October 2020 – The Intelligent Collector Magazine

Presidential elections routinely deliver twists of fate

This Martin Van Buren rectangular sulfide sold for $11,250 at a February 2015 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

The Republic of Texas became an independent sovereign state on March 3, 1836. The United States recognized the legitimacy of the republic, but declined to annex the territory until Dec. 29, 1845, when it also became the 28th state. However, after the 1860 election of Republican Abraham Lincoln, the state of Texas, with a population that was about 30 percent Blacks (predominantly slaves), seceded from the Union. In 1861, Texas joined the Confederate States of America.

The well-known slogan “Six Flags over Texas” refers to the nations that governed Texas: Spain, France, Mexico, the Republic of Texas, the United States and the Southern Confederacy. Some historians claim that the last battle of the Civil War was fought in Texas at the Battle of Palmito Ranch on May 12-13, 1865. This may be technically correct, but it was after General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox (April 9) and President Jefferson Finis Davis dissolved the Confederacy (May 9). They also point out that the battle was a Confederate victory, which seems irrelevant.

Today, Texas is the second-largest state by area (Alaska is No. 1) and second largest in population (No. 1 is California).

The annexation of Texas occurred during the time the United States was rapidly expanding into the geographic area that would become the “Lower 48,” but deeply divided over the slavery issue that would plague national politics. The two-party system was still in an embryonic stage and hybrid political affiliations would result in unusual national elections.

A prime example is Martin Van Buren, vice president for Andrew Jackson from 1833-37 and the eighth man to serve in that position. In the election of 1836, he became the eighth president of the United States and the first to have been born (1782) after the American Revolution.

The election of 1836 was unusual since the recently formed Whig party was still sufficiently disorganized to the point they couldn’t agree on a single candidate to oppose Van Buren. In a highly questionable gamble, they decided to run four strong regional candidates with the hope they could deny Van Buren the opportunity to win a majority of the electoral votes and force the election into the House of Representatives. Despite having to run against four strong regional candidates, Van Buren won a majority of the electoral votes after winning a majority of the popular votes in both the North and South.

However, in a twist of fate, Van Buren’s vice president running mate, Richard M. Johnson, fell one electoral vote short when 23 Unfaithful Electors from Virginia refused to vote for Johnson due to their objections over his biracial marriage. So, for the first and only time (up till now), the United States Senate was required to hold a special election for the vice president. Johnson finally prevailed and served his four years as vice president for President Martin Van Buren. One could hope that this was an unfortunate anomaly, but they would be wrong.

When the Democrats met in Baltimore four years later in 1840 for their nominating convention, the incumbent president, Martin Van Buren, was renominated as expected. But VP Johnson ran into another political issue: the Democratic Party now considered him to be dead weight that would drag down the entire ticket. Even ex-President Andrew Jackson agreed and suggested they drop Johnson and replace him with a younger man … James K. Polk – the Speaker of the House. After the normal wrangling, they were still unable to agree and Martin Van Buren ran without a vice president!

This is only one of two elections (until 2020) where a major party did not have a vice presidential candidate on Election Day. The other was in 1912, when Vice President James S. Sherman (Republican) died six days before the election. You will not be surprised to learn that Martin Van Buren did not win the election and was replaced by William Henry Harrison as president and John Tyler, a Senator from Virginia, as vice president. Tyler took his oath of office on March 4, 1841. However, 30 days later, he was president of the United States when Harrison became the first president to die in office. Tyler was only 51 years old and the youngest president till that time.

Now skip forward 20 years to see how this sage evolved:

“At 4:30 a.m. April 12, 1861, a 10-inch mortar from Fort Johnson, on James Island, South Carolina, fired the first shot of the Civil War. Upon that signal, Confederate batteries from Sullivan’s Island, across Charleston Harbor, joined in. These were soon followed by a battery located at Cummings Point, which dominated Fort Sumpter from a distance of only a mile. The Civil War had begun.”

Epilogue: The hot heads in South Carolina were delirious with joy! They would chase these Yankees back North and whup their behinds in the process. President Jefferson Davis called up 100,000 troops to end this quickly. The old veterans yawned and predicted these cotton states would not last 30 days. Bull Run would demonstrate just how powerful the North was as they crushed these Southern rebels.

Welcome to your new job and shiny new home, Mr. Lincoln.

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].

Sir Walter Raleigh lived in an important time in England’s history

A 1937 Roanoke Half Dollar, a commemorative authorized to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the establishment of Sir Walter Raleigh’s North Carolina colony, sold for $43,200 at an August 2020 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

When I was (much) younger, we thought it was great fun to call a liquor store and ask: “Do you have Sir Walter Raleigh in a can?” If the clerk said yes, we’d shout, “Well, you better let him out! His wife is looking for him!”

This would be followed by raucous laughter and cheering at our clever mischief. What I’m sure we didn’t know was that Sir Walter Raleigh had been beheaded on Oct. 29, 1618, and the severed head given to his wife. She had it embalmed and kept it in a red bag for 29 years until she died.

In a perverse way, our childish phone call may have been technically correct – that his wife had been looking for “the rest of him,” but it was just a much earlier time. Even today, there still exists a controversy over whether the head and body have ever been reunited. Coincidentally, I’ve discovered that Sir Walter Raleigh tobacco is still available (online) in cans or pouches.

Walter Raleigh, born in 1552, lived in an important time in England’s history. As a flamboyant soldier, explorer and would-be colonizer, he owed much of his success to the favor of Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603). She was the daughter of Anne Boleyn, Queen of England from 1553 to 1536 and the second of King Henry VIII’s six wives. Their marriage ended abruptly when Anne was charged with treason, imprisoned in the Tower of London and subsequently beheaded. This was the start of the English Reformation when the Church of England revoked the authority of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church.

Queen Elizabeth fared far better than her mother and ruled for 45 years. She found the tall, handsome Raleigh of great interest and granted him a cornucopia of titles, estates and monopolies as well as the sole patent to place settlers in America. In addition, working on behalf of the Crown, he led privateering expeditions against the Spanish and played a role in the colonization of Ireland, setting in motion the formation of an English Empire.

He was rewarded with a large estate in Ireland and knighthood in 1585. Within a few years, he became captain of the Queen’s Guard. Sir Walter Raleigh was an early supporter of colonizing North America and invested in an expedition across the Atlantic. This was the first attempt to found a permanent English settlement in the New World. It ended up off the coast of modern North Carolina and was known as the Virginia settlement (in honor of Queen Elizabeth, the “Virgin Queen”). Some of the colonists returned to England, bringing potatoes and tobacco, two things generally unknown in Europe.

A second voyage was sent in 1590, only to find no trace of the colony, other than the word CROATOAN on a piece of wood. It would become known as the “Lost Colony of Roanoke Island.” Although historians claim that tobacco was present in Europe before Raleigh’s time, he is often credited with popularizing it in England, despite never making a single trip to America. His association with tobacco has been enshrined by the Beatles on their acclaimed White Album. John Lennon derided him in the song “I’m So Tired,” with the lyrics, “Although I’m so tired, I’ll have another cigarette, And curse Sir Walter Raleigh, He was such a stupid get.”

Sadly, by the time the Jamestown Colony was established in Virginia in 1607, Walter Raleigh would be a prisoner in the Tower of London. His jealous enemies in the Court falsely accused him of participation in a bizarre plot to kidnap King James. Regardless, he was charged with treason and condemned to die (in the usual fashion). However, he somehow convinced the king that he could lead an expedition to the famed El Dorado and make the king the wealthiest man on earth.

It turned out to be a fiasco. But Raleigh honorably returned to England, where the treason charge was reimposed and he was again condemned to death. On Oct. 29, 1618, Raleigh, now 66 years old, coolly stepped up to the scaffold and asked the executioner to test his blade to ensure it “had a good edge.” Smiling, he said, “This is sharp medicine, but is it a physician for all diseases?”

The following century, the French Revolution provided a better answer to the issue of paying the executioner a bribe to have a good, sharp edge and be sure it was done with one accurate stroke. They developed a mechanical beheading machine. On Oct. 10, 1789, physician Joseph-Ignace Guillotin proposed to the National Academy that decapitation be done with “a simple mechanism.” During the Reign of Terror (1793-94), 17,000 people – including King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette – had a chance to evaluate this improvement, but the results are generally from people observing rather than actual users of this technique. Dr. Guillotine was not one the participants.

Eventually, the American cowboy made further improvements whenever there was a rustler or back-shooter that needed a taste of frontier justice. All that was required was a rope and a tall tree. A sharp whack on the buttocks of a sturdy horse was usually sufficient. My favorite Western movie … Red River, with John Wayne and Montgomery Clift (1948) … ends on the issue of hanging. For trivia buffs, if you ever watched the Peter Bogdanovich movie The Last Picture Show, you know it was Red River!

Today’s business tycoons would be wise to not forget the past

A statement on Union Iron Mills stationary signed by Andrew Carnegie and dated Sept. 29, 1870, sold for $6,572 at an April 2013 auction.

By Jim O’Neal

It may come as no surprise to learn that virtually all the major cities in California were incorporated in the same year. 1850 was also the year California became the 31st state to join the United States. It is now the most populous state and supports a $3 trillion economy, which ranks No. 5 in the world … larger than Great Britain. However, you probably don’t know that, in terms of land area, the three largest cities are Los Angeles, San Diego and (surprisingly) California City.

This large chunk of land was formed in the boomlet following World War 2 with the intent of rivalling Los Angeles. Southern California was flourishing due to temperate weather, Pacific Ocean beaches and nearby mountains. It seemed logical that with a large influx of people, all that was lacking were lots of affordable housing, automobiles, streets, freeways and plenty of water to drink and as irrigation for the orange groves.

An ambitious land developer spotted this unique opportunity and bought 82,000 acres of prime California City land just north of the SoCal basin. He commissioned a high-power, architectural master-plan community with detailed maps of blocks, lots and streets. Next was hiring a small army of 1,300 salesmen to promote land sales to individuals, while building a 26-acre artificial lake, two golf courses and a four-story Holiday Inn.

This was land speculation on a grand scale; they sold 50,000 lots for $100 million before the market dried up. Some reports claim that only 175 new homes were actually built. The fundamental reason was that Southern California land development primarily evolved south along the coastline toward San Diego and the prime ocean-front property in Malibu, Long Beach and Orange County. Although the scheme failed, California City was finally incorporated in 1965. Today, the 15,000 inhabitants, many from Edwards Air Force base, are sprinkled liberally over 204 square miles.

A prominent No. 4 on the list is San Jose, which narrowly escaped being destroyed in a 1906 earthquake that nearly leveled nearby San Francisco. When we lived there (1968-71), it was a small, idyllic oasis with plum trees growing in undeveloped lots in the shadow of the Santa Cruz Mountains. There were nice beaches an hour away and for $14.15, PSA would fly you 400 miles to LAX in 45 minutes. In addition to the short drive to San Francisco with all its wonders, Lake Tahoe offered gambling, except when it snowed on the Sierra Nevada, a mere 200 miles away.

Nobody dreamed that the miracle of Silicon Valley was on the horizon and the enormous impact of the Internet would result in the boom-bust of the dot.com era in the late 1990s. The stock market was up 400% and then down 80%, wiping out most of the gains. However, post 2002, and the proliferation of the personal computer, there was another technology revolution that would create more wealth than anyplace in the history of the world.

Apple, Google, Facebook, eBay, Intel, Cisco and Instagram are at the core of a technological society that has revolutionized our economy and communications, our lives and, by extension, the world. Smart phones, search engines and social-media giants – plus a community of 2,000 tech firms and venture capitalists – have generated enormous fortunes. Electric vehicles have morphed into driverless cars and trucks that will result in more creative destruction. AI and robotics will obsolete large swaths of production and elevate privacy and anti-trust concerns that will rival early 20th century government action to break up trusts.

Consider when Andrew Carnegie sold his Carnegie Steel Company to J.P. Morgan in 1901 for an astounding $303 million. He became the richest man in America, surpassing even John D. Rockefeller for several years. JPM then merged it with two other steel companies to form the first billion-dollar U.S. company, U.S. Steel. While Rockefeller continued to expand his oil monopoly, Carnegie devoted the last 18 years of his life to large-scale philanthropy. He literally lived by his credo: “The man who dies rich dies disgraced.” President Teddy Roosevelt would lead the trust-busting that became necessary.

Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg, the Google gang and Jeff Bezos would be wise to heed George Santayana’s aphorism: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Especially when social media becomes more addictive than crack cocaine.