Historical – Page 27 – The Intelligent Collector Magazine

DeWitt Clinton’s Canal was Crucial to Our Nation’s Success

This hand-painted Stobwasser snuffbox picturing DeWitt Clinton sold for $5,312.50 at a December 2016 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

At the end of the American War of Independence in 1783, New York City was at a big disadvantage. First was the issue of loyalty due to the number of people who had maintained relationships with England during the war. This created a natural tension between the citizenry.

Second was its modest size. By 1790, the population was only about 10,000. Philadelphia, Boston and even Charlotte were all busier port cities.

However, New York state had a potentially important advantage: an opening to the West through the Appalachian Mountains. This mountain chain ran roughly parallel to the Atlantic Ocean and stretched about 2,500 miles.

Surprisingly, these modest hills and mountains had almost no usable passes, which created major trade and communication barriers to the lands west. Some even speculated that the people living there might decide to form a separate nation strictly out of necessity.

It was cheaper for farmers to ship their produce to New Orleans by using the Mississippi and Ohio rivers and then by sea around Florida and up to Charlotte or other eastern Atlantic ports. This was a 3,000-mile journey, but still less expensive than a direct route of 300 miles over the mountains that did not exist (yet).

This is when our old friend DeWitt Clinton, mayor of New York City and later governor, devised his plan for the Erie Canal, and in 1817, he received approval from the legislature for construction.

The Erie Canal not only secured the economic primacy of New York within the United States, but quite possibly the United States within the world. Without it, Canada would have undoubtedly evolved into the powerhouse of North America, utilizing the Saint Lawrence River to the Great Lakes region and the rich lands beyond.

The financial dominance of NYC would come later, but only due to the groundwork formed by the Erie Canal. DeWitt Clinton deserves to be elevated in our history of people who made significant contributions to our nation’s success.

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 Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell].

You Can Credit (Blame?) Taste Buds for Europe’s First Large-Scale Economic Network

Mendes Pinto left Portugal in 1537 in a fleet commanded by Vasco da Gama’s son, journeying for two decades before returning home. A rare first English edition of his journal, The Voyages and Adventures of Fernand Mendez Pinto, went to auction in March 2009.

By Jim O’Neal

After Columbus’ failed attempt(s) to find a new route to the Spice Islands, Vasco da Gama in 1497 (sailing for Portugal) decided to try a route around the bottom of Africa, despite winds and currents that prevented ships from simply following the coast line.

This route forced da Gama far out into the Atlantic Ocean and his ships were out of sight of land for as long as three months. Europeans had never sailed this far before and their first discovery was scurvy!

Two other bad side effects were the spread of syphilis to Asia (five years after Columbus’ crew apparently introduced it to Europe) and Gama’s infliction of extreme violence. Everywhere he sailed, he abused or slaughtered the people he encountered to the point where the whole Age of Discovery was marred by brutish violence.

Vasco da Gama never got to the Spice Islands. Like others, he thought the East Indies were just a little east of India, when in fact they were way beyond India. However, he was the first European to reach India by sea, thereby linking Europe and Asia for the first time by an ocean route.

Da Gama’s discovery was significant and paved the way for the Portuguese to establish a long-lasting colonial empire in Asia. It would take another century before England, France and the Netherlands could break this monopoly, but when they did, it opened an entirely new era of European imperialism in the East.

Spices never had the allure of gold and silver or the commercial potential of tobacco, indigo or sugar. The English and Dutch both struggled for control of the Spice Islands, but spices gradually faded from European cuisine because of changing tastes and the plethora of new foods introduced from Mesoamerica.

However, their decline should not obscure their role as the primary basis for the first large-scale economic network and the driving force behind the first expansion of Europe.

Somme Offensive was a Disaster for British, French Forces

A collection of 175 photographs relating to the ground campaigns of World War I went to auction in February 2016.

By Jim O’Neal

The Battle of Antietam on Sept. 17, 1862, in the Civil War was the bloodiest day in American history, with more than 22,700 killed or wounded.

However, it pales in comparison to the Battle of the Somme in WWI. The Somme is a river in northern France that travels through a gentle valley to the Bay of Somme in the English Channel. “Somme” is a Celtic word for tranquility.

The Battle of Somme was anything but.

In 1916, northern France was a prime battleground where French and English armies ran headlong into the Second German Army. With superiority in numbers, the French planned a battle of attrition. But, a massive attack by the Germans at Verdun shifted the planning to the British.

The British launched an offensive with 20 Divisions of English plus seven Divisions of French troops attacking along a 10-mile-wide front, expecting an overwhelming triumph. A critical flaw in their strategy was an over-reliance on their artillery.

From June 24 to July 1, 1916, over 3,000 British and French guns bombarded the Germans with such ferocity that the 750,000 allied troops in the trenches facing west were confident that there would be little opposition when they “went over the top” to attack.

The only issue was that the shelling warned the Germans what to expect next and, critically, the damage to their forces had been amazingly minimal.

When the Allies did attack, it only took a few minutes for the slaughter to begin. But, when it did, it changed British history and attitudes about war forever.

The Germans had not only built just trenches, but heavy dirt and concrete bunkers so deep that no amount of shelling could damage them! So when the Allies finally charged, in tight lines, German machineguns methodically mowed them down. “We didn’t even have to aim.”

The casualties were staggering.

From July 1 to Nov. 16, the Somme became the costliest battle in the history of the world. On the first day (alone), the British Army lost 57,450 troops – 20,000 of them dead. The combined total for the British and French was 1,250,000 dead and wounded.

So much for tranquility and English military planning.

Federal Government Crucial to Making ‘Manifest Destiny’ a Reality

After the Mexican–American War, the Whig Party nominated Army General Winfield Scott for president. This daguerreotype from his unsuccessful 1852 campaign realized $25,000 at a September 2015 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

In 1848, the U.S. Army was firmly encamped in Mexico City waiting for orders from Washington, D.C.

General Winfield Scott’s surprise amphibious capture of Veracruz was followed by a five-month, 200-mile campaign involving bloody hand-to-hand fighting and now they were positioned to conquer the entire country.

President James Polk resisted calls to annex “all Mexico” once they had prevented the sale of California to Great Britain. On Feb. 2, 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed and Polk wisely got the U.S. Senate to approve it. In return for $15 million, the U.S. got a Mexican cessation that included the present day states of California, Utah, Nevada, much of Arizona and New Mexico, plus portions of Wyoming and Colorado.

With a stroke of the pen, the U.S. was now 25 percent larger in size. Added to the annexation of Texas in 1845, this constituted an area larger than the Louisiana Purchase, which had doubled the size of the nation. In a brief span of 45 years, the United States was now a remarkable four times larger.

President Polk also created the Department of the Interior to assist with the assimilation of these vast territories.

Almost from the moment of independence, an expansionist strand of American thinking had envisioned a nation growing beyond the Ohio River into an empire stretching as far as the Pacific Ocean. In 1845, newspaper editor John Sullivan famously described a “manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent.”

What underpinned this vision was the effectiveness of the public land survey and the federal government’s establishment of a sequence of events to guide actions. First, it acquired land by treaty, sending surveyors to map and document the land. Then it ordered federal troops to clear out and subdue any resisting natives. It subsidized the construction of railroads to facilitate western migration. And finally, it had bureaucracies to manage the process. This included the Land Office, Geological Survey, Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the Forest Service.

The process was not smooth.

Nevertheless, by the end of the 19th century, the federal government had amassed great size, power and effective control “from sea to shining sea.”

America the beautiful!

Winston Churchill Rallied Britain to Its Finest Hour

This Winston Churchill inscribed photograph sold for $17,925 at an April 2013 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

In June 1940, Great Britain was in mortal danger. Germany had captured all of Western Europe and had begun preparations for an invasion of Britain. It was the most serious threat to their security since the Spanish Armada in 1588. If Hitler’s panzer divisions were able to cross the channel they would overwhelm the British Army.

The new Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, knew his county faced a daunting challenge. On June 18, he stood before the House of Commons: “The Battle of France is over … the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon it depends our British life and the long continuity of our institutions and our empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us.

“Hitler knows that he will have to break us on this island or lose the war … Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will say … ‘This was their finest hour!’ ”

Operation Sea Lowe or “Sea Lion” was the Nazi plan to invade Great Britain. The United States had not yet entered the war, so if successful, the Fuhrer’s “Thousand Year Reich” might become a reality.

German war planners fixed the invasion date for mid-September, despite Britain’s powerful navy being a serious threat to any invasion. The plan was for the German air force, the Luftwaffe, to clear the skies and then destroy the Royal Navy. Then the invasion could begin unimpeded.

The Luftwaffe was stationed in Norway, Belgium and France. It comprised 2,670 fighters and bombers, compared to only 640 British Spitfires. The Battle of Britain – the first large-scale battle to be fought exclusively in the air – was about to begin.

An epic air battle was fought in two successive phases with heroics on both sides. However, the Germans did not realize the Royal Air Force was actually in dire straits, but then suddenly something happened that changed the entire course of the war.

German bombers accidentally dropped a load of bombs on South London, the first times civilians had ever been attacked. Enraged British forces retaliated by bombing Berlin! This shocked the Germans, who had faithfully promised their people they were entirely safe from any war.

What followed was the final phase of the Battle of Britain.

Beginning on Sept. 7, 200 German bombers – each night – assaulted London using incendiary devices to create fires and high-explosive bombs to destroy structures. On Sept. 15, two massive waves of Germans attacked England, but were somehow repulsed by furious RAF counterattacks. Then another bomber force was repulsed and caused Hitler to first postpone the invasion, and then abandon the idea entirely.

So the threat of invasion was lifted, but the bombing intensified.

On the terrible evening of Oct. 15, nearly 500 German planes dropped 386 tons of explosives and an astonishing 17,000 incendiary devices on London proper. The “blitz” continued throughout the 1940-41 winter as German planes continued to haunt the skies each night.

A major attack on May 10, 1941, turned out to be the last one as five weeks later, Hitler decided to invade Russia. Most Luftwaffe squadrons on the Atlantic were redeployed to the Eastern front.

The British had not been broken and the Battle of Britain did indeed turn out to be “Their Finest Hour.”

The Abner Doubleday Myth and the Alexander Cartwright Reality

An 1839 Alexander Cartwright signed book, the earliest-known Cartwright autograph, realized $10,157.50 at a February 2015 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

The baseball Hall of Fame officially opened on June 12, 1939, in Cooperstown, N.Y. The Cooperstown name was drawn from James Fenimore Cooper, whose works of literature have become American classics in every sense of the word.

The inaugural HOF class was selected three years earlier in 1936 and consisted of Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, Babe Ruth and Honus Wagner. (Seven Cobb baseball cards were discovered this year in an old paper bag in rural Georgia after someone’s great-grandfather died. Experts at PSA estimate their value at “well into seven figures.”)

Now we know for sure that Abner Doubleday was a fine Civil War general and is credited with firing the first shot at the Confederates from Fort Sumter. However, his military record was tarnished when General George Meade replaced him at the Battle of Gettysburg. It was unfair, but Meade had been disdainful of Doubleday for a long time.

We also know that Doubleday obtained a patent on the little cable cars that “climb halfway to the stars,” as the venerable Tony Bennett sings about in his theme song “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” A wise man once told me … never live in San Francisco, but never live too far from it.

Now back to Doubleday, where the facts start to get iffy.

Abner Doubleday was credited with inventing baseball by a commission sponsored by A.G. Spalding, co-founder of the sports equipment company, in an effort to dispel rumors that the All-American game had a British pedigree. Spalding organized the Mills Commission to authenticate baseball as an American invention and it concluded, conveniently, the concept was devised by Doubleday.

Subsequently, the Mills report has been thoroughly discredited and a New York bank clerk, Alexander Cartwright, gets the honor … in addition to starting the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club, designing the diamond shape and even sewing the first baseball. Some of the rules he created are still in use.

For those who love baseball as I do, Harold Peterson’s The Man Who Invented Baseball (1973) is a treasure and highly recommended.

Abner Doubleday had a terrific life, but it did not include baseball.

Gallipoli Battle Established Australian, New Zealand Forces as Ferocious Fighters

The 1981 film *Gallipoli* starred Mel Gibson and was directed by Peter Weir. This Australian daybill went to auction in September 2014.

By Jim O’Neal

Mel Gibson fans remember him for his role in Gallipoli, which won him his second AFI film award in 1981 (his first was for Mad Max). However, the actual history of the Allied invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula in World War I (April 25, 1915-Jan. 9, 1916) is rarely mentioned.

Perhaps that is because in Great Britain it is regarded as an embarrassing military debacle. It is remembered primarily for the fact it almost cost a young Winston Churchill his career while resulting in him losing his job as the First Lord of the Admiralty. He was forced to resign in May 1916 as a consequence of the campaign’s utter failure.

For the triumphant Turks, Gallipoli was a glorious victory. It spurred the nationalist fervor that would lead to the founding of the Turkish Republic eight short years later. Gallipoli was also a personal triumph for Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who became the founder of the modern state of Turkey in 1923.

The Gallipoli campaign was a flawed response to the closure of the Dardanelles strait by the Ottoman Empire that limited Allied shipping to Russia. Churchill endorsed a plan that included a naval attack, followed by an amphibious landing on the peninsula. However, the Turks repelled the invasion and inflicted 250,000 casualties on Allied forces. Critics claim the evacuation of Allied troops from the shambles of the battlefield was the best executed phase of the entire campaign!

One bright spot was the performance on the battlefield by the Australians and New Zealanders. The combined ANZAC forces were so impressive that their reputation as ferocious fighters was permanently established. April 25 – Anzac Day – is solemnly commemorated in both countries and people make pilgrimages to pay their respects for so much bloodshed, even in a lost cause.

RIP.

The Shape of Cities and the Benefits of Buying and Holding

In 1815, John Jacob Astor (right) loaned future president James Monroe $3,400. Monroe stayed in debt to Astor throughout his presidency. This payment document “to the order of the Honbl James Monroe” and signed by Astor went to auction in October 2012.

By Jim O’Neal

Early land surveys were based on a simple principle: A shape that could be easily reduced to smaller parcels was much easier to sell. Merchant, fur trader and investor John Jacob Astor recognized this when he bought his first property in early 1800 on the lower East Side of Manhattan.

His American Fur Company made a fortune in the far west trading beaver pelts and he earned another by gobbling up land in Manhattan, spending $200,000 in a single year. He built a hoard that eventually grew to over 300 lots.

Land bought in 1800 for $50 an acre had a price tag of $1,500 by 1820 and Astor was a patient investor who made an enormous profit.

Underpinning the growth in both Manhattan land values and Astor’s personal wealth was a plan drawn up by the city in 1811 for New York’s future growth. They correctly chose rectilinear and rectangular streets instead of circles, ovals or stars.

By contrast, Washington, D.C., was superbly laid out by Pierre L’Enfant, with its avenues radiating out from the Capitol and White House. This required oval and star shaped lots, but this was a disaster since there was no market for odd-shaped land parcels. Most land developers and speculators lost money.

Critics of Astor were disgusted by his inability to disguise his greed. He shoveled food into his greasy mouth, scooped up peas and ice cream with a knife and wiped his hands on tablecloths. But his greed for land in Manhattan paid off big. When he died in 1848, his estate was valued at $25 million – 2½ times more than the next wealthiest Americans.

“Buy and hold” is a time-tested formula for success in land, coins, art and other rare collectibles. The Intelligent Collector is filled with similar amazing stories of wealth creation through shrewd, knowledgeable acquisitions – combined with patience.

Hope for Peace in the Middle East Has Been an Elusive Goal for a Long Time

Israel in 1967 minted a gold medal commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, which called for the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.

By Jim O’Neal

The Israeli-Palestine issue was back in the news recently as Vice President Joe Biden was visiting. There were also reports that the Obama administration was on the verge of creating another “Peace Talks Structure” to facilitate transition to the next U.S administration and chalk up another legacy achievement.

When Great Britain took control of Palestine after World War I, it promised to create a Jewish state (the Balfour Declaration). However, every wave of Jewish immigration was met with violent resistance from Palestinian Arabs.

Britain reneged on its promise and after World War II, turned the issue over to the United Nations. In 1947, the U.N. partitioned Palestine into two states, one Arab and one Jewish. Shortly afterward, Palestinian fighters attacked and the Israeli “War of Independence” began.

In Egypt, President Nasser first drove the British out of the Suez Canal and then joined with Syria to “push the Israelis into the sea.” By 1967, Israel was surrounded by hostile borders and Egypt, Jordan and Syria considered the destruction of Israel “a child’s game that would take four days.” The United Nations pulled out and the Egyptian Navy blockaded the Strait of Tiran.

However, on June 5, 250 Israeli fighter jets (supplied by the French) made a surprise attack on Egyptian airfields and destroyed half of their total Air Force – 200 fighters, bombers and helicopters. They dominated the skies, pushed the Egyptian Army back and then destroyed most of the Jordanian air power.

The Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan began calling it “The Six-Day War,” echoing the Book of Genesis. God made the world in six days, and Israel asserted itself as a nation in the same time.

The big difference was that God rested on the seventh day, but the Israelis have continued on the defensive every day since, even defeating Egypt and Syria in the 1973 Yom Kippur War and the Palestinians in the 1987-93 First Intifada.

Hope for peace in this tiny place on earth has been an elusive goal for a very long time.

Albert Einstein was Much More than a Scientist

This signed Albert Einstein photograph realized $17,500 at an October 2014 auction.

By Jim O’Neal

Mention the name Albert Einstein and instinctively the image of the iconic scientist with the unruly hair, pensive expression and the word “genius” spring to mind. As a theoretical physicist, his work on general relativity is a theory of gravitation that has evolved into a crucial tool in modern astrophysics and is foundational for current “black hole” research.

In popular culture, his mass-energy equivalence formula of energy equals mass multiplied by the speed of light squared (E = mc²) is generally regarded as “the world’s most famous equation.”

Then, of course, there was Einstein the mortal man.

This aspect is understandably less well known despite his empathy for mankind and the practical application of both his intellect and celebrity to help improve the world and its inhabitants. He was an avowed pacifist who considered war a “disease” and even advocated for a global democratic government that had control over the nation-states (e.g. Nazi Germany).

He viewed racism in the United States as a multi-generational problem and joined the NAACP as an activist to help cure “America’s worst disease.”

An earlier incident in 1925 even led to a series of related activities that eventually helped defeat the Germans in World War II. While reading a local German newspaper, he saw a tragic story about a couple that had died from leaking gases used in early refrigerators.

Einstein collaborated with fellow physicist Leo Szilard and they received patent #1,781,541 for an improved, safer refrigerator. Although they later sold it to Electrolux for 3,150 DM ($10,000), Einstein’s basic motive was to simply improve living standards for common people. BTW, he later invented a hearing aid for the same reason.

When Szilard immigrated to London, he ran across a book by H.G. Wells, The World Set Free, which describes an invention (unnamed) that could accelerate the process of radioactive decay, producing bombs which “continue to explode for days on end.” This inspired Szilard to develop the concept of a nuclear chain reaction in 1933 and then he patented the idea of a nuclear reactor with the famous Italian physicist Enrico Fermi. Basically, he had a patent on the first atomic bomb.

But, in 1936 Szilard sold/assigned his chain-reaction patent to the British Admiralty to ensure its secrecy from the Germans or others considered untrustworthy.

He later suspected the Germans had a clandestine nuclear weapon project and on the eve of World War II drafted a letter to FDR to alert him to the potential development “of extremely powerful bombs of a new type.” He got Einstein to endorse it and to urge the United States to begin similar research.

This inevitably led to the Manhattan Project, which preempted the Germans and saved the world in the eyes of most experts.

Although Einstein supported the development of nuclear weapons to defend the Allies, he denounced the use of nuclear weapons as an offensive force. He never renounced his resolve as a pacifist or as an agnostic.

In 1999, Time magazine named Albert Einstein their choice as “Person of the Century.”

I hope we get one for this century … soon.