Podcast Host 🎙️ Short stories of exceptional Americans doing extraordinary things. New episode every other Wednesday.
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In 1772, the colonists had no right to trees over 12" thick, not even if it was in their front yard.
A law reserved every white pine that size for the Royal Navy's masts. Surveyors roamed New Hampshire slashing a mark into the trees, claiming them for the King of England.
The mill owners of Weare ignored the law and cut the trees they wanted to. So the sheriff rode out to arrest them and collect the fines.
The Weare men blackened their faces and went after the sheriff in what is now called the Pine Tree Riot. They gave him a lash for every tree he'd charged them for. Then they cropped the ears and tails off his horses and sent him riding out of town through a jeering crowd.
Before the Boston Tea Party and the Boston Massacre, a New Hampshire town defied the Crown.
And the pine tree symbol remained. When Washington needed a flag for his first warships in 1775, he put a New England pine on it, over the words "An Appeal to Heaven."
This turned something that the King used to tyrannize the colonists to support his Navy, into a symbol of a country defying him on their own Navy.
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The man who made china for the Queen of England also cut a secret Don’t Tread on Me snake.
Josiah Wedgwood lived in Staffordshire and was one of the most prominent potters in Britain. He made custom pieces for Queen Charlotte and styled himself Potter to Her Majesty.
He still sided with the Americans.
During the Revolution he privately designed an intaglio of a coiled rattlesnake stamped DON’T TREAD ON ME.
Same motto Continental troops already carried on Gadsden’s flag.
Wedgwood told his partner to keep those pieces for “private trade.” He did not want the palace to see them.
A British manufacturer secretly backing the men who were fighting against his king for independence.
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In 1913, a famous American writer rode into a war zone in Mexico and was never seen again.
Ambrose Bierce was 71. A Civil War veteran, a newspaper legend and the man who wrote "The Devil's Dictionary."
He travelled south to observe Pancho Villa's army and watch the revolution from the front lines.
On December 26, he mailed a letter from Chihuahua. It ended:
"As to me, I leave here tomorrow for an unknown destination."
That is the last anyone ever heard from him or of him. No body, no grave, no confirmed account of how he died.
More than a century later, we still don't know what happened to him.
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John Sevier was arrested and charged with treason. Eight years later he was elected the first governor of Tennessee.
In 1784, North Carolina gave its western lands to Congress to pay its war debt, then they changed their minds and took the land back.
The settlers out there felt the whiplash and decided to form their own state. They named it Franklin, after Benjamin Franklin.
Sevier, a Revolutionary War hero, was elected its governor. For about four years Franklin ran as its own country, with its own court system, capital and taxes paid in deerskins and tobacco.
But North Carolina never recognized it. In 1788 it declared Franklin in revolt and arrested Sevier outright. His friends broke him out of jail, and he was ultimately never brought to trial.
In the aftermath, he swore his loyalty back to North Carolina, and the state of Franklin fizzled out.
When that same territory became Tennessee in 1796, the man elected to lead it was none other than John Sevier.
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Robert E. Lee is the only man in history offered command of the armies on both sides of a war.
April 18, 1861. Lincoln’s offered him the Union field army then being raised.
Lee declined that same day. He would not invade the South.
Two days later, he resigned his U.S. commission. Virginia had seceded and he took command of her troops.
The Confederacy then gave him what the Union had offered.
In 1865 they made him general-in-chief.
Ulysses S. Grant Personal Memoirs—Chapter XVII
The Grant memoirs give us insight into the man that I don’t know we get from Robert E. Lee. I doubt Lee would have taken the time to discuss the mundane and as a Virginia “gentleman” it may have been beneath him.
The war has begun and civilian Grant is trying to help organize Illinois volunteers into some semblance of order. He acknowledges that he resigned from the Army as a captain and that, while he hated clerking, he had experience in logistics and leadership from his time in Mexico and the rest of his military career. But I digress and must focus on what I’m here to discuss—Grant’s streetcar ride in St. Louis.
Grant had been sent to Belleville, Illinois, to muster a regiment into state service, but only one or two companies had arrived. With several idle days on his hands, he went into nearby St. Louis. There, he watched Union troops march out to confront the secessionist militia at Camp Jackson. After learning that the camp had surrendered, Grant boarded a horse-drawn streetcar to meet the returning Union troops at the St. Louis Arsenal and congratulate them.
The car was empty until Grant was joined by “a dapper little fellow—he would be called a dude at this day…” I love the use of dude here and also would’ve accepted “dandy” as well.
This dude was apparently a pretty staunch secessionist who didn’t know Ule was a former Army officer. Grant didn’t mention wearing a uniform and he had not volunteered for nor been given a federal commission. Said dude was apparently rather chatty and used many “adjectives” to express his disgust for the Union and those who supported it. He further sought Grant’s support for the burgeoning Confederacy and the idea that a state and its people could adopt a new flag and leave the Union at will. Keep in mind that Missouri was a slave state that had remained in the Union.
He advised Grant that where he came from, “if a man dares to say a word in favor of the Union we hang him to a limb of the first tree we come to.”
Grant told the dude that, so far in St. Louis, Confederate supporters weren’t being hung despite their presence, and further noted that there were “plenty of them who ought to be…”
This deflated the dude and Grant felt the “crestfallen” gentleman would’ve exited the car if Grant had told him to leave.
Again, I’m pointing out the fact that Grant took time to note this story. He was explaining the general confusion he encountered, from eager, uniformless volunteers to angry dudes threatening to hang Unionists. He barely mentions how he helped organize the men or what training they were receiving. Instead, we learned about a dude on a streetcar.
I’d like to hope the dude enlisted in the Confederate Army—although dudes tend to bluster, so I assume this dude did not put his words into action. I’d further hope that someday the dude realized who he had been in the streetcar with.
Now imagine the dude was in a vehicle with Patton, Daniel Morgan or perhaps Chesty Puller. I reckon the dude would’ve been given the boot.
We shall see whats next.
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Three American presidents were murdered in office in the span of 36 years.
Lincoln in 1865. Garfield in 1881. McKinley in 1901. For a generation and a half, an American president was killed roughly every twelve years.
In the 125 years since then, there has been just one successful attempt, although there has been no lack of trying.
So what changed? For most of the 19th century, presidents walked around almost completely unguarded. The night Lincoln was shot, his lone guard, a policeman, had wandered off from his post.
The interesting thing is that the Secret Service already existed. Lincoln literally signed the authorization to create it hours before Booth shot him. But it was built to chase counterfeiters, not to protect the president.
And it continued that job for 36 years, through all three ass*ssinations.
Only after McKinley died did Congress finally task the Secret Service with the guarding of the president.
It only took three dead presidents for Congress to do something...
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A 14-year-old George Washington was about to join the British Royal Navy.
In 1746 his half-brother Lawrence had arranged it. A midshipman's berth waited on a warship anchored in Virginia, and by one early account the boy's bags were already packed.
But his mother said absolutely not.
Mary Washington was a widow raising five children and she would not be deterred. Her brother in London wrote to back her up, warning that George would be better off apprenticed to a tinker than sent to sea. He said the navy would "cut and slash and use him like a dog." Although that letter likely reached Mary after she had already decided.
Washington stayed home and became a surveyor and then...well, you know the rest of the story.
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She had 25 children.
Mary of Pennsylvania was married at 14 in 1874 to a railroad engineer named Samuel Swartwood. Their first baby came 14 months later.
And they didn't stop there.
By the time she died in 1905 she had given birth to 25 children. Tragically, six of them died as newborns, but nineteen lived. And there were two sets of twins.
Newspapers called the Swartwoods the largest family in Pennsylvania and probably the United States.
In 1898, a reporter asked if she wished she had lived an easier life.
“I was married when I was 14. Pretty early, yes, but I wanted to get married and I love Sam. We have been very happy and I wouldn’t change my life for any rich lady’s. Look at these children. Ain’t they riches enough.”
When Mary Swartwood died, she left 18 living children and 12 grandchildren.
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My favorite story about John Quincy Adams is that he would swam naked in the Potomac River every morning at 5:00 AM.
One day a reporter named Anne Royall, who couldn't get him to sit for an interview, found his clothes on the riverbank.
Royall sat on them and refused to move until he answered her questions.
The President, stuck neck-deep in the river, gave her the interview.
On this day in 1817, this brilliant scholar became U.S. Secretary of State. He obtained a world class education from a very young age under the tutelage of his parents. He even traveled to France on a diplomacy mission with his father when he was 10!
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In 1782 Horatio Nelson was hunting in American waters.
He was 23, already a post-captain, commanding the 28-gun frigate HMS Albemarle. The war was nearly over, Cornwallis had surrendered at Yorktown. But the British still prowled the New England coast looking for prizes.
Off Cape Cod, he captured the American schooner Harmony and made its captain, Nathaniel Carver, steer the Albemarle.
For weeks, Nelson raided merchantmen and tried to draw the French fleet out of Boston Harbor.
When he was done, Nelson gave Carver his schooner back and wrote him a certificate:
“This is to certify that I took the schooner Harmony from Nathaniel Carver, master belonging to Plymouth, but on acct of his good services have given him up his vessel again."
For generations that certificate hung in an American house and it may have been the only Nelson signature in the United States.
The man who would later break the combined French and Spanish fleets at Trafalgar once used a Plymouth captain to navigate American waters against Americans.
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Before dating apps, a man courted his lady the honest way: with a stack of hard-earned beaver pelts.
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Excellent article.
Pornography is poison. It destroys individual lives as well as marriages and families.
Pornography isn't harmless entertainment, and its consequences extend far beyond the person viewing it.
If we are serious about raising the next generation of gentlemen, this is a subject we can no longer avoid.
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Storming a beach from the sea was considered suicide. Howlin' Mad Smith spent his career trying to change that.
Holland M. Smith earned his nickname from a play on his initials and his brutal temper. But the temper wasn't his legacy.
Before World War II, most military leaders believed a landing against a defended shore would end in complete slaughter. Smith thought there was a way.
Howlin' Mad spent years drilling the tactics, the timing and the new landing craft that could carry men from ship to sand under fire.
The amphibious doctrine he helped build, shaped landings across the entire war, from the Pacific islands even to the beaches of Europe.
He is known as the father of modern amphibious warfare.
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For 141 years, many believed a U.S. president had been murdered. In 1991, his body was dug up to prove it.
Zachary Taylor died in July 1850, five days after eating cherries and iced milk at a Fourth of July celebration. The official cause was a stomach illness, but the timing was suspicious.
Taylor had been blocking the expansion of slavery, and after he died, his successor, Fillmore, agreed to the Compromise of 1850.
The rumor that he was poisoned never went away.
Nearly a century and a half later, his descendants agreed to open his tomb. Forensic scientists took samples of his hair and nails to test for arsenic, which can linger in a body for centuries.
The verdict came back: Trace amounts only, not enough to kill. "It's not borderline," the medical examiner said. "He was not poisoned."
One of the strangest murder investigations in American history. The victim was a president who had been dead for 141 years.
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For 120 years, every U.S. president elected in a year ending in zero died in office. It was called Tecumseh's Curse.
Tecumseh was a Shawnee leader who tried to unite every tribe from the Great Lakes to the Gulf into one confederacy to stop American expansion. In 1811, while he was away recruiting, his brother attacked American forces at Tippecanoe and was crushed. The general who beat them was William Henry Harrison.
According to legend, Tecumseh cursed the general in the aftermath of the battle.
Harrison rode his victory to the presidency in 1840. But just thirty days into his term, he was dead.
And it didn't end there. Lincoln, elected 1860. Garfield, 1880. McKinley, 1900. Harding, 1920. Roosevelt, 1940. Kennedy, 1960. Every one of them died in office.
There's no solid evidence Tecumseh ever cursed anyone. But the pattern held for 120 years, and it didn't break until 1980 with Ronald Reagan.
And Reagan almost died in office too...when an ass*ssin's bullet lodged an inch from his heart.
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The man who created the Hershey bar gave away his entire fortune to an orphan home. And he tried to keep it a secret.
Milton Hershey and his wife Catherine couldn't have children, so they opened a school for orphaned boys in 1909. They tried to raise the kids as if they were their own.
After Catherine died, Hershey went even further. In 1918, he quietly signed his controlling stake in the chocolate company into a trust for the school. It was worth around $60 million, more than a billion dollars in today's money.
To put it in even more perspective, the following year, the entire Coca-Cola company sold for $25 million. He gave away more than two Coca-Colas to a home for orphans...and told no one. The public didn't find out until a reporter pried it out of him 5 years later.
The school is still open today, tuition-free and has put more than 12,000 kids through.
And more than a century later, Milton Hershey's fortune still funds it.
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