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POSTSCRIPTS
WHOLE CLOTH AND PIECES OF LEAD
Great events generate their own folklore, much of it having little to do with the facts at hand, and some of it downright hallucinatory. Such certainly was the case with the following bizarre account of the first Fourth of July, written by a German named Christoph Heinrich Korn. The story appeared in his book Geschicte der Kriege in und ausser Europa Von Anfange des Auffange des Aufstandes der Brittischen Kolonien in Nordamerika an (History of Wars In and Outside of Europe From the Beginning of the Uprising of the British Colonies in North America Onward), published at Nuremberg in 1777. The relevant portion was translated and sent on to us by Dr. Karl J. R. Arndt, professor of German at Clark University:
“In order to give this [Declaration of Independence] more force in the heated minds of the inhabitants, it was made public in the following solemn manner. On July 4, 1776, the members of the General Congress assembled in Philadelphia in the house designated for their deliberations, and there signed this manifesto. Hereupon in procession they went into the church, where an especially prepared crown had been placed on the altar. After the sermon had been preached, all delegates took their positions around the altar, where the declaration of war was publicly read. After this the crown by a special address designed for the purpose was sacrificed to God as the only King of America from this point on; hereupon it was divided into thirteen parts, according to the number of provinces, and a part sent to each.… In all cities people showed great joy over the freedom which had been gained, but the mob, in keeping with its habits, committed many excesses, as especially in New York where the magnificent statue of George III, which had been erected only a few years ago, was brought down in a heap.”
The consecrated crown never existed, of course, but Korn did manage to get the story of the toppled statue right. As we reported nearly twenty-one years ago (August, 1958), the lead-and-gilt statue of the English king was indeed forcibly deposed by impassioned New York patriots on July 9,1776; it was then hacked to pieces and the chunks were sent north to Litchfield, Connecticut, to be melted down for bullets. Some of the pieces never arrived, for when the rebels stopped off in Wilton to down a tankard or two of ale, a gang of Tories spirited away what fragments they could carry and hid them here and there about the countryside. (The remaining fragments went on to Litchfield and became 42,088 bullets.) For two centuries, pieces of George III have been turning up in the Wilton region, most recently in 1972, when former antiques dealer Louis Miller discovered a twenty-pound fragment in a local swamp. Miller sold it to the Museum of the City of New York for $5,500; the owners of the swampland sued to get it back, and in December, 1978, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled in their favor. The owners, however, consented to let the museum keep the chunk, and there it will stay, a piece in rest.
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ELIJAH ABEL AND THE MARK OF CAIN
’ A ccording to Mormon belief,” histoXA.rian Rodman Paul wrote in “The Mormons: From Persecution to Power” (June, 1977), the skin color of black people “means that they bear a lifelong curse as the descendants of one of the sons of Adam and Eve, Cain, who in a fit of jealousy slew his brother Abel. For this bloody deed, Cain and his descendants were cursed with black skins—the ‘mark of Cain.’ Someday, Mormon theory runs, the curse will be lifted, but until that time participation in the priesthood is forbidden to blacks. … For modern Mormon liberals, the church’s flat prohibition—and the blunt implication of racial inferiority—has become a heavy cross.”
One year later, on June 11,1978, that cross suddenly was lifted: the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints rescinded its ban on the ordination of black priests and welcomed Joseph Freeman, Jr., of Salt Lake City into the Mormon priesthood. Most accounts of this action, therefore, celebrated Freeman as the first black Mormon priest, but Professor Newell G. Bringhurst of Indiana University writes to remind us that in the early years of the Church there were no restrictions on blacks and that a handful were in fact ordained.
According to Professor Bringhurst, the most famous Mormon black priesthood holder was Elijah Abel, who joined the Church at Kirtland, Ohio, in 1832, became an Elder in the Mormon priesthood in 1836, and by the end of that year was ordained to the higher priesthood office of “Seventy.” As a Mormon “minister of the Gospel,” Abel served as a Church missionary in upstate New York and Canada in the latter 1830’s.
His priesthood did not run smoothly for very long, Bringhurst continues. In St. Lawrence County, New York, Abel once was accused of murdering a woman and her five children. He successfully refuted the charge, but later in Canada he fell to bickering with fellow missionaries on points of Church doctrine. In 1842 he moved to Cincinnati, where high Church officials decreed that he confine his preaching activities “to the coloured population.” Finally, in 1849, the Church issued its universal ban on the ordination of blacks to the priesthood, and prohibited Abel and other black priests from participating in certain temple ordinances open to other priesthood holders and considered necessary for Mormon salvation.
That did not stop Abel. In 1853 he emigrated to Utah, continued to practice what was left of his priesthood, contributed money and his own labor to the construction of Salt Lake City’s massive temple, and died in 1884 “in full faith in the Gospel.”
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FORBIDDEN SMILES
Those who enjoyed “Forbidden Diary,” Natalie Crouter’s remarkable account of life in a Japanese prison camp during World War II (April/May, 1979) will remember Captain Rokuro Tomibe, the gentle camp commandant who did his best to make life for the Americans under his control as bearable as possible. Nevertheless, after the war Tomibe became a defendant during the Allied War Crime Trials held in Manila. Fortunately, Jim Halsema, a former prisoner of Tomibe’s, was in Manila covering the trials as a reporter; he insisted on testifying in Tomibe’s behalf, and on the strength of his evidence Tomibe was exonerated.
In 1977 there was a reunion of the Camp Holmes internees in San Francisco. Two hundred and twenty Americans attended, including Natalie Crouter, and as their special guest, they invited Captain Tomibe. In a memoir written after the event, Tomibe recalled “many beautiful stories about how Japanese soldiers and American Workers worked together, in spite of their language barrier, to accomplish their same purpose safely and certainly. I believe that human feeling which sprouted spontaneously became a smile … and enhanced into love among fellow soldiers as sharing a cigarette to smoke.”
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LAST CALL
Taps is the Army’s most beautiful bugle call,” Bruce Catton wrote in This Hallowed Ground. “Played slowly and softly, it has a plaintive, tender, and touching character. It rolls down the curtain on the soldier’s day, and upon the soldier’s life.”
Most Americans would agree, for most have heard the sweet melancholy of the song’s notes at one time or another—too often at funerals. But few have known the circumstances under which it was composed, or when. Now, Colonel Eugene C. Jacobs of Vero Beach, Florida, has ferreted out the story and written it up for the July, 1978, issue of Military Medicine.
Taps was composed, Colonel Jacobs writes, by Colonel Daniel Butterfield while he recovered in a field hospital from wounds received in the Battle of Malvern Hill in July, 1862: “While Butterfield lay in his tent … he reviewed all of the bugle calls of his Brigade, many of which he had composed himself. He had been a great exponent of the bugle call, being able to blow all calls, and to teach his buglers just how each call should sound … [but he] was not satisfied with the final call of the day, variously known as Taps, Tattoo, and Lights Out.… He believed that Taps should bring comfort and peace to the tired and troubled men.”
So thinking, Butterfield grabbed a pencil and scribbled out the notes for a new Taps on the back of an envelope. He then called in the brigade bugler, Oliver W. Norton, asked him to sound the call, made quick revisions, then ordered Norton to play it that night for last call. It was the Fourth of July. “The music was beautiful on that still summer night,” Norton later recalled, “and was heard beyond the limits of the Butterfield Brigade as it echoed through the valleys. The next morning, buglers from other Brigades came to visit and to inquire about the new Taps and to learn how to sound it.”
Colonel Jacobs continues: “Taps followed Butterfield’s commands; to Fortress Monroe … to the Army of Northern Virginia, to the Army of Cumberland, to the Armies of the West … to Gettysburg, and finally on Sherman’s March to the Sea. … Between 1871 and 1874, it became mandatory for the Butterfield Taps to be used at all Army funerals. By 1900, all U.S. Military Services were using Taps and, during World War I, France adopted the American call.”
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A SUFFRAGETTE BOUQUET
Mrs. John F. Daley (née Elsa McGill) of Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, wrote us recently in regard to Carol Lynn Yellin’s “Countdown in Tennessee, 1920” (December, 1978). Mrs. Daley said she was delighted to find herself pictured (page 33) as part of the struggle for final ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment—and described as “one of the most ardent suffragists.” The photograph was published in the Nashville Tennessean of September 5, 1920, and Mrs. Daley tells how it came about—and more: “My picture was taken by a news photographer as I came down the steps of the capital after placing a yellow rose on each legislator’s desk. I was asked to take Betty Gram, a cute, pretty thing, and the two young, unmarried, and very countrified legislators who were very doubtful to dinner. Betty and I were supposed to turn on the charm and get them to be sure ‘Ayes.’ It was really funny. I saw so many friends at the Belle Meade Club, where I was a member and where I was asked to take them, to impress them I guess, and my friends were signaling, ‘Who on earth are those people?!’ with their lips behind our guests’ backs. One of the young men stirred his iced tea so noisily that all eyes turned on us. The waiter asked him if he’d like some more something, and he answered: ‘Don’t keer if I do!’ Maybe his mother did influence Harry Burn, but Betty and I believed we had something to do with it!” It was Burn, of course, who cast the deciding vote in the Tennessee State Legislature that made the Nineteenth Amendment a reality. Betty Gram went on to marry a radio commentator who made her last name part of his ownRaymond Gram Swing.
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