Can a president ruin the US economy?

President Obama is responsible for ruining the economy of the United States of America, in collusion with the Democratic Congress, up until the election of 2010 gave the Republicans a majority in the House of Representatives so that the runaway executive had a partial roadblock. One might ask, has this ever happened in America before, wherein a president’s misguided policy has ruined the economy? Well, yes it has.

In 1800, when President Jefferson was elected, the US was providing materials and agricultural products to France and Britain and to countries in the Mediterranean Sea. France and Britain went to war. American merchant shipping had been targeted by pirates from Tripoli and other North African states in Adams’ administration, so the Congress had passed a bill to authorize building of a Navy – six large frigates (equivalent to heavy cruisers today).  Jefferson had the ships to suppress the pirates, and sent them to do so, but then laid them up in ordinary (storage) when no longer needed.

As the War between France and Britain heated up, they began attacking each others commerce, through blockade and privateering. In addition, British warships would stop American ships and impress sailors to fill their own shorthanded crews.  America, being a long distance from their markets, depended on merchant shipping to keep the commerce cycle operating. It looked like the Navy would be needed again.

However, the time to refit the ships in ordinary would be close to a year, and the idea to build lots of little gunboats with one large gun in each one hadn’t worked worth beans. Jefferson conceived the idea of pressuring both France and Britain to leave our shipping alone by establishing an embargo, prohibiting export of American products from our ports to any European ports, allowing only coastal trade. His thinking was that they needed our goods so much that they would have to change their evil ways and leave our shipping alone. According to J. S Basset, A Short History of the United States, “Congress gave its support, and December 21, 1807, the embargo act was passed. It prohibited the departure for any foreign port of any merchant vessel, except foreign vessels in ballast, and required vessels in the coastal trade to give heavy bonds to land their cargoes in the United States. The president was given discretionary power to modify the operation of the law in specific cases, but the duration was made indefinite. ‘Peaceable coercion’ was an untried experiment of far-reaching effects, yet it passed the two houses in four days and was a law before the people understood its significance.”

How did it work? Disastrously, as I’m sure you could predict. From Ian W. Toll, Six Frigates, a history of the early U. S. Navy: “Smuggling and other evasions were rampant. Vessels slipped out of port without clearances. Coastal traders were “accidentally” blown off course and forced to seek refuge in the West Indies or Canada. Some six hundred vessels were permitted to sail based on the pretext that they were fetching home American property left abroad. Foreign ships brought goods to market and then illegally carried American cargoes out of port. In Vermont, whose economy depended to a great degree on agricultural exports to Canada, the citizens rose up in a general rebellion. Farmers built huge timber rafts on Lake Champlain, to carry enormous quantities of wheat, pork, beef, and potash. One of these rafts was said to be nearly half a mile long, and on it were erected timber fortresses defended by men with small arms and even cannon. They seemed willing to kill any federal agent who was brave or foolish enough to interfere. Jefferson issued a proclamation declaring the Lake Champlain region to be in a state of general insurrection.

“With the longer and warmer days of spring, evasions of the embargo were prevalent all up and down the Atlantic seaboard. Jefferson pushed for increasingly severe enforcement measures. The embargo laws, he said, ‘have bidden agriculture, commerce, navigation to bow before that object, to be nothing when in competition with that.’ Jefferson knew, from the outset, that the American people’s tolerance would not continue indefinitely. The nation had decided to ‘take the chance of one year by the embargo’, he wrote, and if one year was the term fixed in Jefferson’s mind, he was single-minded in his determination to make that year count.

“Much of the enforcement responsibility fell to the Treasury Department, and therefore to Albert Gallatin. Though he had opposed the policy, the loyal Gallatin issued some 584 circulars to customs collectors and revenue officers stationed in the various seaports, generally urging more stringent enforcement and authorizing stronger measures. Most of the larger ships of the Navy were inactive during the embargo, but a few vessels were deployed to patrol the American coast. Under Secretary Robert Smith’s orders, Decatur and the Chesapeake got to sea on July 13, 1808, and patrolled the coastline between New York and Passamaquoddy Bay at the northern boundary of modern-day Maine. In early September, off the Maine coast, Chesapeake was outrun by two smugglers, prompting Decatur’s remark that the frigate was an ‘uncommonly dull’ sailor. Gunboats were deployed to lie to in offing near the most rebellious harbors, with orders to ‘seize the Boats and vessels of American Citizens that may be found violating or attempting to violate the embargo Laws.’

“The American economy was devastated. Exports plunged from $108 million in 1807 to $22 million in 1808. Because the federal government was almost entirely dependent on customs revenues, the fiscal surplus vanished. This, in turn, deprived the nation of the resources needed to mobilize for war, just as Gallatin had warned. Farmers and lumbermen shared in the pain with merchants and seamen, as timber, wheat, tobacco, rice, and cotton piled up to storehouse rafters. Imported and manufactured goods sold at scarcity price. Wages fell, or were not paid. Debtors were unable to manage their debts, and creditors took them to court or threw them into prison. Gangs of idle sailors loafed on the wharves. An Englishman who visited New York during the height of the embargo described the grim scene:

‘The port indeed was full of ships, but they were dismantled and laid up; the decks were cleared, their hatches fastened down, and scarcely a sailor was to be found aboard. Not a box, bale, cask, barrel, or package was to be seen on the wharves. Many of the counting houses were shut up, or advertised to be let; and the few solitary merchants, clerks, porters, and laborers that were to be seen were walking about with hands in their pockets. The coffee houses were almost empty; the streets, near the water side, were almost deserted; the grass had begun to grow upon the wharves.’

“…In August, Gallatin informed Jefferson that the evasions could only be prevented if federal agents were invested with ‘arbitrary powers’ that were ’equally dangerous & odious.’ Enforcement would require a policy forbidding a single vessel in any port of the United States to move except with ‘special permission of the Executive,’ to allow the collectors ‘the general power of seizing property anywhere,’ to remove and confiscate the rudder of any suspicious vessel, and to immunize the collectors against civil suits. The president replied he was willing to authorize whatever measures were necessary to suppress the ‘sudden and rank growth of fraud and open opposition by force.’ Any vessel owned by any merchant suspected of prior violations could be seized. Entire communities were barred from sending a single vessel to sea. Justifying such a measure against Buckstown, in Maine’s Penobscot Bay, Jefferson said that ‘a general disobedience to the laws in any place must have weight toward refusing to give them any facilities to evade.’ As for Nantucket: ‘Our opinion here is that that place has been so deeply concerned in smuggling, that if it [suffers food shortages] it is because it has illegally sent away what it ought to retain for its own consumption.’

“The question of the day was whether the people of England – and France – had suffered enough economic pain to force their governments to the negotiating table. Here the evidence was conflicting. Napoleon’s response was a mingling of disgust and indifference. He remarked that ‘the United States have preferred to renounce commerce and the sea rather than recognize their slavery,’ and ordered the seizure of American ships on the pretext that they must be disguised English vessels. In Britain, the combined effects of non-importation and embargo, conjoined with Napoleon’s Continental System, had severely distorted several important sectors of the economy. Market prices of many imported goods – timber, silk, cotton, flour, rice, flax, linseed – doubled or tripled. The coffee and sugar of the British West Indian colonies, which had once been carried to Continental markets by American vessels, glutted the storehouses of the Channel ports. British manufacturers predicted (cogently) that New England merchants would pour their capital into a domestic American manufacturing industry that would grow to rival England’s.

“But the embargo also benefited an number of powerful European interests, who would not have minded seeing it continued indefinitely. Farmers welcomed the high prices that attended the scarcity of imported foodstuffs. English merchants and shipowners were only too happy to see their American competitors yield the sea lanes, and their voices were strongly represented in Parliament. As one British writer later put it: ‘The late Jeffersonian Embargo was a Rod which produced no other sensation on the rough hide of John Bull, than the pleasurable one which arises from titillation. The poor Animal was delighted, and not suspecting that this philosophical experiment on his Hide was intended to produce pain, he regretted that weariness had ultimately compelled Mr. Jefferson to cease scratching.’ Jefferson’s special emissary to London, William Pinkney, had been instructed to offer an end to the embargo in exchange for a  lifting of the offensive Orders in Council. Foreign Minister Canning’s refusal of this offer, dated September 23, was inscribed in terms of heavy sarcasm: ‘[I]f it were possible to make any sacrifice for the repeal of the embargo, ‘ he wrote Pinkney, the British government ‘would gladly have facilitated its removal as a measure of inconvenient restriction upon the American people.’

“When this stinging rebuff arrived in Washington in late October, Jefferson bowed to the inevitable. The embargo had been an abject failure. He admitted as much in his annual message, forwarded to Congress on November 8…As to the question of what should be done next, Jefferson offered no direction: it 'will rest with the wisdom of Congress to decide on the course best adapted to such a state of things... [and to] weigh and compare the painful alternatives out of which a choice is to be made.'” 

This ended Jefferson's second term; he declined to seek a third term.

How fast can things go to hell?

I gave this talk to the group back in  February 2011. Since then things have blown up in more Arab states - Syria being the major one to watch.

How Quickly Can Things Go To Hell?


We see, in Tunisia, Egypt,Yemen, and today Bahrain, Jordan, and Libya that political protests against the Arab Dictatorships have boiled over into street actions, and it took only a short time until some major abdications were forced. “An earthquake is shaking the whole Arab world and a larger part of the Muslim world and we don’t yet know how these things will turn out.” - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, of Israel. It is instructive to look at how fast these changes can occur.

In America, we have had two periods of major government turmoil. It may be informative, to look at the time scales of first, the Revolutionary War, and second, the Civil War.

The Revolutionary War

Problems and discontent can fester for a long time before something triggers a sudden political outrage resulting in a major change. The time then can be very short before sudden major changes happen. “…all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.” Thomas Jefferson wrote that, in the Declaration of Independence.

In the Revolutionary War, Gradual Usurpations by the British Crown started to really annoy the colonies in 1707 with the Navigation Acts. Goods from Europe had to be transshipped through Britain and carried in British bottoms. By 1733 smuggling was endemic. Royal governors were appointed from gentry in England owed favors, and enriched themselves at the Colonies' expense. British officers in the French and Indian war, called the Seven Years War in Europe, 1755 –1763, were supercilious toward Colonial officers and troops, among whom was Lieutenant Colonel George Washington. After the war, Parliament began trying to recover the cost of the war from the colonists, who they thought were the prime beneficiaries of the war. Thus followed the Stamp Act, the Sugar Act, the Townshend Act. In 1768 British captains tried to impress American seamen in Boston, and at the same time customs agents tried to seize a sloop of John Hancock’s as a smuggler. A mob rescued the seamen and terrorized the customs agents. The case was dropped in 1769, but the Crown sent 4 regiments of troops to Boston. A confrontation with a few troops and an indignant crowd resulted in the troops firing on the crowd, killing four – this in 1770, became known as the Boston Massacre. Americans steadfastly refused to buy taxed East India Company tea – the company obtained remission of the tax on tea leaving Britain, and sent ships loaded with tea to America, expecting the Americans to buy, since they now had only to pay the tax on the American end. They refused. The Royal governor of Massachusetts refused to let the three ships leave the harbor, expecting the Americans to use that tea or nothing. Sons of Liberty, in Indian costumes, raided the ships and threw 342 chests of tea into the harbor in December of 1773, the Boston Tea Party.

Parliament, retaliating, passed five acts called variously the “Coercive Acts” or the “Intolerable Acts” in 1774.
The Port of Boston was closed, the Customs House moved to Salem.
The Massachusetts charter was revised, so that all Councilors and judicial officers were appointed rather than elected; the governor permitted when the town meetings could meet and what business they could transact, etc.
Officials charged with capital crimes could, along with witnesses, be sent to England for trial.
Troops could once again be quartered upon the populace (the quartering law of 1765 had expired.)
The Northwest Territories, claimed by New York, Connecticut, Virginia, And Massachusetts were attached to the Province of Quebec, cutting off westward expansion.

General Gage arrived in Boston as Governor, with four regiments of troops. Events began to pick up speed – Gage closed the port of Boston June 1st, 1774. A Continental Congress was called in September 1774. They agreed to import nothing from Britain, and to export nothing to any British port. Preparations for war began to be made. Minuteman companies were formed. Gage sent out 800 troops to seize the firearms, powder and cannon at Concord on April 18th 1775 – they had a slight skirmish at Lexington, with 60 Minutemen, killing 8 and wounding 10, suffering one wounded British soldier. At Concord, about 400 militia came upon them searching the town. They fired a volley, killing two and wounding nine, suffering two killed and two wounded patriots. The British began a march back to Charlestown, as another column of 1000 troops came out to rescue them. But militia were gathering on every side, perhaps four thousand in all, and it was sixteen miles back to Charlestown. It became a continuous skirmish all the way back to Charlestown – in Cambridge it became a running fight for a mile and a half, with bayonets and clubbed muskets. By dark, the exhausted British were back across Charlestown Neck, having suffered 73 killed, 26 missing and probably dead, and 174 wounded, out of 1800 men. The next day, thousands of armed New Englanders threw up works around Cambridge, and the war was on – the siege of Boston had begun. A second Continental Congress met May 10, 1775 to this electrifying news. By June 15th, they had appointed George Washington Commander in Chief, who left for Boston the next day. From the closing of Boston Harbor to the battle at Concord was ten months. The war continued actively for seven years, until October 1781 when the British general Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown Virginia, and the final peace was declared in 1783.

The Civil War

The problem of slavery festered from earliest days – slave states required agricultural workers –slaves – as the basis for their cotton, tobacco, etc. economy. Land clearing and agriculture were severely labor-intensive. Northern states saw slavery as economically an unfair competitive advantage, and religiously as an abomination before God. The founders danced around the issue to form a Union – Jefferson had written a dandy excoriation of the King for continuing the slave trade: “waging cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights…in the persons of distant people, who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither.” but had to take it out of the Declaration of Independence in deference to certain southern states who had yet to suppress the slave trade. Compromises were made as the country grew, with respect to extending slavery into the territories. These compromises generated ill will on both sides. Disunion threatened. In 1849 Congress had such intense sectional feeling that for seventeen days it could not choose a speaker. Finally on the sixty-third ballot Howell Cobb of Georgia had a plurality over Robert Winthrop of Massachusetts. The Republican Party sprang into existence in 1854 in opposition to extending slavery into Kansas and Nebraska territories. In 1855 and 1856, low-grade guerrilla raids were made, each side upon the other by John Brown and others, giving rise to the epithet “Bleeding Kansas”. In the 1856 election the Republican party, though only two years old, carried the northern states except New Jersey with nominee John C. Fremont. The Democrat party, Buchanan the nominee, carried the southern and border states, except Maryland (Fillmore) along with California, Illinois, Indiana, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Electoral votes were Buchanan 174, Fremont 114. John Brown’s October 1859 raid seizing the Armory at Harper’s Ferry, hoping to incite a slave rebellion, and his subsequent trial and hanging added fuel to the fire.

It all came to a head in the election year of 1860. I’ve printed out for you the sequence of events between the Democratic Party convention on April 23, 1860 and the first battle of Bull Run, known as First Manassas in the South, July 21, 1861. Here are the highlights :
April 23 – Democrats meeting in Charleston cannot agree on a candidate.
May 18 – Republicans in Chicago nominate Abraham Lincoln.
June 23 – Northern Democrats in Baltimore nominate Stephen Douglas.
June 28 – Southern Democrats in Baltimore nominate John C. Breckinridge.
November 6 – Lincoln elected, Electoral votes Lincoln 180, Breckinridge 72, Douglas 12, Bell (Constitutional Union Party) 39.
December 20 – South Carolina secedes.
January 9, 1861 – Mississippi secedes.
January 10 – Florida secedes.
January 11 – Alabama secedes.
January 19 – Georgia secedes.
January 26 – Louisiana secedes.
February 1 – Texas secedes.
February 8-9 – Confederate constitution adopted at Montgomery AL, Jefferson Davis elected President
February 18 – CSA Pres. Jefferson Davis and VP Alexander H. Stephens inaugurated.
March 4 – USA Pres. Abraham Lincoln and VP Hannibal Hamlin inaugurated.
April 12 – Confederates begin bombardment of Fort Sumter, Charleston Harbor.
April 13 – Supplies & reinforcement being interdicted, Fort Sumter surrenders.
April 17 – Virginia secedes
May 6 – Arkansas secedes.
May 20 – North Carolina secedes.
July 21 – Battle of First Bull Run (First Manassas). Generals Joseph E. Johnston and P. G. T. Beauregard, CSA, 18,000 troops, 1980 casualties. Brigadier General Irvin McDowell, USA, 17,700 troops, 2900 casualties.

From the election of President Lincoln to the firing on Fort Sumter was six months, and nine months to the first full scale battle with 36,000 troops engaged. The war lasted until Lee surrendered his army at Appomattox Court House, April 9, 1865; Johnston surrendered to Sherman near Durham Station, North Carolina April 26, and finally on May 26 General Kirby Smith surrendered the forces west of the Mississippi to General Canby at New Orleans. The four years of war involved approximately four million soldiers, of whom one million became casualties. Slavery was abolished, and we are still now one country, not two.

Americans are brave

This was delivered to a TEA party gathering in  June 2010. The speech ran too long, so I left out the Naval battle, but I put it back in here, as it is one of the most valorous fights in WW II - a  destroyer going up against the largest Japanese battleship as well as heavy cruisers, to protect CVE's - escort carriers.

Roy Horsey

American Character – Bravery

Our current administration thinks Americans are dependent, foolish, and simply not very smart. Administration Liberals don’t seem to know what it means to be American – but we know, even if we always can’t immediately put it into words. The concepts of Bravery, Valor, Honor, Honesty, Truth, Justice, and Freedom are not even in their lexicon. I want to focus on just one characteristic right now – American bravery.

As I read history, I come across countless examples of American valor and bravery. I have selected four to tell you about. The first is from the Revolutionary War ( Taken from The First American Army, by Bruce Chadwick).

John Greenwood,15, enlisted as a fifer in the 12th Massachusetts Regiment in June 1775, and was at the battle of Bunker Hill and the siege of Boston. “The British were constantly sending bombs at us,” wrote Greenwood, “and sometimes two to six at a time could be seen in the air overhead, looking like moving stars in the heavens. The shells were mostly 13 inches in diameter, and it was astonishing how high they could send such heavy things.” Once, a British shell arced through the night sky and landed right in front of a building housing Greenwood and about 200 other men. One of Greenwood’s teenaged friends in his company, Private Shubael Rament, 17, saw it coming through the air. He raced from the door of the building into the yard, stopping it as it rolled along the ground, and managed to pull the fuse out before it went off, saving the lives of the men inside.

Skipping over the War of 1812 and the Mexican War, we come to the Civil War. The Civil War was our most terrible war, hard-fought, because there were American boys on both sides, who had flocked to the colors of their States.

My second example is the story of the First Maine Heavy Artillery, at Petersburg, Virginia. ( Taken from The Maine Bugle, 1894 ) Recruited in the Penobscot Valley as the 18th Maine, The regiment, re-designated 1st Maine Heavy Artillery, was assigned to the defenses of Washington manning the heavy guns. In 1864 a number of heavy artillery regiments were re-equipped as infantry. They had one serious battle at Spotsylvania Court House, suffering about 400 casualties, so they were not green when they were called to attack at Petersburg on the 18th of June 1864. Here is Joel Brown, Co. I: “… about ten or fifteen hundred yards across an open field having a little rise and a cover of corn stubble were the rebel works, bristling with artillery, still as death, awaiting our onslaught. …our old Colonel, who was I believe, the coolest man it would be possible to find, took his station as on dress parade, … and then put us through the manual of arms as quietly as though we were still in the defenses of Washington, and all the while bullets from the sharpshooters humming about his ears like bees. Then came the word “Forward, Double Quick, Charge,” and with a wild cheer which seemed to me more like the bitter cry wrung out in a death agony we sprang forward. I saw the works plainly before me. I saw the blinding flash of red flame run along the crest of those works and heard the deafening crash as the awful work began; then the air seemed filled with all the sounds it was possible for it to contain, the hiss of the deadly Minie, the scream of the shell, the crackle, crash, and roar of every conceivable missile, and through it all the red blaze along the crest of that work which we must cross, as we, with bowed heads, breasted the storm. … I looked to right, to left, and found that I was almost alone; we were turning back…how I ever got back, I cannot tell… I remember well that the first thing I heard as I came into the road was this greeting from the rest of the Corps, “Didn’t you fellows know better than to go in there?” “History says that Gen. Birney massed the Second Corps and made a desperate charge that day. So he did, but it was the First Maine Heavy Artillery that made the charge alone. The rest of the corps never crossed the sunken road. I went up the road towards the left to where the Colonel was, just as Gen. Birney rode up, and heard him say “Colonel Chaplin, where are your men?” I shall never forget his answer: “There they are, out on that field where your tried veterans dared not go. Here, you can take my sword; I have no use for it now;” and the old hero sat down in the road and cried like a child. …Out of the nine hundred men of the regiment about seven hundred had fallen. … I had a bullet through my cap cutting off a lock of hair close to the skin, one took off the heel of my shoe, two went through my canteen, one cut the bayonet scabbard in two, and one went through the left sleeve of my blouse leaving a small splinter in my arm, where it is yet.” Joel Brown’s Company I numbered 150 at Spotsylvania, 75 at Petersburg, and 7 after the charge.

Skipping over the War with Spain and the First World War, we come to my third example, from World War Two, the story of the destroyer USS Johnston, DD-557. ( Taken from Blood on the Sea, by Robert S. Parkin ) Her captain was Commander Earnest Evans, an Oklahoman of Cherokee descent. In Leyte Gulf in the Philippines, the Johnston was part of the screen for Admiral Sprague’s six escort carriers. On October 25th , 1944 Japanese battleships, heavy cruisers, and destroyers attacked. Commander Evans drove his destroyer headlong into the mouths of the battleships’ 14-inch guns, trailing a heavy, black smoke screen in her wake. Johnston opened her 5-inch battery on the nearest cruiser, scoring damaging hits. In 5 furious minutes Johnston pumped 200 rounds at the enemy, then Comdr. Evans ordered, "Fire torpedoes !" The destroyer got off 10 torpedoes then whipped around to retire behind her heavy smoke screen. When she came out of the smoke a minute later, Japanese cruiser Kumano could be seen burning furiously from torpedo hits. Kumano later sank. But Johnston took three 14-inch shell hits from a battleship followed closely by three 6-inch shells from a light cruiser: Lt. Kagen, gunnery officer - "It was like a puppy being smacked by a truck. The hits resulted in the loss of all power to the steering engine, all power to the three 5-inch guns in the after part of the ship…." At 7:50 a.m., Admiral Sprague ordered destroyers to make a torpedo attack. Now there was so much smoke that Evans ordered no firing unless the gunnery officer could see the ship. Lt. Kagen: "At 8:20, there suddenly appeared out of the smoke a 30,000-ton Kongo-class battleship, only 7,000 yards off our port beam. I took one look at the unmistakable pagoda mast, muttered, 'I sure as hell can see that!" and opened fire. In 40 seconds we got off 30 rounds, at least 15 of which hit the pagoda superstructure.... The battleship belched a few 14-inchers at us, but, thank God, registered only clean misses." Johnston soon observed Gambier Bay (CVE-73) under fire from a cruiser: "Comdr. Evans then gave me the most courageous order I've ever heard: “Commence firing on that cruiser, draw her fire on us and away from Gambier Bay." Johnston scored four hits in a deliberate slugging match with a heavy cruiser, then the Japanese destroyer squadron was closing rapidly ... Johnston outfought the entire Japanese destroyer squadron, concentrating on the lead ship until the enemy quit cold, then concentrated on the second destroyer until the remaining enemy units broke off to get out of effective gun range before launching torpedoes, all of which went wild. Johnston took a hit …. Her bridge untenable, Evans shifted his command to Johnston's fantail, yelling orders through an open hatch to men turning her rudder by hand. At her one remaining 5-inch battery a Texan gun captain kept calling "More shells! More shells!" Still the destroyer battled desperately to keep the Japanese destroyers and cruisers from reaching the five surviving American carriers: Lt. Kagen: "We were now in a position where all the gallantry and guts in the world couldn't save us, but we figured that help for the carrier must be on the way, and every minute's delay might count.... By 9:30 we were going dead in the water; even the Japanese couldn't miss us. They made a sort of running semicircle around our ship, shooting at us like a bunch of Indians attacking a prairie schooner. Our lone engine and fire room was knocked out; we lost all power, and even the indomitable skipper knew we were finished. At 9:45 he gave the saddest order a captain can give: 'Abandon Ship.'... At 10:10 Johnston rolled over and began to sink. A Japanese destroyer came up to 1,000 yards and pumped a final shot into her to make sure she went down. A survivor saw the Japanese captain salute her as she went down. That was the end of Johnston."
From Johnston's complement of 327, only 141 were saved. 92 men, including Comdr. Evans, were alive in the water after Johnston sank, but were never heard from again.

My fourth example of bravery is recent – we are skipping the Korean War, the Viet Nam War, The Gulf War, and are going to hear a citation for the Silver Star, our third-highest medal for valor, in the War on Terror presently ongoing, for a soldier from Wiscasset, Maine.

The President of the United States takes pride in presenting the Silver Star Medal (Posthumously) to Andrew R. Small, Private First Class, U.S. Army, for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in Afghanistan, on 11 August 2006. On that date, PFC Small was attached to the lead element of a 22-man platoon on patrol in the mountains of Nuristan, Afghanistan….the enemy ambushed the Americans… Three Americans were killed immediately and the remainder of the platoon was pinned down under enemy fire. PFC Small was the sixth man in an extremely tight trail. …. The only cover available was to hug the side of the mountain… His team leader, Sergeant Smallwood, was then hit by an RPG, which seriously wounded him and left him exposed to enemy fire. PFC Small exposed himself and laid down suppressive fire against the well-fortified enemy position. By doing this, he drew fire to his own position, but he refused to seek cover. The action allowed his team leader to drag himself over a cliff to cover. … the enemy launched another barrage of rocket-propelled grenades into PFC Small’s position. This volley severely injured two soldiers who later succumbed to their wounds and struck PFC Small in the back with shrapnel. Even though PFC Small was wounded he got back up and continued to lay down suppressive fire, refusing to seek cover or medical aid until he was able to facilitate the maneuver of his squad out of the kill zone. PFC Small continued to engage and be engaged by the enemy who outnumbered him seven to one. This allowed the rest of the platoon and close air support to suppress and kill the enemy. When the patrol leader was able to move up to PFC Small’s position, he found him lying in the trail, weapon in his hands, oriented toward the enemy and out of ammunition.

There are my four examples of American bravery: Private Shubael Rament, 1775; the First Maine Heavy Artillery, 1864; the USS Johnston, 1944, and Private First Class Andrew Small, 2006. Ladies and gentlemen, Americans are brave and valorous beyond measure, and it is necessary to know and remember this. Thank you for your attention.

Why two major parties? Why not a third party?

This talk was delivered to our members 23 May 2010 -


The Origins of America’s Two-Party System

Why do we have two major parties? Why do third parties seldom get anywhere in major elections? Why can’t the Tea Party run candidates of its own?

The beginnings of the national two-party system are due to the structure for electing the President and Vice President as set forth in the Constitution, Article II section 1. States get one elector, and hence one electoral vote, for each Senator and Representative the state has in Congress. How the electors are chosen was left up to the State; the founders were shy of putting power in the hands of the general populace. In all states now it is by popular vote. In 48 states the winner of the popular vote gets all the electoral votes; in Maine and Nebraska the winner gets the 2 (senatorial) electors, and the other electors are selected according to the party winners in the congressional districts.

The electors (now referred to as the Electoral College) transmit their votes to the President of the Senate, who opens the votes in a joint session of Congress. If there is a tie vote for two persons, the House of Representatives votes to resolve the tie, each state having one vote. If there is no tie but no person has a majority, the house votes upon the top three candidates.

The result of this procedure is that unless a third party (such as the TEA party) can carry enough states to win a majority of electoral votes, which is extremely difficult in the face of entrenched parties, it is better off to join an existing party which is close to its belief system and to try to affect that party platform.

That is the structural reason trending toward a two-party system. The ideological reason for a two party system is that ever since the founding, one group has wanted to exercise government power over people and their lives, and another group has wanted the people to be left alone to live as they wish.

George Washington was such a respected General, President of the Constitutional Convention, and so loved by the people that there really was no other choice for the first President of the United States. He was elected in 1789. For major appointments he naturally depended on men who served with him whose character he knew and who had earned his trust. In particular he asked Thomas Jefferson to be his first Secretary of State. Jefferson had written the Declaration of Independence, had helped General Washington while Jefferson was in Congress and as wartime Governor of Virginia, and in 1789 was returning from his post as Envoy to France. Washington asked Alexander Hamilton to be his Secretary of the Treasury. Hamilton had been an artillery Captain in the war’s early battles, had served on Washington’s staff and then in other positions, leading a storming party to seize a British redoubt in the final major battle at Yorktown. These two men were constantly at odds in cabinet meetings, and opposed in their view of the role of governments. Hamilton led the Federalist Party, formulating a doctrine of “implied powers” (the Constitution means what we want it to mean), and Jefferson led the Republican Party with strict construction of constitutional powers (the Constitution means what it says and no more). Newspapers of the time picked up these debates and hotly and widely discussed them. Jefferson resigned at the end of Washington’s first term. Washington served a second term, then his Vice President John Adams won against Jefferson in 1796. Since at the time the person receiving the second highest number of electoral votes became Vice President, Jefferson took that office during Adams’ Presidency. In 1800 he ran for President hoping to end what he referred to as the “Federalist Reign of Terror”. Here’s Jefferson:

“I am for preserving to the states the powers not yielded by them to the Union, and to the Union its constitutional share in the division of powers; and I am not for transferring all the powers of the states to the general government, and all those of that government to the executive branch.

“ I am for a government rigorously frugal and simple, applying all possible savings of the public revenue to the discharge of the national debt; and not for a multiplication of officers and salaries merely to make partisans, and for increasing by every device the public debt on the principle of it being a public blessing…”

Sound familiar? Clearly these are conservative TEA party sentiments, while the current Democratic Party has taken on the ideology of the early Federalists. Jefferson’s Republican Party later suffered name changes to the Republican-Democratic party and then the Democratic party

The current Republican party was founded in 1852 as an anti-slavery party, and only was able to come onto the national stage because the Democratic party split in the election of 1860 over the slavery issue, allowing the election of Abraham Lincoln.

Jefferson’s election in 1800 exposed a flaw in the constitution – it said electors were to vote for two persons, expecting that the first person would be a presidential vote and the second a vice-presidential vote, but not saying so. Jefferson had more electoral votes than Adams, but the vice presidential candidate Aaron Burr had the same number as Jefferson. The election thus was thrown into the lame-duck Federalist House of Representatives to break the tie, and the bitter Federalists sided with Burr. The states were evenly divided. After a week of balloting, Congressman Bayard of Delaware “announced to his Federalist colleagues that he was ‘no longer willing to exclude Jefferson at the expense of the Constitution’”, and on the thirty-sixth ballot Jefferson was elected. This problem was corrected by the 12th amendment ratified in 1804.