Does America still have ‘the right stuff’ to continue this remarkable story?

This 1903 Louisiana Purchase Gold Dollar, Jefferson Design, minted to commemorate the centennial of the Louisiana Purchase, realized $37,600 at an April 2017 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

The 19th century in the United States was by any standard an unusually remarkable period. In 1800, John Adams was still president, but had lost his bid for re-election to Vice President Thomas Jefferson, the man behind the words in our precious Bill of Rights. Alexander Hamilton had used his personal New York influence to break a tie with Aaron Burr, since Jefferson was considered the least disliked of the two political enemies. (Burr would kill Hamilton in a duel in 1803 by cleverly escalating a disagreement into a matter of honor.)

There were 16 states in 1800 (Ohio would join the Union as no. 17) and the nation’s population had grown to 5.3 million. Within weeks of becoming president, Jefferson learned that Spain had receded a large portion of its North American territory to France. Napoleon now owned 530 million acres, more than what the United States controlled. Fearful that losing control of New Orleans to our new French neighbor would lead to losing control of the strategically important Mississippi River, he developed a plan without including Congress.

He dispatched Robert Livingston and James Monroe to buy greater New Orleans for $10 million. They were pleasantly surprised when the French offered to sell 100 percent of their North American territories for $15 million cash … less several million in pending claims. Concerned that the French would change their offer before they could get formal approval, an agreement in principle was agreed to (later formally approved by Congress after James Madison’s assurance of its constitutionality.)

What a prize! 828,000 square miles for 3 cents an acre, virtually doubling the size of the United States and gaining control of the mighty Mississippi and shipping into the Gulf of Mexico. With this uncertainty removed, cotton production now expanded rapidly south and soon represented over 50 percent of total exports. With the aid of the cotton gin and slave labor, the United States now controlled 70 percent of the world’s production. Ominously, seeds of a great civil war were planted with each cotton plant.

For millions of people overseas, conquest or riches were not their primary ambition. Escaping the clutches of famine trumped all other hardships of life. 1842 was the first year in America’s history that more than 100,000 immigrants arrived in a single year. Five years later, the number from Ireland alone exceeded this, with Irish coming to America to escape the scourge of the Great Famine. In the 1840s and ’50s, 20 percent of the entire population of Ireland crossed the Atlantic in search of a better life. In sharp contrast to the Pilgrims on the Mayflower – who were on a financial venture supplied with rations – the Catholic Irish left in rags to avoid starvation in a mainly Protestant nation.

Concurrently, another wave from the European mainland was fleeing revolution and counterrevolution. In Germany, half-a-million left in a three-year period (1852-55) as a spirit of revolt captured the European continent. “We are sleeping on a volcano,” warned Alexis de Tocqueville. Meanwhile, two German thinkers (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels) penned their intellectual nonsense, The Communist Manifesto, from the safety and luxury of London.

In the United States, just before the impending boomlet of immigration in 1846, total railroad mileage was a meager 5,000 miles. Ten years later, it quintupled to 25,000 as the influx of labor to lay iron rails was a perfect match for $400 million in capital. As famine and revolution were destroying Europe, their foreign transplants were busy transforming their new homeland. Also, the transition of coal to steam to steamboats scampering around the newly dug connecting canals would inspire new communications like the telegraph and Pony Express. While the country had been busy absorbing the wave of immigrants, it had also been in the throes of a decades-long internal migration west.

Thomas Jefferson had predicted it would be 1,000 years before the frontier reached the Pacific Ocean. Only 23 years after his death in 1826, gold was discovered in California and the fever to get rich started a westward movement that expanded globally. Once under way, the richness of the soil and massive new resources of rivers, forests, fish and bison would expand the migration to include farmers and their families. Horace Greeley shouted, “Go West, young man” and they did.

With room to grow and prosper, by 1900 the population would expand by a factor of 15 times to 76 million. They resided in 45 states after the Utah territories joined the Union in 1896. Fulfilling the vision of Manifest Destiny (from sea to sea), the rural population of 95 percent evolved as urbanization grew to 40 percent as industrialization and worker immigrants staffed the factories and cities. A short war with Mexico added California, Arizona and New Mexico, and President Polk’s annexation of Texas in 1845 filled in the contiguous states.

However, it was the railroads that created the permanence. With 30,000 miles of track in 1860, America already surpassed every other nation in the world. The continual growth was phenomenal: 1870 (53k), 1880 (93k), 1890 (160k) and by 1900 almost 200,000 … a six-fold increase in a mere 40-year period. Yes, there were problems: Illinois had 11 time zones and Wisconsin 38, but this was harmonized by 1883. Most importantly, they connected virtually every city and town in America and employed 1 million people!

Throw in a few extras like electricity, oil wells, steel mills and voila! The greatest nation ever built from scratch. Today, we have 6 percent of the people on 6 percent of the land and 30 percent of the world’s economic activity … and we are celebrating the 50-year anniversary of putting a man on the moon.

Do we still have “the right stuff” to continue this remarkable story? I say definitely, if we demand that our leaders remember how we got here.

Intelligent Collector blogger JIM O’NEAL is an avid collector and history buff. He is president and CEO of Frito-Lay International [retired] and earlier served as chair and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell].

Moral arguments continue over the use of atomic weapons in WWII

A 1971 photograph of Emperor Hirohito and Empress Nagako, signed, sold for $8,125 at an April 2015 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

If history is any guide, the month of August will arrive right on schedule. Inevitably, it will be accompanied by yet another birthday (no. 82 if my math is correct) and intellectual debates over the use of atomic bombs dropped on two Japanese cities in August 1945. Despite the passage of 74 years and the fact that it ended World War II, it remains the most controversial decision of a long, bloody war.

As a reminder, President Franklin Roosevelt had died in April 1945 soon after the start of his record fourth term in office. Vice President Harry Truman had taken his place and the new president attended a conference in defeated Germany to discuss how to persuade or force Japan to surrender. Persuasion was not really an option since the Empire of Japan was firmly committed to continue even if it resulted in the annihilation of its people and the total destruction of their country.

They had demonstrated their resolve during the bloody island-by-island fighting that left the Japanese mainland as the final target. Another amphibious landing was ruled out due to the expected enormous loss of life and an oath of 100 million inhabitants to fight until killed. Estimates vary on how many Americans would die … but they were all too high.

One strategy was to simply blockade all their ports and use our overwhelming air superiority to bomb them until they relented. But President Truman had a secret weapon and was fully prepared to use it if Japan resisted.

On July 26, 1945, Truman, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Chiang Kai-shek of the Republic of China signed the Potsdam Declaration that warned the Japanese that if they did not agree to an “unconditional surrender,” they would face “prompt and utter destruction.” In addition, 3 million leaflets were dropped on the mainland to be sure the people were aware of the stakes and perhaps help pressure the leadership.

Afterwards, critics of what became the nuclear option have argued it was inhumane and violated a wartime code-of-ethics, perhaps like mustard gas or the chemical weapons ban we have today. However, it helps to remember that the avoidance of attacking non-combatant civilians had long been discarded by the mass bombings of European cities (e.g. the infamous firebombing of Dresden). And then the even more brutally systematic firebombing of Japanese cities. Destruction became the singular objective, knowing that ending the war would save more lives than any precision bombing.

Case in point is Air Force General Curtis LeMay, who arrived in Guam in January 1945 to take command of the 21st Bomber Command. His theory of war is eerily similar to General William Tecumseh Sherman’s “March to the Sea” in the Civil War. LeMay explained: “You’ve got to kill people, and when you kill enough, they stop fighting.” Precision bombing had given way to terror attacks that included civilian deaths indiscriminately.

Importantly, Lemay had just the right equipment to destroy Japan’s highly flammable cities filled with wooden houses. First was a highly lethal weapon called the M-69 projectile developed by Standard Oil. It was a 6-pound bomblet that consisted of burning gelatinized gasoline that, when stuck to a target, was inextinguishable. Second was a fleet of B-29 Superfortresses, ideal for continental bombing. They were powered by 4×2200 hp engines with a crew of 11 and a range of 4,000 miles. On March 9 … 344 B-29s began dropping M-69s over Tokyo in a crisscross pattern that merged into a sea of flames. The result was 90,000 dead and another million homeless. The victims died from fire, asphyxiation and buildings falling on them. Some were simply boiled to death in superheated canals or ponds where they sought refuge from the fire.

Over the next four to five months, they attacked 66 of Japan’s largest cities, killing another 800,000 and leaving 8 million homeless.

Despite this demonstration of power, the Japanese formal reply to the Potsdam Declaration included the word “mokusatsu,” which was interpreted as an imperial refusal. It was on this basis that Truman gave the order to proceed with bombing Hiroshima on Aug. 6. He left Potsdam and was at sea when the ship’s radio received a prearranged statement from the White House: “16 hours ago, an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima … it is an atomic bomb … it is harnessing the basic power of the universe.” Three days later on Aug. 9, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.

Japanese Emperor Hirohito agreed to capitulate and an imperial script announcing the decision to the Japanese people was recorded for radio broadcast. Most Japanese had never heard the emperor’s voice.

As the moral arguments continue about the use of atomic weapons on people (in WWII), I find it to be a distinction without a difference … at least compared to having one of Lemay’s little M-69s stuck on my back.

Intelligent Collector blogger JIM O’NEAL is an avid collector and history buff. He is president and CEO of Frito-Lay International [retired] and earlier served as chair and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell].

Zimmermann Telegram the proverbial straw that broke America’s isolationism

A vintage postcard signed by U.S. General John J. Pershing (right), and also showing British Field Marshal Douglas Haig and French General Ferdinand Jean Marie Foch, went to auction in October 2006.

By Jim O’Neal

On Jan. 31, 1917, the German Secretary of State for the Imperial Navy addressed the nation’s parliament. “They will not come because our submarines will sink them.” He went on to state, categorically, “Thus, America, from a military point of view, means nothing … nothing!”

Strictly from an Army standpoint, Eduard von Capelle may have had a point. The U.S. Army had gradually declined in size to 107,641 – ranked No. 17 in the world. Additionally, the Army had not been involved in large-scale operations since the Civil War ended in 1865, over 50 years earlier.

The National Guard was marginally larger, with a total of 132,000. However, these were only part-time militia spread among the 48 states and they, quite naturally, varied considerably in readiness. Equipment was another issue since they were armed with nothing heavier than machineguns. This was rectified significantly in 1917-18 when 20 million men were registered for military service.

Known to only a few, two weeks earlier on Jan. 16, British code-breakers had intercepted a diplomatic message sent by German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann. The “Zimmermann Telegram,” as it is known, was intended for Heinrich von Eckardt, the German ambassador to Mexico.

The missive gave the ambassador a set of highly confidential instructions to propose a Mexican-German alliance should the United States enter the war against Germany. Von Eckardt was to offer the president of Mexico generous military and financial support if Mexico were to form an alliance with Germany. In exchange, Mexico would be free to annex the “lost territory in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.” In addition to distracting the United States, Mexico could assist in persuading Japan to join in, as well.

At the start of World War I, Germany’s telegraph cables passing through the English Channel had been cut by a British ship. This forced the Germans to send messages via neutral countries. They had also convinced President Woodrow Wilson that keeping channels of communications open would help shorten the war. The United States agreed to pass on German diplomatic messages from Berlin to their U.S. Embassy in Washington, D.C.

The United States was still firmly committed to remaining neutral and not being entangled in foreign wars that did not pose a direct threat. Wilson had been re-elected in 1916 with a main slogan of “He kept us out of war!” But that did not prevent many individual citizens from joining and many were already fighting in the war in a variety of ways. Some had joined the British Army directly and others joined Canadians already in Europe.

There were also groups in the French Foreign Legion and a special group in the French Air Force. They formed the La Fayette Escadrille in honor of the Marquis de Lafayette, who was a friend from our own war for freedom. Lafayette had actually fought in the American Revolution as a major general under George Washington. He was even present at Yorktown, Va., when British Army General Charles Cornwallis had surrendered, effectively bringing an end to armed hostilities. When Lafayette died in 1834 in Paris, President Andrew Jackson had both Houses of Congress draped in black for 30 days. Individual members of congress also wore mourning badges. It is likely that we may have lost the war with Britain absent the help from the French.

Back on the morning of Jan. 17, 1917, one of the British codebreakers (Nigel de Grey) entered Room 40 of the British Admiralty and asked his boss a question: “Do you want to bring America into the war? I’ve got something that might do the trick!” It was a decoded copy of the Zimmermann Telegram.

Room 40 was the home of the British cryptographic center and they were acutely aware of the implications of disclosing their clandestine activities. They developed an elaborate plan to get a copy to President Wilson without exposing that they had been monitoring all transatlantic cables, including America’s (a practice that would continue for another 25 years). Wilson received a copy on Feb. 25 and by March 1, it was splashed on the front pages of newspapers nationwide.

Diplomatic relations had already been severed with Germany in early February when Germany had resumed unrestricted submarine warfare on American ships in the Atlantic. The Zimmermann Telegram became the proverbial straw that broke America’s isolationism and on April 2, Wilson asked Congress to officially declare war, which they did four days later.

Remarkably, by June 17, the American Expeditionary Force had landed in France. General John J. Pershing and his troops soon marched on Paris. By 1918, it was almost as though Von Capelle’s prophetic “They will never come” had been trumped in six months by America’s melodramatic “Lafayette, we are here!”

Many of the best Room 40 personnel would end up at Bletchley Park to work on cracking the German Enigma machine. Their work is captured brilliantly in the 2014 film The Imitation Game, with Benedict Cumberbatch in the Oscar-nominated role of English mathematics genius Alan Turing.

Intelligent Collector blogger JIM O’NEAL is an avid collector and history buff. He is president and CEO of Frito-Lay International [retired] and earlier served as chair and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell].

How to explain why Americans remain so divided?

An oil-on-canvas portrait of George Washington by Philadelphia artist Robert Street (1796-1865) sold for $41,250 at a May 2019 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

The date was April 30, 1789, and the highly respected commander of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War was ready to take the oath as the first president of the United States. The election had taken place much earlier in January, but electoral votes had not been counted until April 5.

General George Washington, who also had served as the presiding officer at the Continental Convention of 1787, was unanimously elected to the highest office in the new nation. He had to travel from his home in Virginia to New York City for the formal inauguration.

Robert Livingston, chancellor of New York, administered the presidential oath of office at Federal Hall across from the New York Stock Exchange. This site was home to the first Congress, the Supreme Court and executive offices. President Washington then retired to the Senate Chamber where he delivered the first inaugural address to a joint session of Congress. Observers commented he was mildly embarrassed and noticed an almost imperceptible tremble; possibly due to the significant historic relevance of the occasion.

Two blocks away at 75 Wall Street now stands a 42-story modern structure of marble, glass and steel. This luxurious condominium was converted from office space in 2008. It sits at the water’s edge of the Hudson River, atop an old slave market, where people were bought and sold for over 50 years (1711-62).

For Dutch and Spanish slave-traders, who controlled the transatlantic trade at the time, there were far superior markets for the sale of slaves. For one, the sugar plantations in both Spanish America and Portuguese Brazil required hundreds of thousands of slaves.

Given the insatiable European demand for sugar, it made little sense for slave-traders to undertake the additional time to travel up the North American coast to service what was considered a small speculative market. A slave ship could make a round trip between West Africa and Brazil in the same time it would take just to reach Virginia one-way. Compounding the cost were the death rates a longer journey would impose on their human cargo. This was a thriving business and decisions were made based on profitability.

Another factor was that England’s American Colonies were not willing to pay a premium since there was an adequate supply of Europeans willing to serve as indentured servants. As a result, the transatlantic perimeter of the booming slave market essentially ended at the sugar-growing islands of the Caribbean.

In 1788, the year before Washington’s inauguration, the founders recognized that they would have to include language protecting slavery in order to get the necessary state votes to gain approval of the proposed U.S. Constitution. Perhaps James Madison – “The Father of the Constitution” – was the one who accomplished this without using either the words “slaves” or “slavery” (they do not appear until later with the 13th and 15th Amendments). Instead, the reference was to a person “held to service” or “bound to service.”

In a compromise, the Constitution ordered Congress to pass a regulation to abolish it by 1800. A special committee extended the deadline to 1808 to allow a gradual 20-year phase out. They assumed (wrongfully) that slavery would become uneconomic and just naturally die out. In fact, it continued to grow. The 1790 census reported a U.S. population of 4 million, including 700,000 slaves.

Then, in 1793, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, which fueled a massive increase in cotton production. Slave plantations were America’s first big business, not the railroad, as some believe. Ten of the first 12 presidents were slaveholders, and two of the earliest Chief Justices.

The slave trade was one of Great Britain’s most profitable businesses. From 1791 to 1800, British ships made 1,300 trips across the Atlantic with 400,000 slaves. And then from 1801 to 1807 another 266,000. During the whole of the 18th century, the slave trade accounted for 6 million Africans. Britain was the worst transgressor, responsible for 2.5 million of the total.

In 1807, the U.S. Congress passed the slave act to “prohibit the transportation of slaves into any port … from any foreign place” (starting in 1808, as directed by the Constitution). However, it did not ban the trading of slaves within the United States. With an estimated 4 million slaves in the country (plus children born into slavery), this resulted in a self-sustaining model that did not require importation, which was now abolished.

The nation continued to evolve with a Southern agrarian society heavily dependent on slave labor while the North pursued industrialization. The constant debates over abolition simply shifted to how new territories and states would enter the Union … as free or slavers. This delicate balance was not sustainable and virtually everyone knew how it might end. It was almost inevitable that no permanent agreement was possible.

We know the implications of the great Civil War that was required to permanently stop slavery in the United States and the difficulties during the post-war reconstruction era. We can wonder about the progress in civil rights during the 20th century. But how do we explain why we are still so divided racially?

I was eager to hear the recent presidential debates, expecting discussions about climate change, health care, immigration, inequality and impeachment. Instead, issues like reparations, asylum, abortion and even forced busing in the 1970s took center stage. Had I dialed 2020 and ended up in 1820 in a Twilight Zone episode?

Maybe Pogo was right after all: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Intelligent Collector blogger JIM O’NEAL is an avid collector and history buff. He is president and CEO of Frito-Lay International [retired] and earlier served as chair and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell].