How Thanksgiving Made It's Debut michael streich

The first Thanksgiving, celebrated by Pilgrim colonists and Wampanoag Indians in 1621, was very different from the traditional Thanksgiving observed every November in contemporary America. Having barely survived their first New England winter, the Pilgrims, upon late year harvesting, set aside a day of giving thanks. They could not have accomplished this without assistance from the native peoples. Contemporary Americans interested in duplicating this first Thanksgiving meal will be in for a surprise. Among the several missing ingredients was the dominant part of each Thanksgiving feast, the turkey.

 

The First Thanksgiving Feast in 1621

 

Writers and food historians differ as to what specific foods were served at that first Thanksgiving. Anthropology professor Anthony Aveni, for example, writes that Pilgrim men were sent out to kill wild turkeys and other fowl for the feast. British historian Godfrey Hodgson, however, denies that wild turkey was part of the feast, citing the archeological absence of any turkey bones found at the early settlement as well as the inability to shoot turkeys with the type of weaponry used by the Pilgrims.

 

Fowl killed for the meal included duck and geese. Original source records from that early period all state that when the Wampanoag Indians arrived, they brought five slain deer. Thus, the first Thanksgiving featured venison, although it was cooked as a stew that included beans, corn, and squash. Robert Ellis Cahill, commenting on this first feast in his analysis of the first American cookbook from New England, states that Indians also brought oysters.

 

Contemporary Thanksgiving Foods not Found at Plymouth in 1621

 

The Pilgrims served no pumpkin pies, although pumpkins were grown by the native peoples. In later years, pumpkin slices were fried and then baked as a pie. But in 1621, the Pilgrims had no ovens. Additionally, sweet potatoes did not exist in New England. This also was missing at the first Thanksgiving.

 

Cranberries grew in abundance and the native peoples cooked them as a sauce for fish and meats. Europeans, however, would not learn about this until the 1670s. Further, in 1621, the Pilgrims had no sugar, necessary in the preparation of a Thanksgiving cranberry sauce.

 

Corn bread, however, was most likely present at the first Thanksgiving. According to Cahill, corn bread as well as corn on the cob was introduced by the Wampanoags at this first festival. Indian bread was made from roasted corn ears, something that could even be taken on long journeys. Beans were also prominently featured. Beans contained protein and came in a number of varieties. In future generations, New England would become famous for baked beans, usually made with the kidney bean.

 

The First Thanksgiving was a Celebration of the Harvest

 

The Pilgrims learned much from their Indian neighbors. Native peoples showed the Europeans how to use fish such as lobster to fertilize crops. Unlike Europeans used to the crop-rotation methods dating back to the Middle Ages, Indians in New England grew most of their crops together so that one type of plant would enhance the growth of others. Pumpkins, for example, grew on the outer rim, thus protecting corn, squash, and peas from weeds.

 

Aveni writes that, “Every agrarian culture sets its own time of the year aside for the purpose of giving thanks, usually at the beginning of the end of the harvest season…” European traditions, well known by Pilgrims, celebrated the harvest period in a variety of ways, many tied to either old pagan festivals or Christian adaptations. Anthropologists cite such harvest practices as nearly universal and trace them back to ancient times.

 

Celebrating an Authentic Pilgrim Thanksgiving

 

Americans desiring to replicate the first Thanksgiving must be prepared to give up apple and pecan pies, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and the centerpiece roast – the turkey. Substituting venison, which is sold at grocers like Whole Foods or can be ordered on line, cooked as a stew with the appropriate vegetables and served in a common bowl would be a courageous start.

 

Not all foods, however, need to be so different. In 1621, the Indians heated their corn, creating pop corn. According to Cahill, the Pilgrims had butter, saved from their voyage. Although rancid, the Indians doused the buttery liquid over their pop corn, perhaps the first time in America that anyone snacked on hot buttered pop corn.

 

Sources:

 

Anthony Aveni, The Book of the Year: A Brief History of Our Seasonal Holidays (Oxford University Press, 2003)

Evelyn L. Beilenson, editor, Early American Cooking: Recipes from America’s Historic Sites (Peter Pauper Press, Inc.,1985)

Robert Ellis Cahill, Sugar and Spice and Everything: A History of Food and America’s First Cookbook (Old Saltbox, 1991)

Godfrey Hodgson, A Great and Godly Adventure: The Pilgrims and the Myth of the First Thanksgiving (Perseus Books, 2006)

Jack Weatherford, Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World (Fawcett Books, 1988)

 Revolutionary Hamburg: The Nazi Socialists Win

michael Streich

During the 1920s and until February 1933, Albert Walter was one of the most prominent leaders of the German Communist Party and the head of an international maritime union that sought to achieve Comintern (Communist International) goals throughout the world. Working out of Hamburg, Walter developed a highly organized system of control and intelligence. His shift in alliance to the Nazis and subsequent work for German intelligence prior to the outbreak of war shocked the Communist Party.

 

The Early Years in Hamburg

 

According to Communist defector Richard J.H. Krebs (alias Jan Valtin), Albert Walter was made a political commissar of the Baltic fleet by Lenin himself during a visit to Moscow shortly after the end of World War One. Walter had been a seaman, held in the United States after German merchant ships were seized. Returning to Hamburg after the war, he rapidly rose in the ranks of the party.

 

German Communists had been very active in the maritime trade. Their success among sailors of the Imperial fleet led to the naval mutiny of 1918 that turned Bremen into a war zone. Recognizing the value of converting sailors, the Comintern established the International Propaganda and Action Committee of Transport Works in 1922 with Albert Walter at the head.

 

This committee inaugurated the “Hamburg Method” designed to document every ship, the Communist cells aboard that ship, and all ship destinations. Through this efficient system, propaganda was sent throughout the world and local “clubs” established to further party goals. The Committee was headquartered in Hamburg because of the city’s great marine industry.

 

Throughout the early twenties, Soviet Russian officers were smuggled into Hamburg to “train” activists, turning these young men into “Red Marines.” Additionally, the international propaganda efforts paid off: at its height, the Committee supported 72 newspapers and over 4,000 worldwide Communist cells. Albert Walter facilitated the funding for the massive operation.

 

The Immediate Years before Hitler

 

In 1930 Albert Walter traveled to Moscow to attend a conference, part of which was to organize a new Seamen International. Goals included the formulation of plans to effectively tie up capitalist shipping in the event of war. This resulted in the International of Seamen and Harbor Workers (ISH for short), headed by Albert Walter. Revolutionary action included espionage as well as organizing cells. ISH had operating cells in 22 countries and 19 colonies while supporting 47 international clubs, including both coasts of the United States.

 

Arrest and Capitulation

 

Albert Walter was arrested during the night of February 27^th, 1933 – the night of the Reichstag fire, along with other Communist leaders, and eventually imprisoned at Fuhlsbuettel Concentration Camp. Repeatedly tortured, he refused to break.

 

Richard Krebs, in his autobiography, states that Albert Walter had an “Achilles Heel,” which was his mother. Walter was utterly devoted to her. The Gestapo took him to a cell and allowed him to peer inside. Walter saw his mother and was told that if he did not work for the Gestapo, she would be tortured and executed.

 

This story conflicts with that told by members of his family who maintained that it was his friendship with the regional Gauleiter that got him out of the camp and convinced him to work for the Nazis.

 

After the War

 

Albert Walter was no stranger to politics and he was a survivor. In 1949 he became a member of the new German parliament, representing Hamburg on behalf of the conservative “Deutschen” Party (German Party) until 1957. He spent his retirement years in Hamburg, bequeathing his estate to the Seamen’s Union upon his death in 1980. This included a hand-carved chess set given to him by V. Molotov in the years before the war.

 

Sources:

 

Jan Valtin, Out of the Night (New York: Alliance Book Corporation, 1941)

Family archives

YES KARI LAKE, THERE IS A SANTA CLAUS...

and he's skipping your house! 

Anniversaries are part of on-going History. For example, November 9th was the day after the United States mid-term elections. But it was also the day of the Munich Beer Hall putsch that sought to bring Nazis to power in Bavaria but ended with Adolph Hitler going to jail where he wrote Mein Kamph. It was also, sadly, the anniversary of the Night of Broken Glass (Crystallnacht) during which Nazis killed many Jews and destroyed their businesses, homes, property, and places of worship. (For a very good treatment of the subject in film, watch Europa Europa. (Sub-Titles)

The Red Tide was not even the "Thin Red Line" (referring here to the Battle of Balaclava in the Crimea 1854.

Somebody had a great fall on November 9th and all the kings horses and all the king's men are still trying to put it together. GO FIGURE

 First Republican National Convention Nominates John C Fremont

 michael streich

In June 1856 the newly formed Republican Party nominated John C. Fremont on the second ballot to become the party’s first presidential candidate. Held in Philadelphia, a bastion of Democratic ideology, the near unanimous vote brought together a number of delegates formerly associated with other political parties to stand behind a party platform deploring “bleeding Kansas,” the extension of slavery into the territories recently acquired through the Mexican War, and the polygamous practices of the Mormons in Utah. John C. Fremont, a hero of the frontier and instigator of California’s Bear Flag Republic, was the standard bearer.

 

Philadelphia Hosts the First Republican National Convention

 

The choice of Philadelphia for the Republican National Convention helped to identify the party with the nation’s birth and with a sense of patriotism that highlighted Thomas Jefferson’s phrase in the Declaration of Independence, “…all men are created equal…” Philadelphia was the site of the 1787 Constitutional Convention and the first major city George Washington travel through to take the presidential oath in New York. In those early days of the Republic, Philadelphia citizens created a victor’s arch to greet the first president as citizens lined the streets to celebrate the birth of a nation.

 

In 1856, no such arches or celebrations took place. There were no parades with floats such as was seen in 1787 upon the completion of the Constitution. The Liberty Bell remained silent, reminding everyone in the city of brotherly love that the chief result of the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act was bloody warfare in the Kansas territory between pro-slavery interlopers and those following the principle of “free labor” and free men.

 

The First Republican Political Leaders in 1856

 

The men that formed this new party were former Whigs, free-soil Democrats, followers of Webster and Clay, Van Buren and Adams. Led by New York Senator William Henry Seward, who took his name out of contention, they rebuffed overtures from the American or Know-Nothing Party, fearful of losing support among immigrant groups, notably Germans. This would become the “party of Lincoln” four years later and become forever identified as the party that ended the evils of slavery. Old alliances were broken in 1856 as some of the nation’s most influential and well-spoken political leaders met in Philadelphia.

 

Pennsylvania was the home of former Democrat David Wilmot, now a judge and one-time author of the proviso that deeply fractured Congress, as well as Thaddeus Stevens, abolitionist congressman who would emerge through the Civil War as a leader of the Radical Republicans. Both men attended the convention. But Pennsylvania was also home to James Buchanan, the Democratic nominee for the presidency.

 

James Buchanan Leads the Democratic Party

 

Buchanan was untainted by “bleeding Kansas,” having served the United States as diplomatic envoy to Imperial Russia. His political past reflected a stellar resume. But Buchanan was closed wedded to the South and identified with foreign adventurism not popular with Northern political leaders, such as the proposed annexation of slave-owning Cuba. Buchanan had also floated the idea of U.S. intervention in the Crimean War, begun in 1853. Pennsylvania’s electoral votes would go to the Democrats, in part because Buchanan led the ticket.

 

In 1860 Abraham Lincoln attempted to assure the South that his nomination represented no attack upon slavery in the South. Slavery, where it already existed, was legally protected. The emotional rhetoric in 1856, however, could well have been a harbinger of the future for the South and the peculiar institution. Although the platform did not call for emancipation, Southerners would be hard pressed not to come to that conclusion after reading speeches by ardent abolitionists like Illinois’ Owen Lovejoy. Massachusetts Senator Henry Wilson referred to the Democratic platform in terms of the “slave interest of the country…”

 

John C. Fremont and the Ideals of the American Frontier

 

Fremont represented the frontier. He had led numerous expeditions west, raised the bear flag of California, became one of that state’s first senators, and emerged as a national hero. He was also the son-in-law of Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton, with enough political connections to capture the 1856 nomination. Unfortunately, he was also illegitimate, born out of wedlock, a fact that played upon the morals and Christian sensibilities of voters.

 

The Lessons of the First Republican National Convention

 

The first Republican National Convention was a prelude to 1860. Seward kept his name out of voting in 1856 in order to secure the 1860 nomination. Stephen A. Douglas may have done much the same thing in the Democratic Party. Both men would be disappointed, eclipsed by events largely the fault of the 1856 victor, James Buchanan. Buchanan defeated Fremont handily in 1856. Former President James Fillmore, candidate of the American Party, received less than 900,000 popular votes.

 

The Philadelphia Convention also enabled party leaders to chart a broader course. Having rejected a union with the Know-Nothings, many American party members would join the Republicans by the 1858 mid-term elections. Victory in 1860 may have been possible as a result of this earlier convention and the lessons learned: the rhetoric was milder and talk of abolition minimized.

 

Sources:

 

Paul F. Boller, Jr., Presidential Campaign From George Washington To George W. Bush (Oxford University Press, 2004)

Frederick Merk, History of the Westward Movement (Alfred A. Knopf, 1973)

R. Craig Sautter, Philadelphia Presidential Conventions (December Press, 2000)

Page Smith, The Shaping of America: A People’s History of the Young Republic, Vol. Three (McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1980)

Page Smith, The Nation Comes of Age: A People’s History of the Ante-Bellum Years, Vol. Four (McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1981)

 

 

 

SAVE THE SHIRE!

 Political Violence in the 1840's and 1850's

michael streich

 

Begun as a secret society in New York in 1849, the “Know Nothings” or American Party – as they appeared on national ballots in 1856, could be traced to the virulent nativist movement of the 1830s and 1840s. Fiercely anti-immigration, Know Nothings aimed their wrath at Irish and German migrants, many of whom were Roman Catholic. The Know Nothings would achieve some political success during the mid-term elections of 1854. In the 1856 general election led by former President Millard Fillmore, the party split over the Kansas-Nebraska Act but sill gained 871,731 popular votes and 8 electoral votes.

 

Know Nothing Success in the Mid 1850s

 

Paul Boller, a Professor Emeritus of History at Texas Christian University, attributes the Know Nothing name to an initial attempt at secrecy. “When members of the party were asked about the organization, they were directed to answer, ‘I don’t know…’” (93) As the party gained support, however, the secrecy gave way to public awareness. “America For Americans,” Know Nothings chanted, demanding a twenty-one year period of nationalization and the banning of any non-native born Americans from office-holding.

 

Irish immigrants, clustered in the larger urban centers, bore the brunt of nativist ire. Seen as charity cases dumped onto American shores by a British government willing to assist immigrants in order to lessen the pressure on poverty relief, the Irish were willing to work for lower wages in unskilled jobs, taking away work from native-born Americans. Fear of Catholicism also contributed.

 

German immigrants, flooding America after the failed 1848 revolutions, also attracted fear and suspicion. Like the Irish, they were Catholic and did not “keep the Sabbath” the way Protestants did. And Germans brought beer, a particular evil among New Englanders that still clung to Puritan values. Finally, Germans were perceived as socialists, identified with the various liberal movements in Europe.

 

These fears enabled the Know Nothings to achieve some success in the 1854 mid-term election. In both the North and the South, the party attracted former Whigs searching for new political homes. In his valuable study on 1850s American politics and the expansion of slavery, Harvard University Historian Frederick Merk (died 1977) isolates Whig strength in 1854 to New York, Pennsylvania, Missouri, and Vermont with small pockets in mid-Virginia, Illinois, Ohio, and Tennessee.

 

The Presidential Election of 1856

 

By 1856 the Know Nothing Party was beginning to disintegrate in the wake of the ill-advised Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Anti-Nebraska Know Nothings and Whigs “bolted” to support the Republican Party’s candidate, John C. Fremont. By now the “American Party,” the Know Nothings nominated former president Millard Fillmore.

 

Professor Merk’s analysis of the 1856 election demonstrates a remarkable change for the party over the two-year interval. The party had lost ground in Missouri and the Northeast. Small pockets of Know Nothing strength existed in every southern state except South Carolina. Fillmore’s 8 electoral votes came from Maryland, although his popular vote was 871,731. (407)

 

None of the national political leaders respected the Know Nothings. Stephen Douglas, in an October 6, 1855 letter to Howell Cobb, wrote that “Abolitionism, Know Nothingism, and all the other isms are akin to each other and are in alliance…against national Democracy.” In several other letters Douglas equates Know Nothingism with Abolitionism.

 

Abraham Lincoln, quoted by University of Massachusetts Professor Stephen Oates, preferred to live in Russia if the Know Nothings ever succeeded. According to Lincoln, “When the Know Nothings get control, it will read ‘all me are created equal, except Negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.’” (165)

 

Southern “bolters” from the Know Nothing Party would emerge in 1860 as the Constitutional Unionists, led by former pro-Union Whig John Bell. After 1856, the Know Nothings ceased as a viable political party, northern supporters joining the rapidly rising Republican Party. Yet another decade of xenophobic Americanism had come to an end, although it would not be the last time nativism dominated political extremes.

 

Sources:

 

Paul F. Boller, Jr. Presidential Campaigns From George Washington to George W. Bush (Oxford University Press, 2004).

Stephen A Douglas, The Letters of Stephen A Douglas, edited by Robert W. Johannsen (University of Illinois Press, 1961).

Frederick Merk, History of the Westward Movement (Alfred A. Knopf, 1978).

Stephen B. Oates, The Approaching Fury: Voices of the Storm, 1820-1861 (Harper-Collins, 1997).

Page Smith, The Nation Comes of Age: A People’s History of the Ante-Bellum Years Volume Four, (McGraw-Hill, 1981).