Transcript

1.22.26 · Smithsonian Magazine

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Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Rebecca Shore for Radio Eye and to
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day I will be reading the Smithsonian Magazine dated January
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February twenty twenty sixth As a reminder, Radio I is
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a reading service intended for people who are blind or
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have other disabilities that make it difficult to reprinted material.
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Please join me now for the first article titled The
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Time When New York City seriously considered seceding from the
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United States by Colin Woodard, a divisive presidential election threatened
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to destroy the Union. It was eighteen sixty and Abraham Lincoln,
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on record as being morally opposed to the enslavement of
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human beings, had swept nearly every county in the Northeast
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and upper Midwest and lost every single one south of
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the Mason Dixon line. He'd also lost every county in
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and around New York City, fracturing the nation's largest state.
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The city's mayor for nine Wando Wood decided to act.
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Wood could see the Union was coming to an end.
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Expecting the break up to be peaceful, he wanted his
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metropolis to seek its independence as well, ending an unhappy
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two century long marriage between the Dutch founded city and
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the New England settled Upstate New York rival cultures that
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had never seen eye to eye. While other portions of
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our state have unfortunately been imbued with the fanatical spirit
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which actuates a portion of the people of New England,
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the City of New York has unfalteringly preserved the integrity
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of its principles in adherence to the compromises of the Constitution.
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He would later say. The real danger to the city,
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he added, wasn't the Confederacy, but hostile upstate lawmakers in Albany.
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Before November eighteen sixty was out, Wood was holding private
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secession planning meetings at his sprawling country estate on what's
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now the Upper West Side, with invitations going out to
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real estate tycoon William Astor, financier August Belmont, and Democratic
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Party hancho Samuel Tilden. Financier George Law, one of Wood's
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most powerful allies, was dispatched to Washington to rally the
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city's congressional delegation to support the plan, while worried officials
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in Albany tasked Metropolitan Police Superintendent John Kennedy with gathering
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intelligence on the mayor's plans. Reporters at newspapers opposed to
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the mayor began receiving leaks that Wood might lead the
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city out of the Union. By December tenth, it was
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all out in the open. On that day, pro secession
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Congressman Daniel Sickles delivered a fiery speech on the U. S.
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House floor. Secession, although it may begin at the South,
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will not end at the south. He told his colleagues.
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There is no sympathy now between the city and the
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State of New York, nor has there been for years.
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When this union is no more, we will not consent
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to remain the submissive appendage of a Puritan province. Sickles added,
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I tell you our imperial city will repel the hateful
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cabal at Albany, which has so long abused its power
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over her, and as a free city, opened wide her
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gates to the civilization and commerce of the world. James Buchanan,
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the lame Duck President, was alarmed, writing a friend that
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no adequate cause exists for the extent and violence of
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the existing panic in New York through that momentous winter.
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As the Deep South seceded, the Confederate States of America
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was created, and Lincoln was inaugurated, it seemed Wood's secession
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plan might work. Many in the metropolis hoped it would.
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Merchants feared staying with the Union would mean losing the
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city's lucrative Southern trade. But the most most urgent concern
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was that Greater New York City, a polyglot, multi ethnic,
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commercially minded, raucously tolerant society founded by the Dutch, would
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be trapped in a state and rump federation dominated by
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Yankees of Puritan New England origin, with their moralistic missions,
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assimilative predilections, and growing hostility to drinking, Catholicism and slavery.
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Had the South Carolinians not fired on Fort Sumter in
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April eighteen sixty one, New York City might well have
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become its own country, a Singapore like city state on
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the Hudson. New York has always been a state divided
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between two colonial era cultures whose peoples have looked askance
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at one another since the seventeenth century. The towns and
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cities on Manhattan, western Long Island, the Hudson Shore of
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New Jersey, and in the lowermost Hudson Valley were the
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legacy of the New Netherland colony, with Dutch names scattered
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from Harlem, h a r l e M and Brooklyn
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b r e u k e l e n To, Hoboken, Lacabas,
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Flatbush and Staton s taa t e n Island e
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y l A n d T. For decades after its
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sixteen twenty four foundation, the colony was ruled by a
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global corporation, the Dutch West India Company, and served as
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an entropos between Virginia, New England and the Iroquois Confederacy.
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From the start, it was diverse, populated by French speaking Walloons,
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Scandinavian Lutherans, Irish and Portuguese Catholics, Sephardic Jews, Anglican and
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Quaker English, Free and Enslaved Africans, and at least one
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Muslim farmer for Morocco. The Dutch were rarely in the majority,
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even as their signature architecture, stepped gable roofs crowned with
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red tile, defined New Amsterdam, the settlement at the tip
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of Manhattan Island. Their government promoted trade and issued democracy,
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while tolerating cultural differences, religious dissenters, freedom of inquiry, and
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human bondage. At a time when social status was largely
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a matter of birth, New Netherlands local elite were self
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made men. The first Vanderbilt, jan Ertzen van der Bildt,
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was an indentured servant. The founder of the Van Cortland
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dynasty was a soldier, and the van Burens started as
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tenant farmers. After an English victory over the Dutch in
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sixteen sixty four, New Netherland became New York, but greater
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New York City, including northern New Jersey, western Long Island,
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and the Lower Hudson Counties, remained culturally Dutch, and the
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language was dominant there for another century. By eighteen sixty one,
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the city had become what Old Amsterdam had been two
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centuries earlier, a cosmopolitan center of banking, publishing, and trade,
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and a haven for people persecuted in neighboring polities. Upstate
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New York, by contrast, had been settled by New Englanders.
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Hundreds had moved south to infiltrate the contested intercolonial border
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before sixteen sixty four, and afterward they came in numbers
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that alarmed the Dutch, who had long dismissed their provincial
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northern neighbors as John Coss, a derogatory epithet that was
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essentially the Dutch version of cheesehead and which sounded like
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Yankees to the English. These upstate Yankee colonists were the
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descendants of the early Puritans, who believed they had been
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chosen by God to create a more perfect society in
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the New England wilderness. Unlike the Dutch seventeenth century, New
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Englanders were decidedly monocultural, obsessively moralistic, and notoriously intolerant. Hanging
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Quakers attacked Indians and driving out to centers. By the
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early nineteenth century, the Puritans Yankee descendants had become convinced
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their mission was to consummate the ideals in the Declaration
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of Independence. By the ante bellum period, the New England
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founded settlements across the northern seven eighths of New York
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State weren't just part of a greater New England. They'd
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become the primary stronghold of its messianic social projects. This
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was the Burned Over District center of the utopian religious
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awakening that produced Mormonism, Seventh Day Adventism, and the Free
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Love Oneida community. The women's suffrage movement started in Seneca Falls,
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and some paths of the underground railroad terminated on the
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shores of Lake Erie. The leaders of these rival cultural zones,
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the anything goes Dutch space and the moralistic, orderly Yankee one,
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did not see eye to eye on either slavery or multiculturalism.
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Tensions only increased as large numbers of Irish, German, and
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other foreign immigrants arrived in the city, and the eighteen
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fifty Fugitive Slave Act, which forced citizens of free states
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to participate in capturing enslaved people seeking freedom, stirred abolitionist
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sentiment in the rest of the state. New York City
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and its mayor, tolerant of slavery and diversity alike, aligned
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with the southern dominated Democratic Party. Upstate New York, which
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then had more people, joined Lincoln's new anti slavery Republican
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Party while taking measures to bring the unruly metropolis to heel.
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In eighteen fifty seven, the upstate Yankees used their legislative
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majorities and governorship to severely restrict when, where, and by
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whom liquor could be sold in the state, while taking
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over control of the city's metropolitan police, port, and major
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public works brought. In response, Mayor would created his own
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rival police force, which released suspects arrested by the Metropolitans
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When the latter arrived to arrest Wood himself for inciting
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a riot, Wood's men engaged them in a violent battle
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on the steps of city hall. Wood and his allies
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therefore saw the impending collapse of the Union as an opportunity.
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They knew there was no appetite for open rebellion. New
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Yorker's beef was with the state, not the federal government,
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and put their hopes in a peaceful dissolution. If the
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Confederacy is broken up, the government is dissolved, and it
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behooves every distinct community as well as every individual, to
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take care of themselves, would explained. On January seventh, eighteen
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sixty one, the mayor made his move, telling city aldermen
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that New York City would proclaim its independence. Writing in
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reference to the New England colonized upstate, asked why may
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not New York disrupt the bands which bind her to
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a corrupt and venal master. Instead, he argued the city
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would form its own city state, pointing to examples such
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as Hamburg, Frankfort, Bremen, and other Hanseatic states in what
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would become Germany. Later, amid the gloom which the present
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and prospective condition of things must cast over the country.
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New York, as a free city, may shed the only
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light and hope for a future reconstruction of the nation,
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he declared. Southerners loved the mayor's proposal, with Virginian writer
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George Fitzhugh lauding it as a chance to escape the immoral, infidel,
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agrarian free love democracy of Western New York and the
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rule of Puritans, the vilest, most selfish, and unprincipled of
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the human race. At least three members of the city's
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congressional delegation were for it. Three daily newspapers, The Express,
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day Book and Daily News, were enthusiastic, as were many
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merchants and bankers. Secession by peaceful and legal means, the
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Daily News editorialized as worthy of the attention of every
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New Yorker. But South Carolina's shocking April twelfth attack on
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Fort Sumter, a federal military base protecting Charleston's harbor, incensed
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most everyone living north of the Mason Dixon line, effectively
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ending the city's move for independence. Popular opinion in New
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York City swung behind Lincoln's call for troops to put
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down the rebels. Wood directed citizens to set aside partisanship
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and rallied to the restoration of the Constitution and the Union.
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Sickles raised four regiments of soldiers, and as a major
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general at Gettysburg, lost a leg and earned the Medal
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of Honor fighting the Confederates. Charlestonians had entered a Gotham's
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bid for nationhood, but the dream of escaping Albanyese control
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continued for more than a century. Down state legislators repeatedly
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submitted bills to let the metropolis become its own US state.
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Their upstate colleagues, who controlled state politics by force of
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population until the mid twentieth century, laughed them off. One
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of two nineteen nineteen plans proposed a new state of
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Greater New York to include Long Island and seven counties
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on the Lower Hudson, which corresponded almost exactly with the
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old Dutch influence zone. A nineteen fifty nine effort was
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endorsed by the City Council twenty three to one, and
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a nineteen sixty six statehood plan was floated by State
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Supreme Court Justice emeritus Samuel Hofstadter. Author Norman Mahler made
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an unsuccessful nineteen sixty nine mayoral run on a secession platform,
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but the high water mark came in nineteen seventy one,
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when Representative Bella Absod's fifty first State Plan had the
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support of four of her House colleagues, seven state senators,
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thirty three Assembly members, twenty two city councilors, and three
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borough presidents. The effort died after a mayoral commission found
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the city's balance sheets would be hurt. By the nineteen seventies,
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though the balance of power had shifted, Metropolitan New York's
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population growth outstripped upstates as de industrialization hammered Buffalo, Syracuse
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and Rochester. Upstate pride and resentment were encapsulated in the
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political writing of Native son Bill Kaufman, Couch's and visionaries
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Jemima Wilkinson and the Fox Sisters and Frederick Douglas took
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root in our soil. Shanty. Irishmen built the Erie Canal.
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Garrett Smith bought John Brown his guns, he argued in
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a nineteen ninety one essay in The Crooked Like Review.
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Give us our own state, he added, and we just
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might give America another Bob Taft or William Jennings Bryan.
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Since the late nineteen nineties, bills to divide the Empire
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state have come from upstate lead leaders at a rate
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of nearly one a year, only to be killed in
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committee by Gotha Mites one perennial sponsor. State Senator John R.
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Coole Junior once said his Finger Lakes area constituents often
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asked him, why don't you just cut the city of
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New York off and let it drift out to the sea.
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The answer, of course, is that New Amsterdam no longer
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sees the need to leave. Accompanying this article names to
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know who was Fernando Wood born in June fourteenth, eighteen
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twelve in Philadelphia. Wood served as Mayor of New York
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City twice and for three separate stretches in the House
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of Representatives. He vociferously opposed abolition and worked to declare
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New York an independent city state, which he suggested calling
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tri Insula. Also with this article breaking Away. Before the
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Civil War, secession efforts were plentiful and often based on
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ideals of equality by Sonia Anderson the Republic of Texas
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back in eighteen twenty one, Spain's New World Colonies, an
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area that stretched from modern northern California to the Midwest
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and down to Guatemala. And beyond fought a war of independence,
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becoming the first Mexican Empire. Its land attracted white colonists
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from the United States, many of whom established themselves in Austin,
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a colony created by Virginia born Stephen F. Austin in
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Mexican Texas, But in eighteen thirty three, Mexico elected Antonio
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Lopez de Santa Ana, a constitution scrapping president whom the
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colonial U. S. Texans refused to abide. Clashes ensued, and
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in eighteen thirty six, Texas seceded from Mexico, declaring independence.
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The scrappy and outnumbered Texans fought against Mexico, memorably suffering
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at the Alamo and One. The Republic of Texas remained
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an independent nation for nine years until it was adopted
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as a U. S state the Anti Slavery Society. By
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eighteen thirty nearly every northern state had abolished slavery, and
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anti slavery coalitions were emerging across the region. With the
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South unwilling to give up bondage, abolitionists started talking secession.
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They didn't want to be joined with states whose economies
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thrived on moral bankruptcy. In eighteen forty four, Massachusetts, William
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Lloyd Garrison, leader of the American Anti Slavery Society, adopted
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the motto no union with slaveholders and encouraged abolitionists not
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to vote or participate in the federal government. In eighteen
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fifty seven, anti slavery activists of Worcester, Massachusetts, held a
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Disunion convention, at which they discussed the practicability, probability, and
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expediency of a separation between the free and slave states.
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Similar meetings were held that year in other states, but
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of course these abolitionists secession ambitions were never realized. The
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South beat them to it Hertford Convention. In late eighteen fourteen,
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a group of peeved New Englanders the Federalists, met in
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secret to discuss their grievances with President James Madison. Amid
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the War of eighteen twelve, British forces had occupied parts
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of the northeast coast, and delegates from Rhode Island, Massachusetts,
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New Hampshire, Vermont, and Connecticut complained of shouldering unfair financial
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and military birds for a conflict they deemed unnecessary. In Hartford,
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they drafted constitutional amendments to limit conscription embargoes and the
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South's political overrepresentation. Some radical delegates suggested that New England
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secede from the Union. Critics slampooned them as tools of
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King George the Third. Just as the Convention was wrapping
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up in January eighteen fifteen, a war ending treaty was
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on its way from Europe, and American forces prevailed in
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a final battle in New Orleans. As the crux of
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their descent dissolved, so too did the Federalist Party. Next,
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Myles Davis emerged from Middle America to become the Picasso
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of jazz and taught us all how to be cool.
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As we approached the one hundredth anniversary of the birth
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of a jazz legend, looked back on the staggering impact
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of his work and its continued relevance. By Ted Shinman
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Myles Dewey Davis the Third's first memory was a blue
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hot flame on the family stove. I felt fear, real fear,
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he recalled in his nineteen eighty nine autobiography. He was
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also exhilarated that blue, he said, presented an invitation a challenge. Afterward,
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I have always believed that my motion had to be forward,
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away from the heat of that flame. Davis was born
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to a prosperous middle class family in Alton, Illinois, on
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May twenty sixth, nineteen twenty six. The next year, the
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family moved twenty miles or so down the Mississippi River
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to East Saint Louis, or East Boogie, as it came
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to be known because of its crackling music scene. Davis's father,
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Myles Davis Junior, was a dental surgeon. His mother, Cleota
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Henry Davis, was a violinist and pianist who tried to
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steer her son toward classical music. But Davis, the second
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of three children, heard more fire in jazz. He started
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cornett at ten, got his first trumpet at thirteen, and
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met his first girl friend, Irene Birth, when he was
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fifteen or sixteen. The Davises didn't approve because she came
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from the goose Hill neighborhood with its slaughter houses and
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stockyards and its smell of burnt meat and hair. Davis recalled,
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the two fell in love, and Birth provided crucial encouragement.
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In nineteen forty three, she persuaded Davis to try out
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for the Blue Devils, a band where he played what
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he called hot dance music and did his first arranging.
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The next year he left for the Juilliard School, and
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Berth and their first child, Cheryl, soon joined him in
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New York. Davis was a soso student in Juilliard, spending
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nights in the clubs from the village to Harlem. Drawn
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by the flame of beebop. According to his biographer John Sved,
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he was keen to meet the two archaet of this
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rash new style, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and especially saxophonist Charlie
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Byrd Parker. Davis buttonholed Parker outside the heat Wave, a
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club on one hundred forty fifth Street, and by the
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end of nineteen forty five Davis had dropped out of
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school and scored a spot in his idol's quintet. He
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likely recorded more trumpet with Parker than even Gillespie did,
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and he made substantial contributions to bebop. But he wanted
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to blaze a path of his own, and did so
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by bringing an intimate attention to tone and phrasing. I
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prefer a round sound with no attitude in it, like
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a round voice with not too much tremolo and not
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too much bass, David said, for further understatement, he sometimes
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used a partial mute in the belt of his trumpet.
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At the nineteen forty nine sessions later released as Birth
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of the Cool, the Miles Davis sound emerged forthright, eloquent
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and plaintive, as if lamenting that this was the closest
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you could get on trumpet to the human voice. It
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was urbane, perceptive, always ready, but never hurried. In short,
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to use a word whose full meaning we owe to Davis,
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it was cool. While Berth and Davis never married, they
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had three children. By nineteen fifty, bills mounted, and Davis's
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ascent slowed as he served a heroine habit. He kicked
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dope a few times, suffering days and nights of sweats
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and chills. In nineteen fifty four, he got clean in earnest.
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The next year, Columbia Records signed him and bent its
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marketing apparatus toward making him a superstar, and Davis formed
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a breathtakingly versatile quintet that included John Coltrane on tenor sax,
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and boy could Davis work a band? As the great
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critic Stanley Crouch wrote, this historic combo stoked fire as
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ably as it could rooned. In the two sessions released
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in nineteen fifty nine as Kind of Blue, Davis introduced
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unfamiliar melodic scales into jazz, and what might have been
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an obscure modal experiment instead became the biggest jazz album
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ever recorded. Davis took the wartime sound of bebop and
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turned down the volume in heat without sacrificing intensity. He'd
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made a new and beautiful kind of Cold War art,
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bringing acoustic jazz to such a point of perfection that
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when he introduced electric guitars a decade later, many critics,
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especially Crouch, treated it as the vilest haresay. Ever, they
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were wrong. Davis's usion bands were often brilliant, but so what.
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Davis trained as a boxer for fitness and for protection.
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He was obsessed with Jack Johnson and Sugar Ray Robinson
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and imitated them outside the ring, dressing sharp and driving
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fancy cars. He was legendary for the epithets he delivered
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in his frying rasp. To say the very least, his
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relationship with Birth and his three subsequent marriages to Francis Taylor,
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Betty Maybrey, and Cecily Tyson, each an artist in her
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own right, didn't survive his tempers that anger was bound
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up with the prejudice. Davis battled all his life. He
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refused to play segregated shows, and was once beaten and
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arrested for talking back to a white policeman outside a
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club where his name was on the marquee. He also
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battled brutal health problems, particularly toward the end. Despite tremendous pain,
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he maintained a burning curiosity for new music, creating new
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fusions whenever he played. On September twenty eighth, nineteen ninety one,
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he ran out of breath. His last studio work, du Bop,
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a hip hop inflected album, released the following year to day,
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one hundred years after his birth. Some folks still resent
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Davis for being hard to pin down musically. Many purists
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hate his seventies music. Why would such a genius debase
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himself with rock? Many more hate his eighties music? Why
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was Myles Davis covering Cindi lauper O Ludara, a coronetist
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whose son, best known as Naz, became one of the
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most influential rappers in history. Put it this way, Miles
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was dealing with all that America had to say. He
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makes you a true American and a fun fact, what
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were Miles Davis's nicknames? Davis was known alternately as the
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Prince of Darkness and the Sorcerer. Both nicknames evoked the
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trumpeter's mercurial, uncompromising, near omnipotent approach to music and to life.
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And finally, ask Smithian, you've got questions, You've got experts question,
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did James Madison switch over from the Federalists to the
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Democratic Republicans? The answer is from Sid Hart, curator of
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America's President's National Portrait Gallery. No. Though Madison advocated a
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stronger national government, and though he was an author of
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the series of articles published as the Federalist Papers, he
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was never a member of the Federalist Party. When America's
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first political parties formed during the Washington administration, Madison and
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Thomas Jefferson helped form the Democratic Republicans. In fact, Madison
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opposed the Federalists, who were led by Alexander Hamilton, John Adams,
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and John Marshall, in his insistence that the central government's
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powers remain limited and enumerated. This concludes readings from the
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Smithsonian Magazine for to day. Your reader has been Rebecca Shore.
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Thank you for listening, and have a great day.