BELIEVE WHAT YOU WANT--IF YOU DARE!

By Edwin Cooney

Early last week, a USC valedictorian was denied the right to speak at her upcoming graduation. A Muslim from Southwest Asia, this obviously brilliant young lady was expected to express pro-Palestinian sympathies in her address. Apparently, pro-Jewish students belonging to a group call “Trojans for Israel” effectively convinced the “powers that be” at USC that violence might well be the result if pro-Palestinian sentiments were too powerfully expressed during this young lady's remarks.

Of course, we've had too much violence lately here in America as people exercise their right to own guns, counter religious and political beliefs, and advocate for social and political legitimacy both at home and abroad. Even as I write this, word has just come in that a man near the trial of former President Donald Trump set himself afire as a likely advocate for or opponent of Mr. Trump. What you and I believe is legitimately our personal business until — like the fist we might propel toward someone’s nose makes contact with its target — it then becomes far more than private.

In April 2024, American political commentary may contain much circumstantial respect and legitimacy, but in order to be taken constructively, legitimacy must be heard in an atmosphere of acceptance and openness. Our present intolerance for ideas and beliefs counter to our own comfort endanger everyone's liberty especially our individual liberty personal to our natural hopes and dreams.

Ever since I read Thomas Jefferson's first inaugural address which was delivered back on Wednesday, March 4th, 1801, I've appreciated that vital distinction Jefferson expressed that enables democracy to work:

“…bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression. Let us, then, fellow citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things… every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.”

Although the tranquility of Jefferson's 1801 Inaugural may be noted, such notation doesn't nullify the truth or depths of Jefferson's democratic ideal.

Yes, indeed, this young valedictorian ought to be heard, although it doesn't require that her beliefs necessarily be valid or applicable to the current crisis.

I'm certain that, one way or another, we will ultimately tune into one another's humanity.

That has to happen!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

MR. JEFFERSON, VIRGINIA’S GENIUS

By Edwin Cooney

Thomas Jefferson wasn't merely born in Virginia, he was OF Virginia. It's important to remember when evaluating people who lived throughout the Eighteenth Century and even into the late Nineteenth, that most men and women were born and died within about 15 square miles between those two points of mortal transition. It's also important that we who judge the characters of historic figures keep in mind that the one factor we all have in common is that we have no control of the era into which we were born. Hence, Mr. Jefferson was born a slaveholder and ultimately had to educate himself as to the social significance of that "peculiar institution." Finally, it's significant to note that election to the state legislature was as great an honor as election to the federal Congress. A number of congressmen including James Madison went with honor, rather than disgrace, from Congress back to the state legislature's House of Delegates from 1799 to 1800.  

Thomas Jefferson was born on Tuesday, April 13th, 1743 to Peter and Jane Randolph Jefferson. Peter Jefferson was a planter, a sheriff, and a justice of the peace. He died in 1757 when Thomas was 12. Little is known about his mother Jane except that she came from the Randolph family which would produce Chief Justice John Marshall (his second cousin once removed). However, Jefferson came to dislike him as a Federalist and as a jurist. Jane died of a stroke in 1776 just before Jefferson wrote The Declaration of Independence.

Although no friend of royalty, Jefferson was a descendant of King David I of Scotland (c.1084 to 1153). Born the son of a planter and surveyor, Jefferson’s real passion was science, even more than politics. His home in Monticello was loaded with his inventions: beds that folded into the wall to allow for maximum use of space, dumbwaiters that moved supplies from the cellar into the main part of the house, a clock built into the wall with inside and outside faces — these were all Jeffersonian inventions. Fauna and flora were of vital interest to Jefferson, the planter.

Physically, Jefferson was tall (6 foot two and a half) and thin with a pointed chin and the lips. As a youth, he was heavily freckled with reddish brown hair which became sandy as his hair grayed. 

In his book Complete Book of U.S. Presidents, William DeGregorio writes that as a politician Mr. Jefferson lacked two essentials: a thin skin and a capacity for oratory. His legal background and writing skills were certainly more than adequate to write the Declaration of Independence and his 1785 book “Notes on the State of Virginia.” However, he was a poor speaker with a tendency to mumble his words and to slouch while speaking.

Between 1760 and 1762, Jefferson attended William and Mary College. He studied law and was admitted to the Virginia Bar in 1767. Between 1769 and 1774, Jefferson was a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses. Elected to the Continental Congress, he served in 1775 and 1776. Between Wednesday, June 11th, and Saturday, June 28th, 1776, he wrote the Declaration of Independence without aid of reference book or pamphlet. 

Back on Wednesday, January 1st, 1772, Jefferson married Martha Wayles Skelton, a widow. She would be pregnant 7 times during the next ten years. Martha Jefferson died on Wednesday, September 6th, 1782.

 The Jeffersons had two daughters, Martha (called Patsy) and Mary (called Polly). Both daughters accompanied Jefferson to Europe during the late 1780s. Polly, the youngest and prettiest (she resembled her mother), died in childbirth in 1798 while her father was Vice President under John Adams. Martha would serve as White House hostess and, in 1806, bore the first child to be born in the White House.

Jefferson had an extramarital affair with Maria (Hadfield) Cosway while he was our minister to France in 1786. Maria's husband Richard was a miniature artist working for the elite in Paris.

As for the Sally Hemings matter, the evidence of their love relationship is circumstantial. Some believe that Jefferson wooed Sally into the relationship rather than debauching her into it as many masters did to attractive slave women. Jefferson's granddaughter Ellen Randolph Coolidge wrote in 1858 that Sally Hemings was actually the daughter of Elizabeth Hemings and John Skelton. Hence, Sally Hemings was Martha Jefferson's half sister.  

Prior to his appointment by President Washington as our first Secretary of State, Jefferson was a member of the House of Burgesses, a representative to the second Continental Congress where he wrote the Declaration of Independence, and he was a member of the Virginia House of Delegates 1777 to 1779.  He was elected Governor of Virginia between 1779 and 1781. Between 1783 and 1785, he was a member of Congress where he established the decimal system and helped organize the government of the Northwest territories. As Minister to France, he successfully negotiated commercial treaties and was a keen observer of European affairs.

Appointed the nation's first Secretary of State, Jefferson ran the State Department on an annual budget of less than $10,000. He quarreled with Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton over their differences towards France and Britain. He hired a French translator named Philip Freneau to work for the State Department, but Freneau spent most of his time editing the National Gazette, a newspaper favoring the developing Democratic Republican Party in opposition to President Washington's and Alexander Hamilton's Federalist Party. Meanwhile, Secretary Hamilton hired John Fenno with money out of the Treasury Department to run the Gazette of the United States.

In 1797, Jefferson became Vice President having received the second most electoral votes against Vice President John Adams who received 71 to Jefferson's 68.

In 1800, Jefferson, the Democratic Republican party's presidential nominee and his running mate Aaron Burr of New York received 73 electoral votes to Adams' 65, but since Aaron Burr insisted that the tie vote go into the House of Representatives, it took 36 ballots with each state having one vote, based on its state’s majority, to elect Jefferson. Burr's insistence on going to the House ruptured his relationship with Jefferson. The major issue separating the Democratic Republican and Federalist parties was the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts which infringed on the rights of aliens and anti-government citizens to criticize the government under the threat of fines and imprisonments.

Jefferson's two terms as president resulted in the expansion of American territory through the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. A strict constructionist of the Constitution, Jefferson violated his principles since nothing in that document specifically allowed the executive to purchase foreign territory. However, since Napoleon Bonaparte was willing to sell, President Jefferson couldn't resist the opportunity to more than double the size of the United States.

Jefferson replaced Vice President Burr with New York Governor George Clinton in 1804 in the wake of Burr's political losses in New York and his duel that killed Alexander Hamilton at Weehawken, New Jersey on Tuesday, July 11th, 1804.

The second four years of President Jefferson's term was quite a quarrelsome one. The president, angered by increasing criticism by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase, sought unsuccessfully to have Chase impeached. Then there were arguments with Jefferson's second cousin John Marshall over documents needed for testimony in the treason trial of former Vice President Aaron Burr which resulted in Burr's acquittal.

Finally, there was bad blood between both the United States and France, both of whom rated American ships bound for one another’s ports. The resulting shipping embargo caused widespread unemployment in New England and there were threats of possible disunion. Nor did relations between England and France improve.

President Jefferson would live for 17 years following his retirement on March 4th, 1809.

Jefferson's major achievement in retirement was the establishment of the University of Virginia.

On Tuesday, July 4th, 1826, both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died. Jefferson was 83 and Adams was 90 years old.

So proud was Mr. Jefferson of his founding of the University of Virginia that his modest gravestone notes his founding of the university and his authorship of the Declaration of Independence, but leaves out mention of his two terms as President of the United States.

Mr. Jefferson's genius was practical and patriotic more than merely ceremonial!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

(Note: the major source of information here is from William A. DeGregorio's Complete Book of U.S. Presidents, 1986 edition.)

IT'S THE BEST TIME: IT’S 2024 BASEBALL TIME

By Edwin Cooney

I wore my Yankees jacket and hat when I visited my taxman last Wednesday. "How many World Series have the Yankees won?” he asked, even as he read the answer to his question on my jacket. "How long have you been a Yankees' fan?" he wondered. “Since 1954!” I responded. "Who did they have other than Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra?” he wondered.  “Oh, Hank Bauer, Gil McDougald…And Whitey Ford," he added!

My taxman Pat isn't as old as me, although his daughter is about to present him with a new granddaughter. Pat let me know he was no Yankee fan, but those names brought back a time in his early existence that obviously pleases him.

No other sport marks time and even eras as much as baseball. Baseball goes back to the Ulysses S. Grant administration. The Cincinnati Red Stockings began playing that spring even before the golden spike was hammered into place by Leland Stanford on Saturday, May 10th, 1869 linking the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific Railroads at Promontory Point, Utah territory.

That means that 2024 marks the 155th season of wins, losses, base hits, walks, and player umpire rhubarbs are all facts and matters of history.

Between 1869 and 1947, most players came from the dirt farms of rural America. Opening day, April 15th of 1947, Jackie Robinson's entry into baseball broke the “color barrier” and, as the post World War II era continued, more and more college players made the scene.

Since President William Howard Taft tossed out the first baseball of the 1910 season that Thursday, April 14th, our presidents have played a side but sometimes dramatic role in events. On that particular day, Walter Johnson (“TheBigTrain") of the Washington Senators shut out Connie Mack's Philadelphia Athletics three zip. Thirty years later on opening day, Cleveland's Bob Feller pitched a no-hitter against the Chicago White Sox by a score of one to nothing. That very day, President Franklin Roosevelt who was opening the season at Griffiths Stadium hit Washington Post photographer Irving Schlossberg with his opening day pitch. Eleven years later, President Harry Truman dared to open up the 1951 season the day after General Douglas MacArthur addressed Congress following his dismissal by President Truman. Mr. Truman stayed through seven innings of boos!

Then, there's that opening day, April 17th, 1945, at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Frankie Zach had walked and was leading off first base. Suddenly Zach looked down to see that his shoe was untied. Frankie called time just as Bucky Walters, the Reds' pitcher, was making his windup. Bucky threw and Jim Russell, batting just behind Frankie, hit the ball into the right field bleachers. It couldn't count as a two run homer because Frankie had called time. The Pirates lost the game 7 to 6. But Frankie received a present from Manager Frank Frisch the next day. You guessed it! It was a pair of buckle shoes.

Yes, indeed, these are just some of the things that every baseball season potentially brings players, fans and even visiting United States presidents.!

The 2024 season in its fourth day of existence has already featured a no-hitter by an Astro's pitcher, the 30-year-old rookie Ronel Blanco, whom few ever have heard of.

So, what's on deck in 2024, do you suppose?

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY 

MARCHING MADLY THROUGH MARCH

By Edwin Cooney

Believe it or not, it wasn't that long ago that we sanely made our way through March as it entered like a lion and went out like a lamb to feel April's showers and sniff April's flowers! Forty-two years ago, while broadcasting the NCAA 1982 college play-offs, CBS sports broadcaster Brent Musburger called the basketball playoffs "March madness” for the first time and we've celebrated March madness ever since.

Determined to understand our past, present and future, we look to two constellations, Pisces and Aries, to explain our significance to ourselves. After all, who was born, when they were born and when they died has to matter to us as a point of identity or pride, does it not?

If you were born in March, there were four presidents who share March birthdays with you. Andrew Jackson was born on March 15th, James Madison was born on March 16th, Grover Cleveland’s birthday was March 19th and John Tyler was born on March 29th. All of them were very forceful and determined men. As a general and a president and an Indian fighter, Andrew Jackson took pride in every order he issued whether it was to take all federal funds out of the Bank of the United States or to kick the Cherokee and Seminole Indians across the Mississippi into Oklahoma along its “Trail of Tears.” Grover Cleveland, although supposedly pro labor, called in forces to break up the 1894 Pullman Strike. John Tyler who was the first vice president to assume the presidency upon the death of a president, President William Henry Harrison, told the cabinet (according to Harry Truman) that  if they didn't recognize his claim to the presidential office, he'd "fire 'em." James Madison, as a delegate to the 1788 Constitutional Convention, took copious notes and engaged in numerous debates during that historic meeting of the minds. Oh, and in case you've quite forgotten, former Vice President Al Gore was born on Wednesday, March 31st, 1948.

Three American presidents died in March: Millard Fillmore on Thursday, March 8th, 1874, Benjamin Harrison on Wednesday, March 13th, 1901, and Dwight D. Eisenhower on Friday, March 28th, 1969.

On Monday, March 26th, 1979, President Jimmy Carter, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat signed the Israeli Egyptian peace treaty in Washington, D.C.

Just two days later on Wednesday,  March 28th, 1979, the breakdown of the cooling system of the nuclear plant on Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania occurred, nearly bringing about a major nuclear disaster.   

Perhaps the most unforgettable American Sunday night in March was that of March 31st, 1968, when President Lyndon B. Johnson announced that he would not seek nor would he accept the 1968 Democratic Party Presidential nomination.

Finally, it should be noted that every elected president between 1793 and 1933 was sworn into office on March 4th with two exceptions: the first was Zachary Taylor who took office on Monday, March 5th, 1849 because he regarded Sunday, March 4th, as a religious holiday.

(Note: There's an interesting and ironic story here. The president of the United States Senate back then was David Rice Atchison and he technically held the presidency between noon of March 4th when the Polk administration ended and the Zachary Taylor administration began at noon of March 5th. Atchison went to a party that Saturday night, March 3rd and slept through most of his term. It was perhaps all to the good as David Rice Atchison was one of the most violent proslavery men in the country. Several years later, he led proslavery raids from Missouri into Kansas during the era called "Bleeding Kansas.”) 

The second exception occurred when President Ulysses S. Grant had his successor Rutherford B. Hayes sworn in on Saturday night March 3rd, 1877 because he was fearful that Southern Democrats might try and swear in Samuel J. Tilden whom many believed had truly won the 1876 election over Hayes.  

As for our former Soviet cousins, Mikhail Gorbachev was born on Monday March 2nd, 1931, and Joseph Stalin died on Thursday, March 5th, 1953.

Johann Sebastian Bach was born on Monday, March 21st, 1785. Darryl Strawberry was born on Monday, March 12th, 1962.

The 1964 Good Friday earthquake, which occurred in Alaska, measured 9.2 on the Richter scale. The tsunami it caused resulted in 131 lost lives. The date was March 27th.

Meanwhile, to write about March while ignoring St. Patrick's Day with the parades, the kissing of the Blarney Stone, and green beer would show a lack of ethnic appreciation, religiosity and a degree of sobriety that's downright demoralizing!

I'm just mad about March! Aren't you?

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY  

THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY THAT NEVER WAS!

By Edwin Cooney

As the new President of the United States took office on Friday, January 20th, 1961, Americans believed that although “we the people” had a lot of catching up to do with the Russians and "the godless Communism" it represented, Americans were sure that under a vigorous and activist presidency, they surely would become, once again, the first among the nations of the world.

Since 1933 and even before FDR's New Deal, Americans had been well served by most of their presidents. FDR, Harry Truman, and Dwight D. Eisenhower had given them institutional relief from a terrible depression, had protected them from scheming banking and commercial practices, protected Americans from mortgage foreclosures, established Social Security, legitimized the rights of laboring men and women, won a world war, created the United Nations, established the Marshall Plan that fed Europe yet supported American enterprise, faced the Russians down during the Berlin blockade, established NATO, created the interstate highway system, and supported the United Nations in its efforts to sustain international peace. The recent stumbles in space and technology were only temporary. All of these achievements could and would be, whatever their contradictory interpretations, regarded as achievements by the office of President of the United States.

To be inaugurated as President in 1961 was to be elevated to a place of near national reverence.

Frightened of aggressive Communism under Nikita Khrushchev and Chinese leader Mao Zedong, Americans looked primarily to their president for protection from a dangerous world. Whatever his personal faults or failings may be, they generally were not regarded as the public's business. True, FDR had suffered from polio, but he was usually photographed standing. Truman often cussed, but in a “manly” way. Ike had heart trouble and frequently took golfing vacations, but that was merely recreational.

The core of public struggles that would affect public opinion began that very spring. The civil rights movement wouldn't start in earnest until the North Carolina luncheon sit-ins began in May of 1961. President Kennedy could calm the public's disappointment over the April 17th Bay of Pigs Invasion by asserting his responsibility as the Chief Executive Officer of the government for all that had happened. Only a few rabid Republicans challenged his authority once Ike and Nixon proclaimed their ongoing support for our Commander-in-Chief.

In addition, Richard Nixon, even as party leader, was accountable to long trusted GOP veterans such as Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Herbert Hoover, Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Senators Everett M. Dirksen and Prescott Bush, George Aiken, Leverett Saltonstall, and former Secretary of State Christian Herter — all high church men of conventional reputation and integrity. His cabinet was likely to include men named Nelson Rockefeller, Charles Mathias, Charles Percy, Thruston Morton, William Rogers, Robert Anderson, Herbert Brownell, and perhaps even Tom Dewey. 

By the time 1968 rolled around, due to lifestyle changes as a result of the civil rights struggle,  the GOP was more South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond's party than Abraham Lincoln's! Party leadership had shifted from Hugh Scott's or Nelson Rockefeller's party to the party of Barry Goldwater, Texas Senator John Tower, and Ronald Reagan, thereby drawing its energy from radical and angry conservatism rather than from traditional corporate economic conservatism.

Even more significant, the presidency had suffered a national heart rending assassination, and had dedicated itself to a costly and un-winnable war in Vietnam. I've never forgotten the observation that America awakened on November 23rd, 1963 stripped of its innocence.

Hence, Richard Nixon not only inherited a grieving national constituency, but one bedecked by doubt, and socio/political mistrust. So far from Abraham Lincoln idealism had Mr. Nixon moved that according to H. R. Haldeman's published diary, before the Watergate break-in, he was considering dropping the name Republican from his party and renaming it the Conservative Party of America.

Political idealism had replaced patriotism in American lingo. What we believed in was permanently replacing who we were and what we were all about. Americans wondered, for example, if the struggle for civil rights was really about freedom or was it a Communist "cat's paw?" 

Richard Nixon was far from solely responsible for this national change, but Lincolnesque civil rights and humanitarianism were no longer Nixon’s “ticket to ride” as far back as 1964! 

By the time Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew took their presidential and vice presidential oaths of office, Americans felt overtaxed, abused and misled. In 1964, Republicans advertised themselves as "a choice, not an echo.” Mr. Nixon ran in 1968 as a moderate conservative but found political security in a new "southern strategy."

Freedom, peace, and justice for all above and beyond party may well have been a genuine ideal to Vice President Nixon. However, history records that to President Richard Nixon, privileged political power and authority constituted his political and personal legacy!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY