined to recognize the amount blood that was shed. During that spring to fall season, at least 26 major riots and white mob actions broke out across the country. Hundreds of blacks were killed, thousands were injured, and even more forced to flee their destroyed neighborhoods.

World War I had just ended and racial tensions were deepened by the discharge of millions of military personnel. Competition for postwar jobs, combined with a migrated black population placed whites and blacks in conflict yet again. Black American servicemen returned from the First World War only to find a new type of violent racist conflict waiting for them. How and why did this all come about?

During the 1910’s, cities across the north were reshaped by The Great Migration. By 1919, about 1 million blacks had fled the segregated South for northern cities in hopes of escaping poverty and discrimination. The black population grew by 200 percent or more in cities like Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and Philadelphia, where blacks were freer, paid better, and in some cases had political power.

This caused anxiety among whites that blacks were taking jobs, housing, and even “security” from their lives. In the South, black sharecroppers were making money because of a huge worldwide demand for cotton. They were buying houses, cars, and even land. Southern white towns suddenly felt threatened.

In 1917, thousands of young black men answered President Woodrow Wilson’s call to fight for American democracy in The Great War. Many African American soldiers returned with a determination to fight segregation and white supremacists. After fighting Germans, black veterans argued that since the Negro was fit to wear the uniform he was fit for anything. Or as one Texas official put it, “One of the principal concerns is the returned negro soldier who is not ready to fit back into his prior status.”

When the war ended, many returning white servicemen resented that their vacated jobs had been taken by lower-paid African Americans. Many whites feared that a hundred thousand returning black veterans would be unwilling to resubmit to segregation and subjugation.

Because of their military service, whites saw black veterans as a threat.

Having just returned from the battlefield trenches, black veterans were not going to take any abuse lying down. Now they had come back to a country that recognized neither their service nor their right to co-exist as equals. That summer, former soldiers would end up using their military weapons training to defend their neighborhoods against white mob violence.

Black leaders encouraged returning servicemen to assert themselves for the dignity and respect they had earned through military service. Many black veterans were instead mistreated and even attacked while in uniform. The KKK (Ku Klux Klan), which had been shut down during Reconstruction, experienced a sudden resurgence in popularity, carrying out dozens of cross-burnings.

During the 1919 Red Summer, all that mass anxiety became mass violence. Between April and November, there would be approximately 25 riots and 97 recorded lynchings. Racial violence broke out in some of the nation’s most populous cities. Most incidents were initiated by white civilians and veterans. They were made far worse as local, state and federal officials hesitated to take any action or turned a complete blind eye to the violence.

It began in April 1919 at Carswell Grove Baptist Church. The Klan burns down a sharecroppers’ church in rural Georgia, killing seven. In May, an anti-black riot of 1,000 drunken white sailors erupts in the port of Charleston. In June, there is a terrible publicly-advertised lynching, corpse burning and dismemberment by a mob of 8,000 whites in Ellisville, Mississippi.

Washington D.C. had over 5,000 black veterans. It had a successful black middle class which symbolized black people’s expanding economic and social status. They made up a quarter of the population. They also held many jobs in the federal government. It was a slow but steady march forward—one that many white city leaders felt needed to be stopped.

Violence began July 19 when a false rumor spread that a ‘Negro Fiend’ had assaulted a white woman.

It incited white mobs to attack black neighborhoods and assault random African Americans on the streets. One of the first killed was a 22-year-old black veteran. The city’s white-owned newspapers fanned the flames, reporting false instances of black men assaulting white women. The Washington Post even ran a front page story posting the locations for white servicemen to meet and carry out attacks.

“It was almost impossible for me to realize that black men and women were being mobbed, chased, dragged from buses, beaten and killed within the shadow of the Capitol dome,” wrote NAACPs James Weldon Johnson.

**National Guard troops deployed during the Red Summer riots of 1919**

White sailors went on a four-day-long drunken rampage, assaulting, and in some cases lynching black people on the capitol’s streets. When the police did nothing, Washington’s black veterans banded together to fight back, arming themselves with bats, clubs, pistols and knives. Back veterans grabbed their guns and stationed themselves on rooftops in black neighborhoods, prepared to act as snipers in the case of white mob violence.

As the situation escalated, President Wilson first refused to act. He worried that the riots would damage the image of the United States as a global model of justice. After four days of mob violence, 40 people were killed and dozens more were injured. The chaos was only curbed when Wilson finally deployed 2,000 federal troops onto the city streets.

Just two days after federal troops withdrew from Washington, a black teenager was killed by a white man in Chicago on July 27. The 17-year-old teenage boy was floating on a homemade raft on Lake Michigan, trying to escape the oppressive summer heat. A white man started pelting him with rocks from shore. The teen had drifted past an invisible line that divided the white and black beaches. One rock hit the boy in the head. It knocked him unconscious and his body slipped into the lake, drowning the teen.

A white police officer at the scene refused to arrest the man on any crime, despite a large crowd of angry black witnesses and family members. By the time the boy’s body was recovered, a thousand black people had gathered, demanding police action. In response, armed white men jumped in their cars and drove through the West Side streets, firing into black homes and businesses. A white mob marched down South Side streets, assaulting black pedestrians and torching black neighborhoods.

The Chicago police refused to take any action.

This murder kicked off a week of violent riots. By the end, 15 white people and 23 black people would be dead and 537 people injured. Over 1,000 black families would be homeless after their homes and neighborhoods were burned down or destroyed by white mobs. The National Guard was eventually called in.

Chicago newspaper headline from the Red Summer 1919.

Black veterans in Chicago formed militias to defend black neighborhoods when the city government refused. One group of black veterans broke into an armory and stole weapons they then used to beat back a white mob. Because they had actually seen battlefield combat, they were willing and able to defend themselves. Throughout the rest of the Red Summer, black veterans around the country were inspired by Washington D.C. and Chicago vets.

The single deadliest riot occurred in Elaine, Arkanas, on Sept. 30 after a white law officer was killed outside a black sharecropper gathering. The governor ordered 500 Army soldiers from nearby Camp Pike to march on Elaine and put down the “insurrection” of sharecroppers. White mobs went off into the fields and started shooting blacks. Upwards of 200 blacks are believed to have lost their lives. We’ll never know how many were killed as there was no formal investigation made.

It soon became panic across America where everyone wondered, “Where’s the next race riot going to happen?” As bloodshed spread to Texas, South Carolina, Nebraska, Florida, and Ohio, black veterans continued to be targets for lynching. Those who dared wear their uniforms in public were seen by many whites as an affront to America’s racial system.

Riots broke out in August in Knoxville, Tennessee next.

A mob of 2,000 white men searched the town for a black man thought to have killed a white woman. In September in Omaha, a black man is accused of attacking a white woman. The man was arrested and jailed in the city courthouse. A mob of 3,000 white men surrounded the courthouse demanding he be turned over for lynching. The mayor came outside and said they were not turning this man over. The mob knocked him down, broke in, dragged the black man out, and murdered him in the square.

In Elaine, Arkansas in October, after black sharecroppers tried to organize a union for better working conditions, a three day long massacre occurred during which over 200 black men, women, and children in the town were killed.

It’s impossible to say exactly how many were killed or injured during the 1919 Red Summer—official records kept by white officials underreported deaths or never documented them. Hundreds lost their lives, thousands were injured, and ten of thousands were left homeless. The Red Summer would not be the end of mass violence against black Americans. But one of the consequences was the growing confidence of black communities in fighting back—in the streets, the courts and voting booths.

Before the war, the NAACP had 9,000 members. By the early 1920s it had 100,000, planting the seeds of the Civil Rights Movement. The NAACP fought in the courts and started building coalitions in Congress to fight for federal laws to protect people from mobs. The simple message of the NAACP was, ‘We’re American citizens. We deserve the same rights as everyone else.’ That was considered a radical message in 1919.

The Red Summer saw black populations fight back against racial violence like never before. The mob violence did not intimidate blacks into submission. Instead, African Americans emerged with a greater sense of shared purpose, identity and pride. Eventually even racist city governments realized that riots weren’t good for business and profits. They finally started to calm down the white mobs and the Red Summer came to an end.

World War I had become a broken promise for black veterans, who had risked their lives for America and make the world safe for democracy. Then they came home to find that their country was still going to deny African Americans the privileges of that very democracy. Despite the events of the Red Summer, 1.2 million black men would enlist and defend their county again in World War II.

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