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Appendix Theta2: The Athens Intellectual Line Connecting brothers of Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity at Cornell University, tracing their fraternal Big Brother/Little Brother line to tri-Founder John Andrew Rea (1869)

Joseph Benson Foraker, tri-founder of Phi Kappa Psi at Cornell . . .

. . . proposed the tapping of (1870), his former brother-in-arms in the . . .

. . . . Carl arranged the bid for brother . . . Tutu’s partner in nation-building was “Cumps” Sherman . . .  the sachem, Okomfo Anokye . . . 

. . . Sherman was influenced by Philemon . . . the Ashanti formed out of Ethiopia, Beecher. . .  influenced, in part, by Axum and its Hellenic contacts . . .

. . . Beecher was influence by . . . Hellenic ties to sub-Saharan Africa, Paul Cuffee . . .  though fleeting, provided research for the historian Diodorus Siculus . . .

. . . Paul Cuffee was the son of Kofi . . . Siculus followed in the tradition of the Slocum, born to the Greek historians and their Athenian Ashanti Nation . . . supporters. 

. . . the father of the Ashanti Nation was Osei Tutu . . . 

Below we present short biographies of the Athens intellectual line of the Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity at Cornell University.

“Who defends the House.” Carl Christian Schurz, pledged upon the recommendation of brother Foraker in 1870, in turn nominated brother “Cump” Sherman for membership in Phi Kappa Psi:

 William Sherman (, 1820 – , 1891), born Tecumseh Sherman, was an American soldier, businessman, educator, and author. He served as a general in the Union Army during the (1861–65), for which he received recognition for his outstanding command of and criticism for the harshness of the "" policies that he implemented in conducting against the Confederate States. Military historian Basil Liddell Hart famously declared that Sherman was "the first Arms of the Military modern general". Academy at West Point

Sherman served under General Ulysses S. in 1862 and 1863 during the campaigns that led to the fall of the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg on the River and culminated with the routing of the Confederate armies in the state of . In 1864, Sherman succeeded Grant as the Union commander in the western theater of the war. He proceeded to lead his troops— including six (6) soldiers later to become brothers in Phi Kappa Psi at Cornell — to the capture of the city of , a military success that contributed decisively to the re-election of President . Sherman's subsequent march through and the Carolinas further undermined the Confederacy's ability to continue fighting. He accepted the surrender of all the Confederate armies in the Carolinas, Georgia, and in April 1865.

After the Civil War, Sherman became Commanding General of the Army (1869–83). As such, he was responsible for the conduct of the Indian Wars in the western United States. He steadfastly refused to be drawn into politics and in 1875 published his Memoirs, one of the best-known firsthand accounts of the Civil War.

Sherman was born in 1820 in Lancaster, , near the shores of the Hocking River. This is “ Alpha Country”, being sixty (60) miles away from the homeplaces of the Foraker and Buchwalter families. Delaware, Ohio, home to Ohio Wesleyan University, where New York Alpha’s founders tapped into Ohio Alpha, is just thirty (30) miles north of Lancaster, on the other side of Columbus.

2 His father Charles Robert Sherman, a successful lawyer who sat on the Ohio Supreme Court, named him after the famous leader Tecumseh. Judge Sherman died unexpectedly in 1829. He left his widow, Mary Hoyt Sherman, with eleven children and no inheritance. Following this tragedy, the nine-year-old Sherman was raised by a Lancaster neighbor and family friend, attorney , a prominent member of the Whig Party who served as senator from Ohio and as the first Secretary of the Interior. Sherman was distantly related to the politically influential Baldwin, Hoar & Sherman family and grew to admire American founding father .

Sherman's family was nominally Episcopalian, but he had not been baptized. His foster parents were devout Catholics: Maria Ewing, who was of Irish ancestry, by upbringing, and her husband Thomas by conversion. Mrs. Ewing insisted that young Tecumseh Sherman be baptized by a Catholic priest. A Dominican friar picked the baptismal name William because the event took place on June 25, the feast day of Saint William of Montevergine. Sherman was never a churchgoer and he never used the name William in private life; his friends and family always called him "Cump."

His older brother Charles Taylor Sherman became a federal judge. One of his younger brothers, , served as a U.S. senator and Cabinet secretary. Another younger brother, Hoyt Sherman, was a successful banker. Two of his foster brothers served as major generals in the Union Army during the Civil War: Hugh Boyle Ewing, later an ambassador and author, and Thomas Ewing, Jr., who would serve as defense attorney in the military trials against the Lincoln conspirators.

Senator Ewing secured an appointment for the sixteen (16) year old Sherman as a cadet in the United States Military Academy at West Point,[5] where he roomed and became good friends with another important future Civil War General, George H. Thomas. There Sherman excelled academically, but treated the demerit system with indifference. Fellow cadet would later remember Sherman at West Point as "one of the brightest and most popular fellows," and "a bright-eyed, red-headed fellow, who was always prepared for a lark of any kind." About his time at West Point, Sherman says only the following in his Memoirs:

At the Academy I was not considered a good soldier, for at no time was I selected for any office, but remained a private throughout the whole four years. Then, as now, neatness in dress and form, with a strict conformity to the rules, were the qualifications required for office, and I suppose I was found not to excel in any of these. In studies I always held a respectable reputation with the professors, and generally ranked among the best, especially in drawing, chemistry, mathematics, and natural philosophy. My average

3 demerits, per annum, were about one hundred and fifty, which reduced my final class standing from number four to six.

Upon graduation in 1840, Sherman entered the Army as a in the 3rd U.S. Artillery and saw action in Florida in the Second War against the Seminole tribe. He was later stationed in Georgia and . As the foster son of a prominent Whig politician, in Charleston, the popular Lt. Sherman moved within the upper circles of Old South society.

While many of his colleagues saw action in the Mexican-American War, Sherman performed administrative duties in the captured territory of . He and fellow officer Lieutenant reached the town of Yerba Buena two days before its name was changed to . In 1848, Sherman accompanied the military governor of California, Col. , in the inspection that officially confirmed the claim that gold had been discovered in the region, thus inaugurating the . Sherman earned a promotion to for his "meritorious service", but his lack of a combat assignment discouraged him and may have contributed to his decision to resign his commission. Sherman would become one of the relatively few high-ranking officers in the Civil War who had not fought in Mexico.

In 1850, Sherman was promoted to the substantive rank of Captain and married Thomas Ewing's daughter, Eleanor Boyle ("Ellen") Ewing. Ellen was, like her mother, a devout Roman Catholic, and their eight children were reared in that faith. One of their daughters, Eleanor was married to Alexander Montgomery Thackara at General Sherman’s home in Washington D. C. on May 5, 1880. To Sherman's great displeasure and sorrow, one of his sons, Thomas Ewing Sherman, was ordained a Jesuit priest in 1879.

In 1853, Sherman resigned his Captaincy and became president of a bank in San Francisco. He returned to San Francisco at a time of great turmoil in the West. He survived two shipwrecks and floated through the Golden Gate on the overturned hull of a foundering lumber schooner. Sherman eventually suffered from stress-related asthma because of the city's brutal financial climate. Late in life, regarding his time in real-estate-speculation-mad San Francisco, Sherman recalled: "I can handle a hundred thousand men in battle, and take the City of the Sun, but am afraid to manage a lot in the of San Francisco." In 1856, he served as a major general of the California .

Sherman's bank failed during the financial and he turned to the practice of law in Leavenworth, Kansas, at which he was also unsuccessful.

In 1859, Sherman accepted a job as the first superintendent of the Louisiana State Seminary of Learning & Military Academy in Pineville, Louisiana, a position offered to him by Major D.C. Buell and General G. Mason Graham. He proved an effective and popular leader of that institution, which would later

4 become Louisiana State University (LSU). Joseph P. Taylor, the brother of the late President , declared that "if you had hunted the whole army, from one end of it to the other, you could not have found a man in it more admirably suited for the position in every respect than Sherman."

On hearing of South Carolina's secession from the United States, Sherman observed to a close friend, Professor David F. Boyd of , an enthusiastic secessionist, almost perfectly describing the four years of war to come:

You people of the South don't know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don't know what you're talking about. War is a terrible thing!

You mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight, too. They are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it ...

Besides, where are your men and appliances of war to contend against them? The North can make a steam engine, locomotive, or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical, and determined people on Earth—right at your doors.

You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with. At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop and think, they must see in the end that you will surely fail.

In January 1861 just before the outbreak of the Civil War, Sherman was required to accept receipt of arms surrendered to the State Militia by the U.S. Arsenal at Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Instead of complying, he resigned his position as superintendent and returned to the North, declaring to the governor of Louisiana, "On no earthly account will I do any act or think any thought hostile ... to the ... United States." He became president of the St. Louis Railroad, a streetcar company, a position he held for only a few months before being called to Washington, D.C.

Sherman accepted a commission as a colonel in the 13th U.S. Infantry regiment on May 14, 1861. He was one of the few Union officers to distinguish himself at the on July 21, 1861, where he was grazed by

5 bullets in the knee and shoulder. The disastrous Union defeat led Sherman to question his own judgment as an officer and the capacities of his volunteer troops. President Lincoln, however, promoted him to brigadier general of volunteers (effective May 17, 1861, which made him senior in rank to Ulysses S. Grant, his future commander). He was assigned to command the Department of the Cumberland in Louisville, Kentucky.

During his time in Louisville, Sherman became increasingly pessimistic about the outlook of the war. His frequent complaints to Washington, D.C. about shortages and his exaggerated estimates of the strength of the rebel forces caused the local press to describe him as "crazy". He was replaced in his command by and transferred to St. Louis, , where in the fall of 1861 he experienced what would probably be described today as a nervous breakdown. He was put on leave and returned to Ohio to recuperate. While he was at home, his wife, Ellen, wrote to his brother Senator John Sherman seeking advice and complaining of "that melancholy insanity to which your family is subject".

However, Sherman quickly recovered and returned to service under Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck, commander of the Department of the Missouri. Halleck's department had just won a major victory at Fort Henry, but he harbored doubts about the commander in the field, Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, and his plans to capture Fort Donelson. Unbeknownst to Grant, Halleck offered several officers, including Sherman, command of Grant's army. Sherman refused, saying he preferred serving under Grant, even though he outranked him. Sherman wrote to Grant from Paducah, Kentucky, "Command me in any way. I feel anxious about you as I know the great facilities [the Confederates] have of concentration by means of the river and railroad, but [I] have faith in you."

After Grant was promoted to major general in command of the District of West Tennessee, Sherman served briefly as his replacement in command of the District of Cairo. He got his wish of serving under Grant when he was assigned on March 1, 1862, to the Army of West Tennessee as commander of the 5th . His first major test under Grant was at the . The massive Confederate attack on the morning of April 6, 1862, took most of the senior Union commanders by surprise. Sherman in particular had dismissed the intelligence reports that he had received from militia officers, refusing to believe that Confederate General would leave his base at Corinth. He took no precautions beyond strengthening his picket lines, refusing to entrench, build , or push out reconnaissance patrols. At Shiloh, he may have wished to avoid appearing overly alarmed in order to escape the kind of criticism he had received in Kentucky. He had written to his wife that, if he took more precautions, "they'd call me crazy again".

Despite being caught unprepared by the attack, Sherman rallied his division and conducted an orderly, fighting retreat that helped avert a disastrous

6 Union rout. Finding Grant at the end of the day sitting under an oak tree in the darkness smoking a cigar, he experienced, in his own words "some wise and sudden instinct not to mention retreat". Instead, in what would become one of the most famous conversations of the war, Sherman said simply: "Well, Grant, we've had the devil's own day, haven't we?" After a puff of his cigar, Grant replied calmly: "Yes. Lick 'em tomorrow, though." Sherman would prove instrumental to the successful Union counterattack of April 7, 1862. Sherman was wounded twice—in the hand and shoulder—and had three horses shot out from under him. His performance was praised by Grant and Halleck and after the battle, he was promoted to major general of volunteers, effective May 1, 1862.

Sherman developed close personal ties to Grant during the two years they served together. Shortly after Shiloh, Sherman persuaded Grant not to resign from the Army, despite the serious difficulties he was having with his commander, General Halleck. Sherman offered Grant an example from his own life, "Before the battle of Shiloh, I was cast down by a mere newspaper assertion of 'crazy', but that single battle gave me new life, and I'm now in high feather." He told Grant that, if he remained in the army, "some happy accident might restore you to favor and your true place." The careers of both officers ascended considerably after that time. Sherman later famously declared that "Grant stood by me when I was crazy and I stood by him when he was drunk and now we stand by each other always."

Sherman's military record in 1862–63 was mixed. In December 1862, forces under his command suffered a severe repulse at the Battle of Chickasaw Bayou, just north of Vicksburg, Mississippi. Soon after, his XV Corps was ordered to join Maj. Gen. John A. McClernand in his successful assault on Post, generally regarded as a politically motivated distraction from the effort to capture Vicksburg. Before the in the spring of 1863, Sherman expressed serious reservations about the wisdom of Grant's unorthodox strategy, but he went on to perform well in that campaign under Grant's supervision. After the surrender of Vicksburg to the Union forces under General Grant on July 4, 1863, Sherman was promoted from major general of volunteers to brigadier general in the regular army.

During the Battle of Chattanooga in November, Sherman, now in command of the Army of the Tennessee, quickly took his assigned target of Billy Goat Hill at the north end of , only to discover that it was not part of the ridge at all, but rather a detached spur separated from the main spine by a rock-strewn ravine. When he attempted to attack the main spine at Tunnel Hill, his troops were repeatedly repulsed by 's heavy division, the best unit in 's army. Sherman's effort was overshadowed by 's army's successful assault on the center of the Confederate line, a movement originally intended as a diversion.

7 Despite this mixed record, Sherman enjoyed Grant's confidence and friendship. When Lincoln called Grant east in the spring of 1864 to take command of all the Union armies, Grant appointed Sherman (by then known to his soldiers as "Uncle Billy") to succeed him as head of the Military Division of the Mississippi, which entailed command of Union troops in the Western Theater of the war. As Grant took command of the Army of the Potomac, Sherman wrote to him outlining his strategy to bring the war to an end concluding that "if you can whip Lee and I can march to the Atlantic I think ol' Uncle Abe will give us twenty days leave to see the young folks".

Sherman proceeded to invade the state of Georgia with three armies: the 60,000-strong under George Henry Thomas, the 25,000-strong Army of the Tennessee under James B. McPherson, and the 13,000-strong under John M. Schofield. He fought a lengthy campaign of maneuver through mountainous terrain against Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston's , attempting a direct assault only at the disastrous Battle of . The cautious Johnston was replaced by the more aggressive , who played to Sherman's strength by challenging him to direct battles on open ground.

Sherman's concluded successfully on September 2, 1864 with the capture of the city. After ordering all civilians to leave the city, he ordered it burned to the ground. This was to set a precedent for future behavior by his armies. Capturing Atlanta was an accomplishment that made Sherman a household name in the North and helped ensure Lincoln's presidential re-election in November. Lincoln's electoral defeat by Democratic Party candidate George B. McClellan, the former Union army commander, had appeared likely in the summer of that year. Such an outcome would probably have meant the victory of the Confederacy, as the Democratic Party platform called for peace negotiations based on the acknowledgment of the Confederacy's independence. Thus the capture of Atlanta, coming when it did, may have been Sherman's greatest contribution to the Union cause. Sherman was rewarded with a promotion to major general in the regular army.

After Atlanta, Sherman began his march south, declaring that he could "make Georgia howl". Initially disregarding Hood's army moving into Tennessee, he boasted that if Hood moved north he (Sherman) would "give him rations" as "my business is down south." He quickly, however, had to send an army back to deal with Hood. Sherman marched with 62,000 men to the port of Savannah, Georgia, living off the land and causing, by his own estimate, more than $100 million in property damage. Sherman called this harsh tactic of material war "hard war", which is now, in modern times, known as total war. At the end of this campaign, known as Sherman's March to the Sea, his troops captured Savannah on , 1864. Sherman then telegraphed Lincoln, offering him the city as a Christmas present.

8 Sherman's success in Georgia received ample coverage in the Northern press at a time when Grant seemed to be making little progress in his fight against Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. A bill was introduced in Congress to promote Sherman to Grant's rank of lieutenant general, probably with a view towards having him replace Grant as commander of the Union Army. Sherman wrote both to his brother, Senator John Sherman, and to General Grant vehemently repudiating any such promotion.

In the spring of 1865, Grant ordered Sherman to embark his army on steamers to join him against Lee in Virginia. Instead, Sherman persuaded Grant to allow him to march north through the Carolinas, destroying everything of military value along the way, as he had done in Georgia. He was particularly interested in targeting South Carolina, the first state to secede from the Union, for the effect it would have on Southern morale. His army proceeded north through South Carolina against light resistance from the troops of Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston. Upon hearing that Sherman's men were advancing on corduroy roads through the Salkehatchie at a rate of a dozen miles per day, Johnston declared that "there had been no such army in existence since the days of Julius Caesar."

Sherman captured the state capital of Columbia, South Carolina on February 17, 1865. Fires began that night and by next morning, most of the central city was destroyed. The burning of Columbia has engendered controversy ever since, with some claiming the fires were accidental, others a deliberate act of vengeance, and still others that the retreating Confederates burned bales of cotton on their way out of town. Local Native American guides helped Sherman's army cross the through torrential rains and into . According to Sherman, the trek across the Lumber River, and through the swamps, pocosins, and creeks of Robeson County "was the damnedest marching I ever saw". Thereafter, his troops did little damage to the civilian infrastructure.

Shortly after his victory over Johnston's troops at the , Sherman met with Johnston at in Durham, North Carolina to negotiate a Confederate surrender. At the insistence of Johnston and Confederate President , Sherman offered generous terms that dealt with both political and military issues, despite having no authorization to do so from either General Grant or the Cabinet. The government in Washington, D.C. refused to honor the terms, precipitating a long-lasting feud between Sherman and the Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton. Confusion over this issue lasted until April 26, 1865, when Johnston, ignoring instructions from President Davis, agreed to purely military terms and formally surrendered his army and all the Confederate forces in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida.

Though he came to disapprove of slavery, Sherman was not an abolitionist before the war, and like many of his time and background, he did not

9 believe in "Negro equality". His military campaigns of 1864 and 1865 freed many slaves, who greeted him "as a second or Aaron" and joined his marches through Georgia and the Carolinas by the tens of thousands, performing invaluable service as foragers and pioneers. Impressed with their industry and loyalty, Sherman quickly became concerned with the future of the freed slaves and the improvement of their precarious living conditions.

On January 12, 1865, Sherman met in Savannah with Secretary of War Stanton and with twenty local black leaders. After Sherman's departure, , a Baptist minister, declared in response to an inquiry about the feelings of the black community that

We lookupon General Sherman, prior to his arrival, as a man, in the providence of God, specially set apart to accomplish this work, and we unanimously felt inexpressible gratitude to him, looking upon him as a man that should be honored for the faithful performance of his duty. Some of us called upon him immediately upon his arrival, and it is probable he did not meet [Secretary Stanton] with more courtesy than he met us. His conduct and deportment toward us characterized him as a friend and a gentleman.

Four days later, Sherman issued his Special Field Orders, No. 15. The orders provided for the settlement of 40,000 freed slaves and black refugees on land expropriated from white landowners in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. Sherman appointed Brig. Gen. , an abolitionist from who had previously directed the recruitment of black soldiers, to implement that plan. Those orders, which became the basis of the claim that the Union government had promised freed slaves "40 acres and a mule", were revoked later that year by President .

General Sherman's record as a tactician was mixed, and his military legacy rests primarily on his command of logistics and on his brilliance as a strategist. The influential 20th century British military historian and theorist Basil Liddell Hart ranked Sherman as one of the most important strategists in the annals of war, along with , , Bonaparte, T. E. Lawrence, and . Liddell Hart credited Sherman with mastery of maneuver warfare (also known as the "indirect approach"), as demonstrated by his series of turning movements against Johnston during the Atlanta Campaign. Liddell Hart also stated that study of Sherman's campaigns had contributed significantly to his own "theory of strategy and tactics in mechanized warfare", which had in turn influenced 's doctrine of and Rommel's use of during World War II.

Sherman's greatest contribution to the war, the strategy of total warfare— endorsed by General Grant and President Lincoln—has been the subject of much controversy. Sherman himself downplayed his role in conducting total war,

10 often saying that he was simply carrying out orders as best he could in order to fulfill his part of Grant's master plan for ending the war.

Like Grant, Sherman was convinced that the Confederacy's strategic, economic, and psychological ability to wage further war had to be definitively crushed if the fighting were to end. Therefore, he believed that the North had to conduct its campaign as a war of conquest and employ scorched earth tactics to break the backbone of the rebellion, which he called "hard war".

Sherman's advance through Georgia and South Carolina was characterized by widespread destruction of civilian supplies and infrastructure. Although looting was officially forbidden, historians disagree on how well this regulation was enforced. The speed and efficiency of the destruction by Sherman's army was remarkable. The practice of bending rails around trees, leaving behind what came to be known as Sherman's , made repairs difficult. Accusations that civilians were targeted and war crimes were committed on have made Sherman a controversial figure to this day, particularly in the South.

The damage done by Sherman was almost entirely limited to the destruction of property. Though exact figures are not available, the loss of civilian life appears to have been very small. Consuming supplies, wrecking infrastructure, and undermining morale were Sherman's stated goals, and several of his Southern contemporaries noted this and commented on it. For instance, -born Major Henry Hitchcock, who served in Sherman's staff, declared that "it is a terrible thing to consume and destroy the sustenance of thousands of people", but if the scorched earth strategy served "to paralyze their husbands and fathers who are fighting ... it is mercy in the end."

The severity of the destructive acts by Union troops was significantly greater in South Carolina than in Georgia or North Carolina. This appears to have been a consequence of the animosity among both Union soldiers and officers to the state that they regarded as the "cockpit of secession". One of the most serious accusations against Sherman was that he allowed his troops to burn the city of Columbia. Historian James M. McPherson, however, claims that:

The fullest and most dispassionate study of this controversy blames all parties in varying proportions—including the Confederate authorities for the disorder that characterized the evacuation of Columbia, leaving thousands of cotton bales on the streets (some of them burning) and huge quantities of liquor undestroyed ... Sherman did not deliberately burn Columbia; a majority of Union soldiers, including the general himself, worked through the night to put out the fires.

11 After the fall of Atlanta in 1864, Sherman ordered the city's evacuation. When the city council appealed to him to rescind that order, on the grounds that it would cause great hardship to women, children, the elderly, and others who bore no responsibility for the conduct of the war, Sherman sent a response in which he sought to articulate his conviction that a lasting peace would be possible only if the Union were restored, and that he was therefore prepared to do all he could do to quash the rebellion:

You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace. But you cannot have peace and a division of our country. If the United States submits to a division now, it will not stop, but will go on until we reap the fate of Mexico, which is eternal war.

[...] I want peace, and believe it can only be reached through union and war, and I will ever conduct war with a view to perfect and early success.

But, my dear sirs, when peace does come, you may call on me for anything. Then will I share with you the last cracker, and watch with you to shield your homes and families against danger from every quarter.

Literary critic found in Sherman's Memoirs a fascinating and disturbing account of an "appetite for warfare" that "grows as it feeds on the South".[51] Former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara refers equivocally to the statement that "war is cruelty and you cannot refine it" in both the book Wilson's Ghost and in his interview for the film . Some modern critics have denounced Sherman's attitude as proto-totalitarian and as a harbinger of the inhumanity of the large-scale wars of the 20th century.

On the other hand, when comparing Sherman's scorched earth campaigns to the actions of the during the (1899–1902)— another war in which civilians were targeted because of their central role in sustaining an armed resistance—South African historian Hermann Giliomee declares that it "looks as if Sherman struck a better balance than the British commanders between severity and restraint in taking actions proportional to legitimate needs". The admiration of scholars such as , Basil Liddell Hart, Lloyd Lewis, and John F. Marszalek for General Sherman owes much to what they see as an approach to the exigencies of modern armed conflict that was both effective and principled.

12 In May 1865, after the major Confederate armies had surrendered, Sherman wrote in a personal letter:

I confess, without shame, that I am sick and tired of fighting—its glory is all moonshine; even success the most brilliant is over dead and mangled bodies, with the anguish and lamentations of distant families, appealing to me for sons, husbands, and fathers ... it is only those who have never heard a shot, never heard the shriek and groans of the wounded and lacerated ... that cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation.

On July 25, 1866, Congress created the rank of General of the Army for Grant and promoted Sherman to lieutenant general. When Grant became president in 1869, Sherman was appointed Commanding General of the . After the death of John A. Rawlins, Sherman also served for one month as interim Secretary of War. His tenure as commanding general was marred by political difficulties, and from 1874 to 1876, he moved his headquarters to St. Louis, Missouri in an attempt to escape from them. One of his significant contributions as head of the Army was the establishment of the Command School (now the Command and General Staff College) at .

Sherman's main concern as commanding general was to protect the construction and operation of the railroads from attack by hostile Indians. In his campaigns against the Indian tribes, Sherman repeated his Civil War strategy by seeking not only to defeat the enemy's soldiers, but also to destroy the resources that allowed the enemy to sustain its warfare. The policies he implemented included the decimation of the buffalo, which were the primary source of food for the Plains Indians. Despite his harsh treatment of the warring tribes, Sherman spoke out against speculators and government agents who treated the natives unfairly within the reservations.

In 1875 Sherman published his memoirs in two volumes. According to critic Edmund Wilson, Sherman:

had a trained gift of self-expression and was, as says, a master of narrative. [In his Memoirs] the vigorous account of his pre-war activities and his conduct of his military operations is varied in just the right proportion and to just the right degree of vivacity with anecdotes and personal experiences. We live through his campaigns [...] in the company of Sherman himself. He tells us what he thought and what he felt, and he never strikes any attitudes or pretends to feel anything he does not feel.

On June 19, 1879, Sherman delivered his famous "War Is Hell" speech to the graduating class of the Michigan Military Academy and to the gathered crowd

13 of more than 10,000: "There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell."

Sherman stepped down as commanding general on November 1, 1883, and retired from the army on February 8, 1884. He lived most of the rest of his life in . He was devoted to the theater and to amateur painting and was much in demand as a colorful speaker at dinners and banquets, in which he indulged a fondness for quoting Shakespeare. Sherman was proposed as a Republican candidate for the presidential election of 1884, but declined as emphatically as possible, saying, "If drafted, I will not run; if nominated, I will not accept; if elected, I will not serve." Such a categorical rejection of a candidacy is now referred to as a "Shermanesque statement".

Sherman died in New York City. On February 19, 1891, a small funeral was held there at his home. His body was then transported to St. Louis, where another service was conducted on February 21, 1891 at a local . His son, Thomas Ewing Sherman, a Jesuit priest, presided over his father's funeral mass. General Joseph E. Johnston, the Confederate officer who had commanded the resistance to Sherman's troops in Georgia and the Carolinas, served as a pallbearer. It was a bitterly cold day and a friend of Johnston, fearing that the general might become ill, asked him to put on his hat. Johnston famously replied: "If I were in [Sherman's] place, and he were standing in mine, he would not put on his hat." Johnston did catch a serious cold and died one month later of pneumonia.

Sherman is buried in Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis. Major memorials to Sherman include the gilded bronze equestrian statue by Augustus Saint- Gaudens at the main entrance to in New York City and the major monument by Carl Rohl-Smith near President's Park in Washington, D.C. Other posthumous tributes include the naming of the World War II and the "General Sherman" Giant Sequoia tree, the most massive documented single-trunk tree in the world.

Some of the artistic treatments of Sherman's march are the Civil War era song "" by Work, the film Sherman's March by Ross McElwee, and E. L. Doctorow's novel The March. At the beginning of 's novel Gone with the Wind, first published in 1936, the fictional character Rhett Butler warns a group of upper-class secessionists of the folly of war with the North in terms very reminiscent of those Sherman directed to David F. Boyd before leaving Louisiana. Sherman's invasion of Georgia later plays a central role in the plot of the novel.

14 “Cump” Sherman was fostered by Thomas Ewing, Sr:

 Thomas Ewing, Sr. (Dec. 28, 1789 – Oct. 26, 1871) was a National Republican and Whig politician from Ohio. He served in the U.S. Senate as well as serving as the Secretary of the Treasury and the first Secretary of the Interior. Born in West Liberty, Ohio County, Virginia (now West Virginia). After studying at and reading law under Philemon Beecher, Ewing commenced the practice of law in Lancaster, Ohio, in 1816. As a colorful country lawyer, he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1830 as a Whig Ohio State University and served a single term. He was unsuccessful in seeking a second term in 1836.

Ewing served as Secretary of the Treasury from March 4, 1841 – September 11, 1841, serving under Presidents William Henry Harrison and John Tyler.

Ewing was later appointed to serve as the first Secretary of the Interior by President Zachary Taylor. Ewing served in the position from March 8, 1849–, 1850 under Taylor and . As first secretary, he consolidated bureaus from various Departments, such as the Land Office from the Treasury Department and the Indian Bureau from the War Department. The bureaus were being kicked out of their offices as unwanted tenants in their former departments. However, the Interior Department had no office space, so Ewing rented space. Later, the Patent Office building, with a new east wing, provided permanent space in 1852. Ewing initiated the Interior Department's culture of corruption by wholesale replacement of officials with political patronage. Newspapers called him "Butcher Ewing" for his efforts.

In 1850 Ewing was appointed to the Senate to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of Thomas Corwin, and served from , 1850 - March 3, 1851. Ewing was unsuccessful in seeking re-election in 1851. Ewing was appointed by President Andrew Johnson to a third post as Secretary of War in 1868 following the firing of Edwin M. Stanton but the Senate, still outraged at Johnson's firing of Stanton—which had provoked Johnson's impeachment— refused to act on the nomination.

15 Ewing married Maria Wills Boyle, a Roman Catholic, and raised their children in her faith. His foster son was the famous general , whose conversion Maria Ewing arranged and he took the Christian name "William" (prior to that he was known simply as "Tecumseh Sherman"). William Tecumseh Sherman married Thomas Ewing Sr.'s daughter. Ewing's son, Thomas Ewing, Jr., was an American Civil War Union army general and two-term U.S. Congressman from Ohio.

Prior to his death in 1871, Ewing had been the last surviving member of the Harrison and Tyler Cabinets. Future President and Governor of Ohio Rutherford B. Hayes was a pallbearer at his funeral.

16 Thomas Ewing, Sr., practiced law with Philemon Beecher:

 Philemon Beecher (March 19, 1776 – Nov. 30, 1839) was an attorney and legislator who was a member of the United States House of Representatives from Ohio. Philemon Beecher was born in Oxford, Connecticut, the son of Abraham Beecher and Desire Tolles. Philemon Beecher received a classical education, read law and was admitted to the bar. Philemon Beecher moved to Lancaster, Ohio, in 1801 and continued the practice of law, being admitted to the bar while Ohio was still the Northwest Territory. He was the Beecher served as leading lawyer of the Lancaster bar for Speaker of the House twenty-five years.

It was in his office that the great lawyer and political figure Thomas Ewing studied law. Beecher was often a barrister at the court house in Marietta, Ohio.

Philemon was a member of Scioto Lodge No 2 and senior Deacon of the Grand Lodge of Ohio of Free and Accepted Masons. Philemon Beecher made the acquaintance of Susan Gillespie, a daughter of Neil Gillespie of Brownsville, , when she came to Lancaster on a visit to her sister, Mrs. Hugh Boyle. Philemon Beecher and Susan Gillespie were married in Pennsylvania in 1803 or 1804.

Originally a Federalist, Beecher was elected a member of the Ohio House of Representatives in 1803 and again in the three sessions from 1805 to 1807, serving as speaker in 1807. His swarthy complexion earned him the sobriquet of the "Black Knight."

In 1805, he opposed a Resolution commending the United States government for the , but the Resolution passed by one vote. Beecher was a witness on behalf of Fairfield County, Ohio Common Pleas Judge William W. Irvin at the latter’s impeachment trial in 1806. Irvin was married to the sister of Beecher’s future wife. Irvin went on to follow Beecher in the Ohio legislature, in Congress, and was later on the Ohio Supreme Court.

Philemon Beecher was unsuccessful as candidate for United States Senator in 1807 against . That year he also failed to win a place on

17 the bench as judge of the Ohio Supreme Court. Philemon Beecher was appointed a major general in the Ohio militia.

The Lancaster, Ohio Bank was chartered in 1816 with Beecher as president for one year. He continued as a director of the bank for many years.

Philemon Beecher was elected as a Democratic-Republican from Ohio's 5th congressional district to the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Congresses. He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1820.

Described in later years as an old-line Whig, in 1822, Philemon Beecher was elected as an Adams-Clay Republican from the new Ohio 9th district to the Eighteenth Congress, and an Adams candidate to the Nineteenth and Twentieth Congresses. In the 1824 battle between and for Ohio’s electoral votes, he voted for Adams.

In 1826, Philemon Beecher participated as a managing member of The Colonization Society in Lancaster, an organization promoting repatriation to Africa as an alternative to slavery. He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1828 when he was defeated by his brother-in-law, William W. Irvin.

Philemon Beecher returned to Lancaster and continued the practice of law until his death there, aged 63. He and his wife are interred in Elmwood Cemetery.

Beecher was among the pioneer settlers of Lancaster, Ohio. The earliest known inhabitants of the southeastern and central Ohio region were the Hopewell, Adena, and Fort Ancient Native Americans, of whom little evidence survived, beyond the burial and ceremonial mounds built throughout the Ohio and Mississippi valleys. Many mounds and burial sites have also yielded archaeological artifacts.[4](See also: Serpent Mound and Hopewell Culture National Historic Park, which though not located in Fairfield County proper, are very close by.)

Prior to and immediately after European settlement, the land today comprising Lancaster and Fairfield County, Ohio was inhabited variously by the Shawnee, Iroquois, Wyandot, and other Native American tribes. It served as a natural crossroads for the inter-tribal and intra-tribal wars fought at various times.[5] (See also: Beaver Wars) Noted frontier explorer Christopher Gist reached the vicinity of Lancaster on January 19, 1751, when he visited the small Delaware town of "Hockhocking" nearby. Leaving the area the next day, Gist rode southwest to "Maguck," another Delaware town near Circleville.

Having been ceded to the United States by Great Britain after the American Revolution by the Treaty of Paris, the lands north of the Ohio River and west of the Appalachian Mountains became, in 1784, incorporated into the

18 Northwest Territory. White settlers began to encroach on Native American lands in the Ohio Territory. As the new government of the United States began to cast its eye westward, the stage was set for the series of campaigns that culminated in the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794 , and the Treaty of Greenville in 1795. With pioneer settlement within Ohio made legal and safe from Indian raids, developers began to speculate in land sales in earnest.

Knowing that such speculation, combined with Congressional grants of land sections to veterans of the Revolution, could result in a lucrative opportunity, Ebenezer Zane in 1796 petitioned the US Congress to grant him a contract to blaze a trail through Ohio, from Wheeling, West Virginia, to Limestone, Kentucky, (near modern Maysville, Kentucky) a distance of 266 miles (428 km). As part of the deal, Zane was awarded square-mile tracts of land at the points where his trace crossed the Hocking, Muskingum, and Scioto rivers. Zane's Trace, as it has become known, was completed by 1797 , and as Zane's sons began to carve the square-mile tract astride the Hocking into saleable plots, the city of Lancaster formally came into being in 1800. It predated the formal establishment of the State of Ohio by three years.

The initial settlers were predominantly of German stock, and emigrated from Pennsylvania. Ohio's longest continuously operating newspaper, the Lancaster Eagle Gazette, was born of a merger of the early Der Ohio Adler, founded about 1807, with the Ohio Gazette, founded in the 1830s. The two newspapers were ferocious competitors--they were on opposite sides of the Civil War, as was the split populace of the city itself--until they merged in 1937. This was shortly after the Gazette was acquired by glassmaker Anchor-Hocking. The newspaper is currently part of the Newspaper Network of Central Ohio, which is in turn a unit of Gannett, Inc.

Initially known as New Lancaster, and later shortened by city ordinance (1805), the town quickly grew; formal incorporation as a city came in 1831. The connection of the Hocking Canal to the Ohio and Erie Canal in this era provided a convenient way for the region's rich agricultural produce to reach eastern markets.

Modern Lancaster is distinguished by a rich blend of 19th-century architecture (best evidenced in historic Square 13, part of Zane's original plot) and natural beauty (best evidenced by the famous Standing Stone, today known as Mount Pleasant) with all the typical modern accoutrements of a small- medium-sized American city.

Philemon Beecher of Lancaster, Ohio was a supporter of the American Colonization Society (in full: The Society for the Colonization of Free People of Color of America), an organization that helped in founding Liberia, a colony on the coast of West Africa. In 1821 Black Americans traveled there from the United States. During the next 20 years the colony continued to grow and establish

19 economic stability. In 1847, the legislature of Liberia declared itself an independent state.

Some charged that the ACS was a racist society, while others point to its benevolent origins and later takeover by men with visions of an American empire in Africa, although both black abolitionist and white slave owners were a part of the ACS. The Society closely controlled the development of Liberia until 1847, when it was declared to be an independent republic. By 1867, the ACS had assisted in the movement of more than 13,000 Americans to Liberia, whose descendants came to be called Americo-Liberians. The organization was formally dissolved in 1964.

The society was supported by Southerners fearful of organized revolt by free blacks, by Northerners concerned that an influx of black workers would hurt the economic opportunities of indigent whites, by some who opposed slavery but did not favor integration, and by many blacks who saw a return to Africa as the best solution to their troubles.

Following the American Revolutionary War, the "peculiar Institution" of slavery and those bound within it grew. At the same time, due in part to manumission efforts sparked by the war and the abolition of slavery in Northern states, there was an expansion of the ranks of free blacks.

The events which motivated some supporters of emigration included an abortive slave rebellion headed by Gabriel Prosser in 1800, and a rapid increase in the number of free African-Americans in the United States which was perceived by some to be alarming. Although the ratio of whites to blacks was 8:2 from 1790 to 1800, it was the massive increase in the number of free African- Americans that disturbed proponents of colonization. From 1790 to 1800, the number of free African-Americans increased from 59,467 (1½ % of total U.S. population, 7½ % of U.S. black population) to 108,378 (2 % of U.S. population), a percentage increase of 82 percent; and from 1800 to 1810, the number increased from 108,378 to 186,446 (2½ % of U.S. pop.), an increase of 72 percent.

This steady increase did not go unnoticed by an anxious white community that was ever more aware of and anxious about the free blacks in their midst. The arguments propounded against free blacks, especially in free states, may be divided into four main categories. One argument pointed toward the perceived moral laxity of blacks. Blacks, white supremacists of that time claimed, were licentious beings who would draw whites into their savage, unrestrained ways. These fears of an intermingling of the races were strong and underlay much of the outcry for removal.

Along these same lines, blacks were accused of a tendency toward criminality and were thought inclined to deviate from the straight and narrow

20 path. Still others claimed that the mental inferiority of African-Americans made them unfit for the duties of citizenship and incapable of real improvement. Economic considerations were also put forth. Free blacks, it was thought, would only take jobs away from whites. This feeling was especially strong among the "working class" in the North.

Southerners had their special reservations about free blacks. It was feared that freedmen located in slave areas would act as an enticing reminder of what freedom might mean and encourage runaways and slave revolts.

While the colonizationists in the South were motivated by racism and fear of slave uprising; the white colonizationists in the North refused to accept the notion of white-black co-existence. The proposed solution was to have this class of people deported from United States to Africa by a process euphemistically called "colonization".

As early as the Revolutionary period, proposed relocating beyond the boundaries of the new nation. Colonization, as this idea became known, rested upon the contention that blacks and whites—due to innate racial differences, polarized societal statuses, and pervasive racism—could not live together in social harmony and political equality within the U.S. To many of its advocates, colonization was an ideological middle ground between the immediate, nationwide abolition of slavery, which seemed an ever remote possibility, and perpetual black bondage, a proposition that even some southern slaveholders found discomforting.

Paul Cuffe (1759-1817), a successful Quaker ship owner of African- American and Native American ancestry, advocated settling freed American slaves in Africa. He gained support from the British government, free black leaders in the United States, and members of Congress for a plan to take emigrants to the British colony of Sierra Leone. Cuffe intended to make one voyage per year, taking settlers and bringing back valuable cargoes. In 1816, Captain Cuffe took thirty-eight American blacks at his own expense to Freetown, Sierra Leone and planned subsequent voyages but these were precluded by his death in 1817. However, Cuffe had reached a large audience with his pro- colonization arguments and thus laid the groundwork for later organizations such as the American Colonization Society.

The ACS had its origins in 1816, when Charles Fenton Mercer, a Federalist member of the Virginia state assembly, discovered accounts of earlier legislative debates on black colonization held in the wake of Gabriel Prosser's conspiracy. Mercer pushed the state of Virginia to support the idea, and one of his political contacts in Washington City, John Caldwell, in turn contacted his brother-in-law, a Presbyterian minister, the Reverend Robert Finley, who endorsed the scheme.

21 The American Colonization Society was established in Washington at the Davis Hotel on December 21, 1816. Among the delegates attending were Henry Clay, John Randolph of Roanoke, Richard Bland Lee, and the Rev. Robert Finley; colonization mastermind Charles Fenton Mercer was a member of the Virginia legislature and was unable to be in Washington for the meeting.

At this inaugural meeting, Finley proposed a colony be established in Africa to take free people of color, most of whom had been born free, away from the United States. Finley meant to colonize "(with their consent) the free people of color residing in our country, in Africa, or such other place as Congress may deem most expedient."

Henry Clay, , John Randolph and Fernando Fairfax were among the best known members. Ex-president Thomas Jefferson publicly supported the organization's goals, and President arranged public funding for the Society. Other notable supporters included Francis Scott Key, Bushrod Washington, and the architect of the U.S. Capitol, William Thornton—all slave owners.

These "moderates" thought slavery was unsustainable and should eventually end but did not consider integrating slaves into society a viable option. So, the ACS encouraged slaveholders to offer freedom on the condition that those accepting it would move to Liberia at the society's expense. A small number of slave owners chose to follow this course of action.

Bushrod Washington, a Supreme Court justice and nephew of , served as the first president of the organization. The great American statesman Henry Clay of Kentucky provided its main intellectual and political leadership. The presidents of the ACS tended to be southerners. The first president of the ACS was the nephew of former U.S. President George Washington, Bushrod Washington, an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Clay was ACS president from 1836 to 1849.

The prestige of the ACS benefited tremendously from the high-profile association of leaders like Clay and Washington, and over the years, some of America’s greatest men were not merely members but officers of the society: James Madison, Daniel Webster, , Stephen Douglas, John Randolph, William Seward, Francis Scott Key, General , and Roger Taney. Other great men such as Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, while never members of the society, strongly supported colonization and the removal of blacks from the United States, though Lincoln later supported black suffrage.

Supporters of the ACS may be divided into three main groups. The first consisted of those who genuinely felt that it was the best solution to a difficult problem and might lead to a gradual emancipation. Another smaller group was a

22 pro-slavery group who saw removal as an answer to the problems associated with "dangerous" free blacks. Perhaps the largest group of supporters was made up of those who opposed slavery, but did not believe in anything remotely resembling equality of the races.

The colonization effort resulted from a mixture of motives. Free blacks, freedmen and their descendants, encountered widespread discrimination in the United States of the early 19th century. They were generally perceived as a burden on society, and a threat to white workers because they undercut wages. Some abolitionists believed that blacks could not achieve equality in the United States and would be better off in Africa. Many slaveholders were worried that the presence of free blacks would encourage slaves to rebel. Other supporters of removal to Africa wanted to prevent racial mixing, to promote the spread of Christianity in Africa, or to develop trade with Africa.

The ACS encouraged slaveholders to offer freedom on the condition that those accepting it would move to Liberia at the society's expense. A number of slave owners did just that. Despite being anti-slavery, Society members were openly racist and frequently argued that free blacks would be unable to assimilate into the white society of this country. John Randolph, a slave owner, called free blacks "promoters of mischief." At this time, about 2 million African Americans lived in America of which 200,000 were free persons of color. Henry Clay, a congressman from Kentucky who was critical of the negative impact slavery had on the southern economy, believed that because of "unconquerable prejudice resulting from their color, they never could amalgamate with the free whites of this country."

Although the eccentric Randolph believed that the removal of free blacks would "materially tend to secure" slave property, the vast majority of early members were philanthropists, clergy and abolitionists who wanted to free African slaves and their descendants and provide them with the opportunity to return to Africa. Very few members were slave owners who feared free people of color and wanted to expel them from America, and in fact the Society never enjoyed much support among planters in the Lower South.

Three of the reasons the movement never became very successful were the objections raised by blacks and abolitionists, the enormous scale of the task of moving so many people (there were 4 million free blacks in the USA after the Civil War), and the difficulty in finding locations willing to accept large numbers of black newcomers.

Black Americans stood divided on the issue of emigration. A few black church leaders signaled their support for the ACS. In January 1817, free blacks in Richmond, Virginia, made a public pronouncement favoring emigration. However, most free blacks in northern communities such as , New York, and Boston united against emigration, seeing it as a ploy to expel free

23 blacks from the United States. Many denounced the membership of the society as racist deportationists whose aim was not to help black people, but rather to strengthen slavery by ridding society of a free black population. They felt that it would be better to stay in America and fight against slavery and for full rights as United States citizens. Lemuel Haynes, a free black Presbyterian minister at the time of the Society's formation, argued passionately that God's providential plan would eventually defeat slavery and lead to the harmonious integration of the races as equals. In 1817, over 3,000 blacks gathered in Philadelphia in a protest against the plans for colonization.

At the same time, many slave owners in the South vigorously denounced the plan as an assault on their slave economy.

Despite the support of the federal government, contributions from state governments and several leading citizens, the society had trouble raising the money it would need for its venture.

For many years the ACS tried to persuade the United States Congress to appropriate funds to send colonists to Liberia. Although Henry Clay led the campaign, it failed. The society did, however, succeed in its appeals to some state legislatures.

One of the chief methods of fundraising that they developed was selling lifetime membership certificates to private citizens.

The Society's members relentlessly pressured Congress and the President for support. The American Colonization Society had an ally in the new President of the United States, James Monroe, taking office in 1817. Monroe had endorsed the removal of free blacks to Africa since the turn of the century when he had been Governor of Virginia, and was now willing to use his authority to help the new society. He was able to convince Congress to appropriate $100,000 for the cause in 1819, and also helped the society to secure federal help in acquiring territory. In fact, Monroe's efforts to help the American Colonization Society were seen as so monumental, the capital of Liberia was named Monrovia in his honor.

Despite the opposition of many blacks, hundreds had volunteered to go as colonists back to the land of their origin. In January 1820 the first ship, the Elizabeth, sailed from New York headed for West Africa with three white ACS agents and 88 emigrants. The ACS purchased the freedom of American slaves and paid their passage to Liberia. Emigration was offered to already-free black people.

Under the leadership of Samuel Bacon, an Episcopal clergyman, the first expedition took place on the ship Elizabeth, a small merchantman. Among the items brought were wagons, wheelbarrows, plows, ironworks for a saw mill and

24 grist mill, two cannons, 100 muskets, 12 kegs of powder, fishing equipment, and a small barge. President James Monroe had the Secretary of the Navy order an American sloop of war, the USS Cyane, to convoy the Elizabeth to Africa. Of the 86 black emigrants sailing on the Elizabeth, only about one-third were men, the rest were wives and children.

The ship arrived first at Freetown, Sierra Leone then sailed south to what is now the northern coast of Liberia and made an effort to establish a settlement. All three whites and 22 of the emigrants died within three weeks from yellow fever. The remainders returned to Sierra Leone and waited for another ship. The Nautilus sailed twice in 1821 and established a settlement at Cape Mesurado on an island they named Perseverance. It was difficult for the early settlers, made of mostly free-born blacks, who were not born into slavery, but were denied the full rights of American citizenship.

The native Africans resisted the expansion of the settlers resulting in many armed conflicts. Nevertheless, in the next decade 2,638 African-Americans migrated to the area. Also, the colony entered an agreement with the U.S. government to accept freed slaves captured from slave ships.

The society had experienced little success in convincing local tribal leaders to sell land for the new colony, and the first 88 free black settlers from America were dropped off on Scherbo Island.

When President Monroe heard of the disaster, he was disturbed but still believed that the colonization movement could succeed. He appointed the Reverend Ephraim Bacon, Samuel's brother, to lead a new expedition that would gather up the survivors from the first and attempt once again to forge a permanent settlement. Bacon set sail, along with a few other white agents and 33 black colonists, on the ship Nautilus from , Virginia on January 23, 1821, just a little over a year after the Elizabeth had left New York. Like the Elizabeth, the Nautilus had a smooth voyage across the ocean. After landing at Freetown, the new party hurried to Fourah Bay to unite with the survivors of the original settlement and take stock of the situation.

Bacon and others proceeded to sail down the coast to look for a better place to found their colony. Encountering the same difficulties as Crozer had, they found that most local chiefs were unwilling to sell their land. In April they did manage to sign a treaty to buy 40 square miles (100 km2) of land in Bassa, but the Colonization Society refused to ratify it because it was too expensive and would require an annual tribute to be paid to the king. Frustrated by the failure to obtain land, President Monroe replaced Bacon with Dr. Eli Ayers, who left New York in Juli 1821 aboard the USS Shark, and arrived in Africa to meet the party in November 1821. Not wanting the effort to fail again, Monroe also decided to involve the military in the quest for a suitable territory, and sent the USS Alligator commanded by Navy Lieutenant Robert F. Stockton to assist Ayers.

25 Ayers and Stockton sailed down the coast looking for an appropriate location for their settlement, eventually deciding on Cape Mesurado, about 225 miles (362 km) south of Sierra Leone. Agents of the American Colonization Society had previously tried to buy the land, but King Peter, who ruled the region, had flatly refused to sell it. This time, Ayres and Stockton would not take no as an answer. They arrived on the cape on December 12 and requested a meeting with the king. Although denied at first, they were persistent and eventually succeeded in gaining an audience. King Peter refused to sell them the land they wanted, but agreed to return the next day for further negotiation. When the next day arrived, the king sent messengers in his place to inform the Americans that he would neither sell them any land nor meet with them again. Infuriated at this treatment, Stockton and Ayres decided to take matters into their own hands. They paid native guides to lead them to the king's town, where they once again insisted on a meeting. On December 14, King Peter did meet with them and once again told them that he would not sell them Cape Mesurado under any circumstances. Stockton and Ayres then proceeded to prove him wrong when they and their company pulled out pistols and aimed them at the king and others. At gunpoint, King Peter "agreed" to sell Cape Montserado (or Cape Mesurado) to the Americans. On the next day a formal agreement was drawn up, in which Ayers and Stockton acquired the cape for their colony in exchange for a quantity guns, powder, beds, clothes, mirrors, food, rum, and tobacco worth about $300.

Ayers and Stockton returned to Sierra Leone, where they loaded up the colonists on two ships and headed for their newly acquired home. The first settlement was on Providence Island near where the present capital city, Monrovia, is located. Providence Island had not possessed an adequate supply of fresh water, and the rainy season had begun. Many of the new settlers began to fall ill, just as the colonists of the Elizabeth had done a year earlier. The colony survived, however, and was strengthened on August 8, 1822, when the brig Strong, which had been chartered by the U.S. government and left Hampton Roads, Virginia on May 26, arrived at Cape Mesurado. The Strong carried food and other supplies for the colony, along with 55 freed black settlers.

In 1824 the Cape Mesurado Colony expanded and became the Liberia Colony, and the United States government settled New Georgia with "Congo" recaptives (slaves rescued by Americans in mid-ocean). Other colonies soon followed.

Jehudi Ashmun, an early leader of the American Colonization Society colony, envisioned an American empire in Africa. During 1825 and 1826, Ashmun took steps to lease, annex, or buy tribal lands along the coast and along major rivers leading inland. Like his predecessor Lt. Robert Stockton, Ashmun was prepared to use force to extend the colony's territory. His aggressive actions quickly increased Liberia's power over its neighbors.

26 In a treaty of May 1825 deposited by the ACS in the U.S. Library of Congress, King Peter and other native kings agreed to sell land in return for 500 bars of tobacco, three barrels of rum, five casks of powder, five umbrellas, ten iron posts, and ten pairs of shoes, among other items.

The Maryland State Colonization Society withdrew her support from the American Colonization Society and resolved to establish a colony in Liberia to send free people of color, of that state, that wished to emigrate. Soon afterwards, the Young Men's Colonization Society of Pennsylvania was induced to establish a separate colony at Port Cresson. The New York City Colonization Society united with the Young Men's Colonization Society of Pennsylvania. Under the active agency of Dr. Proudfit, the funds of the State were brought to their aid.

In 1832 the Edina and Port Cresson colonies were formed by the New York and Pennsylvania Colonization Societies. In 1834 the Maryland in Liberia colony was created by the Maryland State Colonization Society.

In 1834, the Mississippi State Colonization Society established a colony independent of the American Colonization Society. The Mississippi-in-Africa colony was created by the Mississippi and Louisiana State Colonization Societies in 1835. In 1835, the Port Cresson Colony was destroyed by natives of the area. The Bassa Cove Colony was founded on the ruins of the Port Cresson Colony a month later.

A period of consolidation followed. The Bassa Cove Colony absorbed the Edina Colony in 1837. Bassa Cove in turn was incorporated into Liberia in 1839, as was New Georgia. Maryland in Africa became the State of Maryland in Liberia in 1841. Mississippi-in-Africa was incorporated into Liberia as Sinoe County in 1842. Maryland in Liberia declared independence from Liberia in 1854 and had a brief life as the independent state of Maryland in Liberia. It was annexed into Liberia as Maryland County in 1857.

Abolitionist resistance to colonization grew steadily. Beginning in the 1830s, the society was harshly attacked by some abolitionists, who tried to discredit colonization as a slaveholders' scheme and the American Colonization Society as merely palliative propaganda for the continuation of slavery in the United States.

In 1832, as the ACS began to send agents to England to raise funds for what they touted as a benevolent plan, helped instigate opposition to the plan with a 236-page book on the evils of colonization and sent abolitionists to England to track down and counter ACS supporters.

In 1855, William Nesbit published the pamphlet "Four Months in Liberia, Or, African Colonization Exposed", a highly critical essay against the feasibility of colonization. Nesbit had sailed to Liberia under the auspices of the American

27 Colonization Society in 1853, and his booklet was a recounting of his experiences and observations in the colony.

Despite the strong opposition, the scheme did have some supporters. Slave states like Virginia, Kentucky and Maryland were already home to a significant number of free blacks, and whites there—still reeling from Nat Turner's 1831 rebellion, which emancipated slaves had a hand in—formed local colonization societies.

The colonization effort received a major boost after the Nat Turner slave uprising in 1831. Virginia, Kentucky, and Maryland all appropriated funds for the shipment of free blacks to Africa. Also, many more blacks were now more willing to emigrate since the Turner rebellion had produced significant white backlash against free blacks.

Thus encouraged, Maryland legislators passed a law in 1832 that required any slave freed after that date to leave the state and specifically offered passage to a part of Liberia administered by the Maryland State Colonization Society. However, enforcement provisions lacked teeth, and many Marylanders forgot their antipathy to free blacks when they needed extra hands at harvest time. There is no evidence that any freed African-American was forcibly sent to Liberia from Maryland or anywhere else.

The society in Liberia developed into three segments: The settlers with European-African lineage; freed slaves from slave ships and the West Indies; and indigenous native people. These groups would have a profound affect on the history of Liberia. The new colonies adopted other American styles of life, including Southern plantation-style houses with deep verandas, and established thriving trade links with other West Africans. The Americo-Liberians distinguished themselves from the local people, characterized as "natives," by the universal appellation of "Mr."

The settlers recreated American society, building churches and homes that resembled Southern plantations, and continuing to speak English. Many settlers also entered into a complex relationship with the indigenous people — marrying them in some cases, discriminating against them in others, but all the time attempting to "civilize" them and impose Western values on the traditional communities.

The formation of the colony did not occur altogether without difficulty. The land occupied by the American Colonization Society in Liberia was not void of native inhabitants when the emigrants arrived. Much of the area was under the control of the Malinké tribes who resented the expansion of these settlers. In addition to disease, poor housing conditions and lack of food and medicine, these new emigrants found themselves engaged in sporadic armed combat with the natives.

28 Almost from the beginning, the settlers periodically encountered stiff opposition from local tribesmen, usually resulting in bloody battles. On the other hand, colonial expansionists encroached on the newly-independent Liberia and took over much of the original territory of independent Liberia by force.

Since the 1840s Abraham Lincoln, an admirer of Clay, had been an advocate of the ACS program of colonizing blacks in Liberia. In an 1854 speech in Illinois, he points out the immense difficulties of such a task are an obstacle to finding an easy way to quickly end slavery.

Early in his presidency, Abraham Lincoln tried repeatedly to arrange resettlements of the kind the ACS supported, but each arrangement failed (See Abraham Lincoln on slavery). By 1863, most scholars believe that Lincoln abandoned the idea following the use of black troops. Biographer Stephen B. Oates has observed, Lincoln thought it immoral to ask black soldiers to fight for the United States and then remove them to Africa after their military service. Others, like Michael Lind, believe that as late 1864 or 1865 Lincoln continued to hold out hope for colonization, noting that he allegedly asked Attorney General Edward Bates if the Reverend James Mitchell could stay on as "your assistant or aid in the matter of executing the several acts of Congress relating to the emigration or colonizing of the freed Blacks." In his second term as president, on April 11, 1865, Lincoln gave a speech supporting suffrage for blacks.[11]

The American Colonization Society closely controlled the development of Liberia until 1847. However, by the 1840s, Liberia had become a financial burden on the American Colonization Society which was effectively bankrupt.

Liberia faced external threats, chiefly from Britain, because it was neither a sovereign power nor a bona fide colony of any sovereign nation. The Society controlled the colony of Liberia until 1846 when, under the perception that the British might annex the settlement, the ACS directed the Liberians to proclaim their independence. In 1847, the colony became the independent nation of Liberia. The new Liberian constitution was said to be fashioned after the American model.

In 1850, Virginia set aside $30,000 annually for five years to aid and support emigration. In its Thirty-Fourth Annual Report, the society acclaimed the news as "a great Moral demonstration of the propriety and necessity of state action!" During the 1850s, the society also received several thousand dollars from the New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Missouri, and Maryland legislatures.

By 1867 the Society had sent more than 13,000 emigrants to Liberia. After the Civil War, when many blacks wanted to go to Liberia, financial support for colonization had waned. During its later years the society focused on educational and missionary efforts in Liberia rather than further emigration.

29 In 1913 and again at its formal dissolution in 1964, the Society donated its records to the U.S. Library of Congress. The material contains a wealth of information about the foundation of the society, its role in establishing Liberia, efforts to manage and defend the colony, fund-raising, recruitment of settlers, conditions for black citizens of the American South, and the way in which black settlers built and led the new nation.

30

Philemon Beecher was influenced by Paul Cuffee, supporter of the American Colonization Society:

 Paul Cuffee (Jan. 17, 1759—Sept. 9, 1817) was an African- American businessman, patriot, and abolitionist. Cuffee built a lucrative shipping empire, even building his first three ships. He also built the first school of Westport, Massachusetts, which was racially integrated. A devout Christian, Cuffee often preached and spoke at the Sunday services at the bi-racial Society of Friends meeting house in Westport, even fronting most of the money to build a new meeting house in 1813. In Africa, Cuffee helped to establish The The Friendly Society of Sierra Leone, in an attempt to support the former slave colony.

Paul Sloacum was born free during the French and Indian War, on Cuttyhunk Island, Massachusetts. Paul was the seventh of eleven children. His father, Kofi (also known as Cuffee Slocum), was a member of the Ashanti ethnic group who had been captured at age ten, and brought to the British colony of Massachusetts to become a slave. Paul's mother, Ruth Moses, was a Native American and a member of the Wampanoag Nation. Kofi was a skilled carpenter who educated himself. He worked long hours and earned enough money to buy his own freedom in 1746. He eventually bought a 116-acre (0.47 km2) farm.

While Paul was growing up, there was no Quaker meeting house on Cuttyhunk Island, so the family held religious services in their kitchen with Kofi preaching from the scriptures. The family moved to Dartmouth, Massachusetts when Paul was eight years old. Kofi died when Paul was thirteen. Paul and his brother John took over the responsibility of the farm, and cared for their mother and three younger sisters. Paul resented the fact that their last name was the name of the man who had enslaved his father, so Paul persuaded his brothers and sisters to use their father's English first name, "Cuffee", as their family name.

With the responsibility of caring for a family and managing a farm at such a young age, Cuffee was unable to fulfill his dream of receiving an education and having a sailing career. At the time of his father's death, he knew little more than the alphabet.

31 The closest mainland port to Cuttyhunk was New Bedford, Massachusetts - the center of the American whaling industry. Whenever Cuffee had time, he would try to learn more about ships and sailing. He would find sailors and pepper them with questions. Eventually, he was given a lesson in navigation by one of the sailors. Although intiially discouraged by his difficulty in understanding mathematics necessary to navigate, Cuffee studied whenever he could. Finally, at the age of 16, Paul Cuffee signed onto a whaling ship and, later on, cargo ships, where he learned navigation. During the American Revolution he was held prisoner by the British for a time.

After he was released from prison, Cuffee moved to Westport, Mass. He farmed and studied and saved money from his produce sales. In 1779, he and his brother David built a boat by hand. His brother was afraid to sail in the dangerous seas, so Cuffee went out by himself, in 1780, to deliver his cargo to Connecticut. The boat was lost during a storm. Undaunted, Cuffee built another boat, also by hand. Again he set out to sea alone. During this voyage, his ship and his cargo were seized by pirates. A third time he and David built a boat, and he borrowed money for the cargo. He set off for Nantucket by himself. Pirates chased him and, in his haste to flee them, his ship hit a rock. But he was not captured, and he was able to make it back to Westport. Although Cuffee reached Nantucket, he did not turn a profit on the venture. Finally, he made yet another trip to Nantucket that turned a profit. His brother David then prophesized that Cuffee would be a rich man.

Cuffee finally made enough money to purchase another ship and hired on crew. He soon owned a fleet of ships and bought a 116-acre (0.47 km2) farm in Westport, Mass.

At the age of twenty-one, he refused to pay his taxes because he did not have the right to vote. Cuffee believed that he should not have to pay taxes if he was not being represented. In 1780, he petitioned the council of Bristol County, Massachusetts to end taxation without representation. The petition was denied, but it was one of the influences that led the Legislature to grant voting rights to all free male citizens of the state in 1783.

At age twenty-four, he became part owner of a small vessel and married Alice Pequit. Like his mother, Pequit was also a Wamponoag. The couple settled in Westport, Massachusetts, where they raised their eight children. As Cuffee became more successful, he invested in more ships and made a sizable fortune. In the 1790s, he made his money in cod fishing and smuggling goods from Canada. With this money Cuffee bought a large farm along the Westport River and was able to invest in the expansion of his fleet.

Paul Cuffee always felt the need to do something about the demeaning conditions that many African-Americans lived under in the American colonies. Due to his wealth, Cuffee did not live the average life of blacks in America so he

32 sought ways to help others who had not been as fortunate. Unfortunately, most Americans felt that blacks were inferior to Europeans, even in the predominantly Calvinist and Quaker New England. Although slavery continued, some believed the emigration of Blacks to colonies outside the United States was the easiest and most realistic solution to the race problem in America.

Many previous attempts by Europeans and Americans to colonize Blacks in other parts of the world had failed miserably, including the British attempt to colonize Sierra Leone with free African-Americans, criminals, and prostitutes, beginning in 1787, when four hundred people departed from Great Britain and headed for Sierra Leone. The colony was plagued with serious problems from the outset and proved to be a severe disappointment to its London sponsors.

` Although colonizing Sierra Leone was an extremely difficult task, Cuffee believed it was a viable option for blacks and threw his support behind the movement. Paul Cuffee stated “I have for these many years past felt a lively interest in their behalf, wishing that the inhabitants of the colony might become established in truth, and thereby be instrumental in its promotion amongst our African brethren.” Cuffee received encouragement to proceed with his project from people in New York, , and Boston as well as members of the African Institution. Cuffee mulled over on the logistics and chances of success for the movement for three years before deciding in 1809 to move ahead with the proposed project. He launched his first expedition to Sierra Leone on January 2, 1811.

Cuffee reached Freetown, Sierra Leone on March 1, 1811. During his time there he traveled the area investigating the social and economic conditions of the region. He met with some of the colony’s officials, who opposed Cuffee’s idea for colonization of blacks from America. He sailed to Great Britain to seek help from there.

He met with the heads of the African Institution and was granted permission to continue with his mission in Sierra Leone. Cuffee then left Liverpool and sailed back to Sierra Leone, where he finalized his plans for the colony.

While in Sierra Leone, Cuffee helped to establish the Friendly Society of Sierra Leone, a trading organization run by blacks. He had faith that the Friendly Society would help to establish a far more powerful Sierra Leone economy as well as self-help projects for the residents of the colony. Cuffee’s friends from the African Institution granted the Friendly Society money for these goals. Heartened by London’s response to the Friendly Society, and also by the evident faith Freetown’s inhabitants entrusted in him, Cuffee now believed the trip to Sierra Leone was well worth the sacrifice of time, effort, and money. Although Cuffee viewed the expedition as successful, he feared that once he, along with several other powerful leaders, left, the citizens of the colony would again return to their

33 previous non-Christian religious practices. So, Cuffee left the colony with a message advising them how to behave and warned them that they should not defer from his advisement.

After returning to America in 1812, Cuffee was arrested for bringing British cargo into the United States. His brig, the Traveler, was seized as well. He was summoned to Washington, D.C. for violating trade laws. There he met with the President, James Madison. He was warmly welcomed into the by Madison. Madison later decided that Cuffee was not aware of and did not intentionally violate the national trading policy. Madison questioned Cuffee’s experience and the conditions of Sierra Leone and was eager to learn about Africa and the possibility of further expanding colonization. Madison evaluated Cuffee’s plans carefully, but rejected them reluctantly. Madison believed that there would be too many problems in further attempts to colonize Sierra Leone but regarded Cuffee as America’s African authority.

Cuffee intended to return to Sierra Leone once a year but the War of 1812 between the United States and Britain prevented him from doing so. He visited Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York, speaking to groups of free blacks about the colony. He also urged blacks to form organizations in these cities to communicate with each other and to correspond with the African Institution and with the Friendly Society at Sierra Leone. He printed a pamphlet about Sierra Leone to inform the general public of his ideas.

In the spring of 1813, Cuffee suffered several monetary losses because of some unprofitable ventures of his ships; one ship never returned. After getting his finances in order he prepared to return to Sierra Leone. The war between the U.S. and Britain continued, so Cuffe decided he would have to convince both countries to ease their restrictions on trading. He was unsuccessful and was forced to wait until the war ended.

He left on , 1815 with thirty-eight Black colonists and arrived in Sierra Leone on February 3, 1816. Cuffee and his emigrants were not greeted as warmly as before. The authorities were already having trouble keeping the general population in order and were not thrilled at the idea that more emigrants were arriving. Although things did not go exactly as planned, Cuffee believed that once continuous trade between America, Britain, and Africa commenced the society would realize his predicted success. Cuffee left Sierra Leone in April filled with optimism for its future.

In 1816, Cuffee’s vision resulted in a mass emigration plan for blacks. This time around Congress rejected his petition to return to Sierra Leone. During this time period many Black Americans began to demonstrate interest in immigrating to Africa. Cuffee was then persuaded by Reverends Samuel J. Mills and Robert Finley to help them with their colonization plans in the American Colonization Society.

34 In the beginning of 1817, Cuffee’s health deteriorated. He never returned to Africa and died on , 1817 leaving an estate with an estimated value of $20,000.

Paul was of the Ashanti, or Asante, a major ethnic group of Ashanti Region in Ghana, through his paternal line. The Ashanti speak Twi, an Akan language similar to Fante. For the Ashanti (Asante) Confederacy see AsaP colonization, the developed a large and influential empire in West Africa. The Ashanti later developed the powerful Ashanti Confederacy or Asanteman and became the dominant presence in the region.

Ghana has a variable terrain, coasts and mountains, forests and grasslands, lush agricultural areas and near deserts. The Ashanti settled in the central part of present-day Ghana, about three hundred kilometres from the coast. The territory is densely forested, mostly fertile and to some extent mountainous. There are two seasons -- the rainy season (April to November) and the dry season (December to March). The land has several streams; the dry season, however is extremely desiccated. It is hot year round.

Today Ashanti number close to 7 million people (roughly 30% of the Ghanaian population, speaking Asante, also referred to as Twi, a member of the Niger-Congo language group.) Their political power has fluctuated since Ghana's independence, but they remain largely influential. The current president of Ghana, John Agyekum Kufuor is Ashanti. The majority of the Ashanti reside in the Ashanti Region, one of the administrative regions of the country. Kumasi, the capital of the current Ashanti region, has also been the historic capital of the Ashanti Kingdom. Currently, the Ashanti region of Ghana has a population of 3,612,950, making it Ghana's most populous administrative district.

The Ashanti are one of Africa's matrilineal societies where line of descent is traced through the female. Historically, this mother progeny relationship determined land rights, inheritance of property, offices and titles.

The father role was to catalyze the conception and provides the nkra or the soul of the child, that is, the child received its life force, character, and personality traits from the father. Though not considered as important as the mother, the male interaction continues in the place of birth after marriage.

Typically, individual Ashanti did not own land, but rather occupied that which came down from a previous ancestor. Both men and women can possess property made or acquired by individual efforts. Heirlooms and carved stools -- all possessions of family and lineage property -- may be disposed of by individuals if they choose to do so.

Historically, an Ashanti girl was betrothed, if not in childhood, immediately after the puberty ceremony. They did not regard marriage as an important ritual

35 event, but as a state that follows soon and normally after the puberty ritual. The Ashanti required that various goods given by the boy's family to that of the girl, however this was not a 'bride price' situation, but simply stands as an agreement between the two families. A man may marry a cross cousin -- his father's sister's daughter or his mother's brother's daughter. Parallel cousins are members of the same 'abusua (family) and hence prohibited as marriage partners. Sometimes nuptial arrangements were arranged before the birth of the couple. Parents allowed boys some initiative, but he must receive the consent of the households, the only formalities required.

The Ashanti went from being a tributary state, to a confederation of states, and ultimately a centralized hierarchical kingdom. Beginning as a tributary state of , the foremost Akan power during the 16th century, the Ashanti Kingdom or Asante grew out of a confederation of Akan-speaking states led by Osei Tutu, the first Asantehene. Osei Tutu, military leader and head of the Oyoko clan, founded the Ashanti kingdom in the 1670s. He obtained the support of other clan chiefs and using Kumasi as the central base, subdued surrounding Akan states. He challenged and eventually defeated Denkyira in 1701.

Realizing the weakness of a loose confederation of Akan states, Osei Tutu strengthened centralization of the surrounding Akan groups and expanded the powers judiciary system within the centralized government. Thus, this loose confederation of small city-states grew into a kingdom or empire looking to expand its borders. Newly conquered areas had the option of joining the empire or becoming tributary states.[3] Opoku Ware I, Osei Tutu's successor, extended the borders, embracing much of present day Ghana's territory.

Essential to Ashanti nationhood is the legend of the 'Golden Stool' (sika 'dwa), the legend actually tells of the birth of the Ashanti kingdom itself. In the seventeenth century, in order for the Ashanti to win their independence from Denkyira, then another powerful Akan state, a meeting of all the clan heads of each of the Ashanti settlements was called. In this meeting, the Golden Stool was commanded down from the heavens by Okomfo Anokye, the Priest, or sage advisor, to the very first Asantehene (Ashanti king), Osei Tutu I. The Golden Stool floated down from the heavens straight into the lap of Osei Tutu I. Okomfo Anokye declared the stool to be the symbol of the new Ashanti union ('Asanteman'), and allegiance was sworn to the Golden Stool and to Osei Tutu as the Asantehene. The newly founded Ashanti union went to war with Denkyira and defeated it.

The Golden Stool is sacred to the Ashanti, as it is believed that it contains the 'Sunsum' — spirit or soul of the Ashanti people. Just as man cannot live without a soul, so the Ashanti would cease to exist if the Golden Stool were to be taken from them. The Golden Stool is not just sacred; it is a symbol of nationhood, a symbol that binds or unifies all Ashanti.

36 The Golden Stool is a curved seat 46 cm high with a platform 61 cm wide and 30 cm deep. Its entire surface is inlaid with gold, and hung with bells to warn the king of impending danger. It has not been seen by many and only the king and trusted advisers know the hiding place. Replicas of the stool have been produced for the chiefs and at their funerals are ceremonially blackened with animal blood, a symbol of their power for generations.

The Ashanti have always defended their Golden Stool when it was at risk. In 1896, the Ashanti allowed their King, Prempeh I, to be exiled rather than risk losing a war and the Golden Stool in the process. The Governor of the , Sir Frederick Hodgson, demanded to sit on the stool in 1900. The Ashanti remained silent and when the assembly ended, they went home and prepared for war. Although they lost on the battle field, they claimed victory because they fought only to preserve the sanctity of the Golden Stool, and they had. Then in 1920, a group of African road builders accidentally found the Golden Stool and stripped it of its gold ornaments. They were tried by an Ashanti court, found guilty, and the death penalty was imposed. But the British intervened and the sentence was commuted to perpetual banishment.

The Ashanti have always been proud of the uniqueness of their Golden Stool, and it was a symbol of not only their independence, but a common bond between their people. When the King of Gyaman, Adinkra, made a Golden Stool for himself, the Asantehene was so annoyed that he led a massive army against him. Adinkra was completely destroyed near Bondoukou, and he was decapitated. The Asantehene then proceeded to order the melt down of Adinkra's golden stool, and for it to be made into two masks, to represent his "ugly" face. These masks remain hanging on each side of the Ashanti Golden Stool to this day.

37 Paul Cuffee was of the Ashanti Nation, founded by Osei Kofi Tutu the First:

 Osei Kofi Tutu I was one of the co-founders of the Empire of Ashanti, along with Okomfo Anokye, his chief priest. The Ashanti were a powerful, warlike, and highly disciplined people of West Africa, whose history goes back more than 2000 years. The Ashanti are said to be the descendants of those Ethiopians mentioned by Diodorus Siculus and Herodotus who were driven southward by a conquering Egyptian army. Osei Tutu led an alliance of Ashanti states against the regional hegemon, the Denkyira, The Ashanti Empire completely defeating them.

Then, through force of arms and diplomacy, he induced the rulers of the other Ashanti city-states to declare allegiance to Kumasi, his capital. Through his career he was closely advised by Okomfo Anokye, his chief Priest.

The Empire of Ashanti was officially formed in 1701 and Osei Tutu was crowned Asantehene (King of all Ashanti). This was just a half century before Paul Cuffee’s birth in Massachusetts, to a slave born in the Ashanti Empure. Emperor Tutu held that position until his death in 1717 in a battle against the . Osei Tutu was the fourth ruler in Asante royal history, succeeding his uncle Obiri Yeboa. The Asante comprise the largest contingent of the Akan or Twi-speaking peoples. Akan societies are matrilineal, with a person belonging to the abusua of his mother. Inheritance, succession and status are lineally determined. Osei Tutu belonged to the Oyoko Abusua.

By the middle of the sixteenth century, previous migrations of Abusua groups resulted in the development of a number of Akan states within a thirty mile radius of modern-day Kumasi, Ghana. The dense concentration of states in this limited area was primarily due to the region being a known source of gold and kola; two important trade routes—one from Jenne and Timbuktu in the western Sudanand the other from Hausaland—entered the area. These states were all dominated by the Denkyira. In the middle of the seventeenth century the last of the Abusua groups, the Oyoko Abusua, arrived.

Exploiting the Abusua's mutual hatred for their oppressor, Osei Tutu and his priest-counselor Okomfo Anokye succeeded in merging these states into the

38 Asante Union. This was a carefully orchestrated political and cultural process, which was implemented in successive stages.

First, the union was spiritually brought into being through the Golden Stool, invoked by Okomfo Anokye, and explained as the embodiment of the soul of the Asante Union. The ruler—in essence the religious and political leader— and the occupant of the Golden stool was to be known as the Asantehene and to be subsequently selected from the lineage of Osei Tutu and Obiri Yeboa.

Second, Kumasi was chosen as the capital of the Asante Union, and Osei Tutu was now both the Kumasihene and the Asantehene. The Odwira Festival was inaugurated. Established as an annual and common celebration, and attended by all member states, this served as a unifying force for the nation.

Third, Osei Tutu, assisted by Okomfo Anokye, developed a new constitution for the Union. The Asantahene, who was also the Kumasihene, was at its head, with the kings of the states of the union forming the Confederacy or Union Council. While the power of the asantehene was not absolute, Osei Tutu enjoyed much despotic power. He is arguably one of the most significant black kings in history. He more than tripled the size of his empire through wars of conquest, and expansion, and he brought a sense of dignity back to West Africa.

Fourth, as one of the key objectives for forming the Asante Union was to overthrow the Denkyira, Osei Tutu placed strong emphasis on the military organization of the Union. Supposedly borrowing the military organization from the , Osei Tutu honed the Union army into an effective and efficient fighting unit.

With the Asante Union firmly established and its military organization in place, Osei Tutu embraced on wars of expansion and revenge.

After avenging his uncle's death at the hands of the Dormaa and bringing some recalcitrant states into line, Osei Tutu focused on the Denkyira. In 1701, the absolute defeat of the Denkyira and their abettors, the people of Akyem, brought the Asante to the attention of the Europeans on the coast for the first time. The victory broke the Denkyira hold on the trade path to the coast and cleared the way for the Asante to increase trade with the Europeans.

In 1717, Osei Tutu was killed in a war against the Akyem. He was struck by bullets from snipers and sharpshooters, who were hiding in the dense forests and the trees as he crossed a river in a canoe.

At the onset of the struggle, Osei Tutu underestimated the Akyem, because they were few in number, however this would prove to be a fatal mistake. He went into the battle, without his usual magical amulets", and even left some of his body armor back at Kumasi, his capital.

39 Minutes after being struck by the bullet, Asantehene Osei Tutu I died. His last words were "ankah me nime ya" (If only I knew) in reference to underestimating the akyem.

Osei Kofi Tutu I and his adviser, Okomfo Anokye, forged the Asante Union from a number of different Abusua groups who submerged their old rivalries and hatred for the common good—the overthrow of their common oppressor, the Denkyira. Skillfully utilizing a combination of spiritual dogma and political skill, and ably supported by military prowess, Osei Tutu tripled the size of the small kingdom of Kumasi which he had inherited from his uncle Obiri Yeoba and laid the foundation for the Empire of Ashanti in the process.

40 Osei Kofi Tutu the First was advised by the shaman, Okomfo Anokye:

 Okomfo Anokye (active late 17th century) was an Ashanti priest, statesman, and lawgiver. He occupies a Merlin-like position in Ashanti history. A cofounder of the Empire of Ashanti in West Africa, he helped establish its constitution, laws, and customs. The original name of Okomfo Anokye was Kwame Frimpon Anokye (Okomfo means "priest"). Some traditions say that he came from Akwapim in the Akwamu Kingdom southeast of the Empire of Ashanti, but his descendants claim he was born of an Ashanti mother and father and was related to the The Ashanti Empire military leader Osei Tutu (the other co- founder of the Empire of Ashanti) through a maternal uncle.

When Osei Tutu succeeded about 1690 to the leadership of the small group of Akan forest states around the city of Kumasi which were already grouped in loose military alliance, Anokye was his adviser and chief priest. Tutu and Anokye, who must be considered together, carried out the expansionist policy of their predecessors, defeating two powerful enemies, the Akan Doma to the northwest and the Denkyera empire to the south.

To throw off the Denkyera yoke required a powerful unity that transcended the particularism of the Ashanti segments, and Anokye employed not only the political influence of his priesthood but also added the spiritual ties that transformed the loose Ashanti alliance into a "national" union in 1695. Anokye and Tutu established rituals and customs of the Ashanti state to diminish the influence of local traditions. They designated Kumasi the Ashanti capital. They established a state council of the chiefs of the preexisting states admitted to the union and suppressed all competing traditions of origin. Finally, they reorganized the Ashanti army.

The war with Denkyera from 1699 to 1701 went badly at first, but when the Denkyera army reached the gates of Kumasi, Anokye's "incantations" supposedly produced defections among their generals. The Ashanti broke the Denkyera hegemony and captured the Dutch deed of rent for Elmina . This gave the Ashanti access to the African coast and involved them henceforth in the

41 commerce and politics of the coastal slave trade. After Tutu's death in 1717, Anokye is said to have returned to Akwapim and died there.

The greatness of Anokye the lawgiver, and of Tutu the warrior, is measured by the permanency of the nation they created, its symbolism and ritual alive today in the greater state of Ghana. A historical judgment on Anokye is that he enabled the Ashanti "to succeed where Hellas had failed," that is, to retain their national unity even after their war of liberation.

Anokye the Lawgiver was important in forming the narrative which allowed the various Ashanti to bond with one another. In this, he is an example of “fraternitas” in action. Fraternitas can allow nations to come forth and be sustained in governance by the power of myth and religion.

But even the myth of Anokye comes under scrutiny, now and then. In spite of, or perhaps because of his generally acknowledged incredible achievements, the origin of Okomfo Kwame Anokye Frimpon Kotobre, popularly known as Okomfo Anokye, like his death is shrouded in myth and mystery.

In 1921, Nana Kwadwo Apau, Chief of Agona and direct descendant of Okomfo Anokye recounted the ancestry to the English anthropologist R.S. Rattray, that curiously linked Okomfo Anokye’s ancestry to Otumfuo Osei Tutu I. Similarly, at Awukugua, Akuapem in Ghana’s Eastern Region, there are descendants of Okomfo Anokye who are adamant that the Great Priest was born at Awukugua and comes from Awukugua.

Regardless of his origins, he was a great man, Had he remained at Awukugua, he would have been merely remembered as a great priest who climbed a tall palm tree with his sandals on; and who also carved a traditional game of Oware out of a huge slab of stone with his bare fingers. Both items are still extant in Awukugua, and draw endless visitors to the town.

However, by befriending Barima Osei Tutu at Akwamu (much closer to Awukugua, than Agona in Asante!), in the 1680's, Okomfo Anokye became the catalyst through which the project of the (Asante) state in time (history) is given definition and launched on its way, as one historian has eloquently put it.

One thing is certain and irrefutable about Okomfo Anokye. He was a friend of the then Barima Osei Tutu, and both of them lived at Akwamufie, the capital of Akwamu. Osei Tutu, a royal of the Oyoko lineage of Kwaman (now called Kumase) had been sent to the court of Nana Ansa Sasraku, the King of Akwamu to learn statecraft.

Upon the death of his uncle Obiri Yeboa, Osei Tutu was summoned to Kwaman to assume leadership of the Oyoko clan of Kwaman. Legend has it that upon realizing his mistake in allowing Anokye to travel with Osei Tutu, Ansa

42 Sasraku sent his men after the group. With the spiritual support of Okomfo Anokye, Osei Tutu was able to turn away their pursuers. Thus, began the legend of Okomfo Anokye, and the successes he attained together with Osei Tutu.

Upon becoming the chief of Kwaman, Osei Tutu made Okomfo Anokye his chief advisor in all matters. Every military or diplomatic success was attributed to the magical powers of the great Okomfo Anokye. His fame extended far and wide, and the magical things he could do were innumerable. Among other incredible deeds, it was said that Okomfo Anokye fetched water in a basket, and yet the water did not spill! Okomfo Anokye’s house was without a roof, and yet it was sheltered from the rain!! Okomfo Anokye could dissect an ant and expose its intestines!!! (As a child, I recall singing the great deeds of Akomfo Anokye which had been turned into a song!).

As Okomfo Anokye’s fame and influence grew, so did the need to create a powerful kingdom that would unite the Asante, as a prelude to the unification of all the Akan. With the defeat of Denkyira, then the most powerful kingdom, by Asante-speaking forces under Osei Tutu, the idea of a new united kingdom of Asante became a reality. To this end, Okomfo Anokye invited the various independent and fragmented Asante Chiefs to an important meeting one Friday in Kumase, the new name that Okomfo Anokye gave to Kwaman.

The meeting was held at Dwabrem, which was situated at the present site of the Kumase Post Office, in 1701. Okomfo Anokye whose mystical powers and his role in the defeat of Denkyira had made him a recognized and unquestioning authority, told the Chiefs that he was about to command a Stool from Heaven, with the powers given to him by God. He added that the Stool will rest on the lap of one of the assembled Chiefs. He made the Chiefs agree and swear by Oath that the one upon whose lap the Stool from Heaven rested would become the King of the new Union.

It was a Mount Carmel (Bible's Old Testament), type of assembly. Here was Okomfo Anokye, impressing upon the assembled Chiefs and people that the powers he assumed from his God were more potent than whatever gods the individual Chiefs claimed to acquire their symbols of authority from. Lo and behold, the Stool commanded from Heaven landed safely onto the lap of Nana Osei Tutu. The Stool was laden in Gold, it arrived on a Friday; so it was given the splendid name Sika Dwa Kofi, or Friday’s Golden Stool. Every Asante child knows this story, and it is passed on from generation to generation.

Okomfo Anokye decreed that the Sika Dwa represented the collective well-being of all Asante, their unity, and strength; and it must never be defiled or taken away from them. The occupant of the Sika Dwa must be respected as their supreme ruler and authority. By prior agreement, all the Chiefs accepted Nana Osei Tutu Opemsuo I as the occupant of the Sika Dwa, and the first King of the new political union called Asante.

43

Okomfo Anokye warned that if the Golden Stool is ever captured, Asante would lose its power and disintegrate into chaos. This explains why in 1900, when the British colonial governor demanded the Golden Stool for the British monarch, Nana Yaa Asantewaa , without any prompting led Asante in a fight against Britain and her allies for two years --The Yaa Asantewaa War to deny the British their sacrilegious request.

Okomfo Anokye created lesser Stools for all the other Chiefs. In this manner, no Stool in Asante could claim to have preceded the great Golden Stool. It was an act of political mastery and strategy; political wisdom and a symbol of unity and nationhood.

Just to underscore the historical fact: My own several times great- grandfather Obrempon Nana Firam Gyereba, (Asuonwunhene), was present at that momentous occasion. He was the main gunner or Tufuo protecting Otumfuo Osei Tutu I and Sika Dwa at that very moment of the birth of Asante at Dwabrem. He had accompanied Osei Tutu to Denkyira and Akwamu as one of his seven military guards. Okomfo Anokye created a Stool for him that very Friday evening as he did for all seven military guards who had served him in Denkyira and Akwamu. This led to the establishment of the powerful Kumase Ekonti Division, also known as the Atuo Nson or the Seven Gunners. The Bantamahene is the head of the Kumase Ekonti Division. According to the historical record, Okomfo Anokye was rewarded with the Stool of Agona by Nana Osei Tutu for services rendered to Asante.

Okomfo Anokye helped in instituting other symbols of authority and unity for Asante such as the annual Odwira festival, at which observance, the Asantehene gave a state of the Union account to all Asante. The Odwira served to rekindle the spirit of belonging among all Asante and a dedication to serve Asante better the coming year.

Okomfo Anokye was also a great Law-Maker and Law-Giver. He is reputed with giving Asante a set of codes known as the Okomfo Anokye Seventy-Seven Laws. It covered everything from birth and child rearing; observance of puberty rites; sexual relations; installation of Chiefs; the governing of the nation; to death and burial rites. Even today, in Asante, whenever a grandmother advises that something is a taboo, the grandmother is unwittingly referring to one of Okomfo Anokye’s codes of conduct. Such was the political and legal acumen of the great Akomfo Anokye.

Given his supernatural powers and achievements which are still visible today, and validated by the pomp and pageantry of Asante; as well as the entrepreneurial spirit of Asantefuo; Okomfo Kwame Anokye Frimpon Kotobre could not be expected to die a natural death! Death could not conquer him. Legend has it that the Great Priest left specific instructions to his nephew and

44 eventual successor as Chief of Agona, Kwame Siaw Anim. The instructions were that the Great Priest would be traveling in the spirit world for Seven days, after falling into a deep trance, to search for a cure for Death, after which he would re- enter his human form. During the course of the seven-day waiting period, the nephew, impatient to inherit the Stool and all the wealth accumulate by his uncle Okomfo Anokye; pronounced his uncle dead, and presided over a noisy funeral; as the historian T.C. McCaskie eloquently puts it in his book State and Society in Pre-colonial Asante.

During the course of the funeral, as related by McCaskie, Okomfo Anokye in his human form appeared at the outskirts of the town. He met a hunter from Gyamase (a nearby town), who upon the Great Priest’s enquiry as to the commotion at Agona answered that a greedy nephew of Okomfo Anokye had disobeyed his uncle’s instructions and had pronounced the Great Priest’s death, hence all the commotion at the funeral in Agona.

Okomfo Anokye revealed himself to the hunter, and gave him a medicine called Nkontwima for the hunter’s own prosperity. Okomfo Anokye also gave the hunter a message that he had found a cure for Death, but to tell the people of Agona and Asante that because of his nephew’s greed, the cure will be withheld from them forever! The lesson in this story is that calamity follows upon wilful disobedience of Okomfo Anokye’s instructions! This explains why in Asante traditional matters, every word and instruction given by the Great Priest are accepted as gospel. Further, claimants to Asante Stools legitimize their claim by appealing to the role of Okomfo Anokye thereof.

After the encounter with the hunter, the great Okomfo Anokye disappeared. Folks, Okomfo Anokye did not die, he simply disappeared, and that is what our history says! To this day, nobody can tell where that Okomfo Kwame Anokye Frimpon Kotobre was buried. Whatever Okomfo Anokye provided to the hunter is today part of the heirloom of the Chief of Gyamase.

The great things that Okomfo Anokye did are still extant for people to see: the Golden Stool, the buried Sword at the present Komfo Anokye Hospital in Kumasi; the palm tree he climbed with his footmarks still evident in the bowels of the tree; the Oware game carved out of a huge slab of stone with his bare fingers, at Awukugua; and numerous others, not least the pomp and pageantry of Asanteman.

Upon reflection, it is sad that of late some of our misguided Ghanaian Christian Pastors and other similarly misguided people, have taken to deriding the achievements and personality of Okomfo Anokye as idolatry and anathema. It is this sad reality due to the colonization of the African mind that concerns me. In every corner of the globe, people respect their tradition and culture in spite of so-called modernity. Other cultures still regard similar feats as the gospel truth. To wit: Moses received Ten Commandments from Heaven and resulted in

45 Judaism; a virgin birth of Jesus resulted in Christianity; Mohamed’s vision led to Islam; think about Buddha and Buddhism; or Hinduism and its prophets; in the United States, Joseph Smith had a vision in the 1820's in New York and that led to the birth of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints or Mormons. Examples are legion. It is only Africans who tend to undermine and disrespect their own culture while hanging on to the truths of received ideas from foreign lands.

Such critics rarely condemn Julius Caesar or any of the Roman and Greek gods. Rather, the collapsing temples of Greek and Roman idolatry are promoted as national treasures, visited by Popes, Cardinals, Pastors, Christians and countless tourists. This raises a question in the sub-Saharan world, namely whether one can be an African Christian, and yet remain respectable of what his ancestors accomplished, just as Europeans seem to have done. Why should some African Christians view Chieftaincy and its regalia as idolatrous, when the white missionaries who converted Africans to Christianity were sent to do that job with the blessings of their Queens and Kings? Okomfo Anokye never met any Christian missionary, black or white. He accomplished his task by his God-given talents. In the least, we must revere him, and in so doing show respect to ourselves and to our customs and to our tradition.

46 The Ashanti have been called “the Greeks of Africa”, succeeding in unification where the men of Hellas, failed, they noted the comparison, and the heirs to the Greeks made them the subject of observation, too:

 Diodorus Siculus (Greek: Διόδωρος Σικελιώτης), was a Greek historian living in from the Roman province of and living during the 1st century BCE. According to Diodorus' own work, he was born at Agyrium in Sicily (now called Agira). With but one exception, antiquity affords no further information about Diodorus' life and doing than is to be found in his own work Bibliotheca historica. Only Jerome, in his Chronicon under the year of Abraham 1968 (49 BC), writes, "Diodorus of

Sicily, a writer of Greek history, became illustrious". The Senate and People of Rome

His English translator, Charles Henry Oldfather, remarks on the "striking coincidence" that one of only two known Greek inscriptions from Agyrium (I.G. XIV, 588) is the tombstone of one "Diodorus, the son of Apollonius".

Diodorus' universal history, which he named Bibliotheca historica ("Historical Library"), consisted of forty books, of which 1–5 and 11–20 survive, and were divided into three sections. The first six books treat the mythic history of the non-Hellenic and Hellenic tribes to the destruction of Troy and are geographical in theme, and describe the history and culture of Ancient Egypt (book I), of Mesopotamia, India, Scythia, and Arabia (II), of North Africa (III), and of Greece and Europe (IV–VI). His account of gold mining in Egypt is one of the earliest extant texts on the topic, and describes in vivid detail the use of slave labour in terrible conditions.

Through his Egyptian research, he record some of the earlier historical narratives regarding the Ashanti peoples later to create an Empire in west Africa.

In the next section (books VII–XVII), he recounts the history of the world from the Trojan War down to the death of Alexander the Great. The last section (books XVII to the end) concerns the historical events from the successors of Alexander down to either 60 BC or the beginning of Caesar's Gallic War. (The end has been lost, so it is unclear whether Diodorus reached the beginning of the Gallic War as he promised at the beginning of his work or, as evidence suggests,

47 old and tired from his labors he stopped short at 60 BC.) He selected the name "Bibliotheca" in acknowledgment that he was assembling a composite work from many sources. Identified authors on whose works he drew include Hecataeus of Abdera, Ctesias of Cnidus, Ephorus, Theopompus, Hieronymus of Cardia, Duris of Samos, Diyllus, Philistus, Timaeus, Polybius, and Posidonius.

48

Diodorus Siculus worked in the tradition of the great Athenian historian, Herodotus:

 Herodotus of Halicarnassus (Greek: Ἡρόδοτος Ἁλικαρνᾱσσεύς Hēródotos Halikarnāsseús) was a Greek historian who lived in the 5th century BC (c. 484 BC–c. 425 BC) and is regarded as the "Father of History" in Western culture. He was the first historian to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a well-constructed and vivid narrative. He is almost exclusively known for writing The Histories. These were a record of his "inquiries" (or ἱστορίαι, a word that passed into Latin and took on its The shield of Athens modern meaning of history) into the origins of the Greco-Persian Wars which occurred in 490 and 480-479 BC.

This was a special achievement, since he includes a narrative account of that period, which would otherwise be poorly documented, and many long digressions concerning the various places and peoples he encountered during wide-ranging travels around the lands of the Mediterranean and Black Sea. Although some of his stories are not completely accurate, he states that he is only reporting what has been told to him.

Much of what is known of Herodotus's life is gathered from his own work. Additional details have been garnered from the Suda, an 11th-century encyclopaedia of Byzantium, which likely took its information from traditional accounts. It holds that he was born in Halicarnassus (Bodrum in present-day Turkey), the son of Lyxes and Dryo, and the brother of Theodorus, and that he was also related to Panyassis, an epic poet of the time. According to this account, after being exiled from Halicarnassus by the tyrant Lygdamis, Herodotus went to live on Samos. Later returning to the land of his birth, Herodotus took part in the ousting of Lygdamis. The traditional biography includes some time spent in Athens, where he is said to have given public readings from his oeuvre and befriended the dramatist Sophocles. It also has Herodotus joining and founding the Athenian colony of Thurii in Southern in 443 BC. His death and burial are placed either at Thurii or at Pella, in Macedon, between 425 and 420 BC.

49 How much of this is correct we do not know. It was common practice in antiquity for the biographies of poets to be pieced together out of inferences drawn from their works. Something similar may have happened in Herodotus' case. His casting as a tyrannicide may simply reflect the pro-freedom attitude that he expresses in the Histories, whereas the stays at Samos and Athens may have been invented to explain the pro-Samian and pro-Athenian bias that has often been thought to pervade his work. His exile from Halicarnassus may also be fictional: later historians, such as Thucydides and Xenophon, underwent periods of exile, and their fate may have been retrospectively imposed on Herodotus by later writers.

Herodotus provides much information concerning the nature of the world and the status of the sciences during his lifetime. He was arguably the first historian, and certainly the first to travel methodically around the known world in a bid to write more accurately, although this still involved second-hand and third- hand accounts relating to his primary subject, the Persian wars.

He reports, for example, that the annual flooding of the Nile was said to be the result of melting snows far to the south, and he comments that he cannot understand how there can be snow in Africa, the hottest part of the known world, offering an elaborate explanation based on the way that desert winds affect the passage of the Sun over this part of the world (2:18ff). He also passes on dismissive reports from Phoenician sailors that, while circumnavigating Africa, they "saw the sun on the right side while sailing westwards". Owing to this brief mention, which is put in almost as an afterthought, it has been argued that Africa was indeed circumnavigated by ancient seafarers, for this is precisely where the sun ought to have been.

Herodotus is one of the sources on Croesus and his fabulous treasures of gold and silver, and many stories about his riches.

Written between 431 and 425 BC, The Histories were divided by later editors into nine books, named after the nine Muses (the "Muse of History", Clio, represented the first book). His accounts of India are among the oldest records of Indian civilzation by an outsider.

Herodotus' invention earned him the twin titles "The Father of History", first conferred by Cicero, and "The Father of Lies". As these epithets imply, there has long been a debate—at least from the time of Cicero's On the Laws (Book 1, paragraph 5)—concerning the veracity of his tales and, more importantly, the extent to which he knew himself to be creating fabrications.

There are many cases in which Herodotus, not certain of the truth of a certain event or unimpressed by the dull "facts" that he received, reported the several most famous accounts of a given subject or process and then wrote what he believed was the most probable. Although The Histories were often criticized

50 in antiquity for bias, inaccuracy and plagiarism—Claudius Aelianus attacked Herodotus as a liar in Verae Historiae and went as far as to deny him a place among the famous on the Island of the Blessed—this methodology has been seen in a more-positive light by many modern historians and philosophers, especially those searching for a paradigm of objective historical writing. Of course, given the sensitivity surrounding the issue—the very foundation of the discipline of history—this has not become a common view; attacks have been made by various scholars in modern times, a few even arguing that Herodotus exaggerated the extent of his travels and invented his sources.[

Discoveries made since the end of the 19th century have helped greatly to restore Herodotus's reputation. The archaeological study of the now-submerged ancient Egyptian city of Heracleion and the recovery of the so-called "Naucratis stela" give extensive credibility to Herodotus's previously unsupported claim that Heracleion was founded under the Egyptian New Kingdom. Because of this recent increase in respect for his accuracy, as well as the quality and content of his observations, Herodotus is now recognized as a pioneer not only in history but in ethnography and anthropology.

One of the most recent developments in Herodotus scholarship was made by the French ethnologist Michel Peissel. On his journeys to India and Pakistan, Peissel claims to have discovered an animal species that may finally illuminate one of the most "bizarre" passages in Herodotus's Histories. In Book 3, passages 102 to 105, Herodotus reports that a species of fox-sized, furry "ants" lives in one of the far eastern, Indian provinces of the Persian Empire. This region, he reports, is a sandy desert, and the sand there contains a wealth of fine gold dust. These giant ants, according to Herodotus, would often unearth the gold dust when digging their mounds and tunnels, and the people living in this province would then collect the precious dust. Now, Peissel says that in an isolated region of Pakistan, in the Pakistani-controlled part of Kashmir that is known as the Federally Administered Northern Areas (FANA), on the Deosai Plateau there exists a species of marmot (a type of burrowing squirrel) that may solve the mystery of Herodotus' giant "ants". Much like the province that Herodotus describes, the ground of the Deosai Plateau is rich in gold dust. According to Peissel, he interviewed the Minaro tribal people who live in the Deosai Plateau, and they have confirmed that they have, for generations, been collecting the gold dust that the marmots bring to the surface when they are digging their underground burrows. The story seems to have been widespread in the ancient world, later authors like Pliny the Elder mentioning it in his gold mining section of the Naturalis Historia.

Even more tantalizing, in his book, "The Ants' Gold: The Discovery of the Greek El Dorado in the Himalayas", Peissel offers the theory that Herodotus may have become confused because the old Persian word for "marmot" was quite similar to that for "mountain ant". Because research suggests that Herodotus probably did not know any Persian (or any other language except his native

51 Greek), he was forced to rely on a multitude of local translators when travelling in the vast polylingual Persian Empire. Therefore, he may have been the unwitting victim of a simple misunderstanding in translation. (It is also important to realize that Herodotus never claims to have himself seen these "ants/marmot" creatures—he may have been dutifully reporting what other travellers were telling him, no matter how bizarre or unlikely he personally may have found it to be. In an age when most of the world was still mysterious and unknown and before the modern science of biology, the existence of a "giant ant" may not have seemed so far-fetched.) The suggestion that he completely made up the tale may continue to be thrown into doubt as more research is conducted.

However, it must be noted that this theory of the marmots fails to take into consideration Herodotus's own follow-up in passage 105 of Book 3, wherein the "ants/marmots" are said to chase and devour full-grown camels; nevertheless, this could also be explained as an example of a tall tale or legend told by the local tribes to frighten foreigners from seeking this relatively easy access to gold dust. On the other hand, the details of the "ants" seem somewhat similar to the description of the camel spider (Solifugae), which strictly speaking is not a spider and is even sometimes called a "wind scorpion". Camel spiders are said to chase camels (they can run up to 10mph), they have lots of hair bristles, and they could quite easily be mistaken for ants given their rather bizarre appearance. And as has been noted by some, on account of the fear factor of encountering one, there have been "many myths and exaggerations about their size". Images of camel spiders could give the impression that this could be mistaken for a giant ant, but certainly not the size of a fox.

52 The great Athenian historian, Herodotus, was influenced by the great Athenian playwright, Sophocles:

 Sophocles (c. 496 BCE - 406 BCE) was the second of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus and earlier than those of Euripides. According to the Suda, a 10th century encyclopedia, Sophocles wrote 120 or more plays during the course of his life, but only seven have survived in a complete form, namely , Antigone, Trachinian Women, Oedipus the King, Electra, Philoctetes and Oedipus at Colonus. For almost 50 years, Sophocles was the most- awarded playwright in the dramatic The shield of competitions of the city-state of Athens Athens that took place during the religious festivals of the Lenaea and the Dionysia.

Sophocles competed in around 30 dramatic competitions; he won perhaps 24 and never received lower than second place; in comparison, Aeschylus won 14 competitions and was defeated by Sophocles at times, while Euripides won only 4 competitions.

The most famous of Sophocles' tragedies are those concerning Oedipus and Antigone: these are often known as the Theban plays, although each play was actually a part of different tetrology, the other members of which are now lost. Sophocles influenced the development of the drama, most importantly by adding a third actor and thereby reducing the importance of the chorus in the presentation of the plot. He also developed his characters to a greater extent than earlier playwrights such as Aeschylus..

Sophocles, the son of Sophillus, was a wealthy member of the rural deme (small community) of Colonus Hippius in Attica, which would later become a setting for his plays, and was probably born there. His birth took place a few years before the Battle of Marathon in 490 BCE: the exact year is unclear, although 497/6 is perhaps most likely. His artistic career began in earnest in 468 BCE when he took first prize in the Dionysia theatre competition over the reigning master of Athenian drama, Aeschylus. The victory came under unusual circumstances. At the time, the remains of the hero Theseus were being removed by Cimon from the isle of Scyros to Athens. Instead of following the

53 custom of choosing judges by lot, the archon asked Cimon and his associates to decide the victor of the contest. Aeschylus soon left for Sicily following this loss to Sophocles. The production probably included Triptolemus. Although Plutarch says that this was Sophocles' first production, it is now thought that this is an embellishment of the truth and his first production was most likely in 470 BCE.

Sophocles became a man of importance in the public halls of Athens as well as in the theatres. Sophocles was chosen to lead the paean, a choral chant to a god, at the age of 16 celebrating the decisive Greek sea victory over the Persians at the Battle of Salamis. This rather insufficient information about Sophocles’ civic life implies he was a well-liked man who participated in activities in society and showed remarkable artistic ability. He was also elected as one of ten strategoi, high executive officials that commanded the armed forces, as a junior colleague of Pericles. Sophocles was born highly wealthy (his father was a wealthy armour manufacturer) and was highly educated throughout his entire life. Early in his career, the politician Cimon might have been one of his patrons, although if he was there was no ill will borne by Pericles, Cimon's rival, when Cimon was ostracized in 461 BCE.

In 443/2 he served as one of the Hellenotamiai, or treasurers of Athena, helping to manage the finances of the city during the political ascendancy of Pericles. In 420 he welcomed and set up an altar for the icon of Asclepius at his house, when the deity was introduced in Athens. For this he was given the posthumous epithet Dexion (receiver) by the Athenians. He was also elected, in 413 BCE, to be one of the commissioners crafting a response to the catastrophic destruction of the Athenian expeditionary force in Sicily during the Peloponnesian War.

Sophocles died at the venerable age of ninety in 406 or 405 BCE, having seen within his lifetime both the Greek triumph in the Persian Wars and the terrible bloodletting of the Peloponnesian War. He was so respected by the Athenians that two plays performed at the Lenaia soon after his death paid homage to him, and his unfinished play Oedipus at Colonus was completed and performed years later. Both Iophon, one of his sons, and a grandson, also called Sophocles, followed in his footsteps to become playwrights themselves.

Among Sophocles' earliest innovations was the addition of a third actor, which further reduced the role of the chorus and created greater opportunity for character development and conflict between characters. Aeschylus, who dominated Athenian playwrighting during Sophocles' early career, followed suit and adopted the third character into his own work towards the end of his life.[3] It was not until after the death of the old master Aeschylus in 456 BCE that Sophocles became the pre-eminent playwright in Athens.

Thereafter, Sophocles emerged victorious in dramatic competitions at 18 Dionysia and 6 Lenaia festivals. In addition to innovations in dramatic structure,

54 Sophocles' work is also known for its deeper development of characters than earlier playwrights. His reputation was such that foreign rulers invited him to attend their courts, although unlike Aeschylus who died in Sicily, or Euripides who spent time in Macedon, Sophocles never accepted any of these invitations.[4] Aristotle used Sophocles's Oedipus the King in his Poetics (c. 335 BCE) as an example of the highest achievement in tragedy, which suggests the high esteem in which his work was held by later Greeks.

Only two of the seven surviving plays have securely-dated first or second performances: Philoctetes (409 BCE) and Oedipus at Colonus (401 BC, staged after Sophocles' death by his grandson). Of the others, Electra shows stylistic similarities to these two plays, which suggests that it was probably written in the latter part of his career. Ajax, Antigone and The Trachiniae are generally thought to be among his early works, again based on stylistic elements, with Oedipus the King coming in Sophocles' middle period. Most of Sophocles' plays show an undercurrent of early fatalism and the beginnings of Socratic logic as a mainstay for the long tradition of Greek tragedy.

The Theban plays consist of three plays: Antigone, Oedipus the King (also called Oedipus Tyrannos or Oedipus Rex), and Oedipus at Colonus. All three plays concern the fate of Thebes during Greece's Mycenaean pre-history, during and after the reign of King Oedipus. They have often been published under a single cover. Sophocles, however, wrote the three plays for separate festival competitions, possibly over a duration of forty years or more. He also wrote other Theban plays, such as The Progeny, of which only fragments have survived. Not only are the Theban plays not a true trilogy (three plays presented as a continuous narrative) but they are not even an intentional series and contain some inconsistencies between them.

Each of the plays relates to the tale of the mythological Oedipus, who killed his father and married his mother without knowledge that they were his parents. His family is fated to be doomed for three generations.

In Oedipus the King, Oedipus is the protagonist. He becomes the ruler of Thebes after solving the riddle of the sphinx. Before solving this riddle, Oedipus had met at a crossroads a man accompanied by servants; Oedipus and the man fought, and Oedipus killed the man. Oedipus continued on to Thebes to marry the widowed Queen, who was, unknown to him, his mother. Oedipus eventually learns that his mother and father gave him up when he was just an infant in fear that he would kill his father and fulfill the Delphic Oracle's prophecy of him. Upon learning of the completed prophecy, his mother, Jocasta, realizes the incest and commits suicide; Oedipus, in horror of what he has seen, blinds himself and leaves Thebes. The couple had four children, who figure in the remaining plays of the set.

55 In Oedipus at Colonus, the banished Oedipus and his daughters Antigone and Ismene arrive at the town of Colonus where they encounter Theseus, King of Athens. Oedipus dies and strife begins between his sons Polyneices and Eteocles.

In Antigone the protagonist is Oedipus' daughter. Antigone is faced with the choice of allowing her brother Polyneices' body to remain unburied, outside the city walls, exposed to the ravages of wild animals, or to bury him and face death. The king of the land, Creon, has forbidden the burial of Polyneices for he was a traitor to the city. Antigone decides to bury his body and face the consequences of her actions. Creon sentences her to death. Eventually, Creon is convinced to free Antigone from her punishment, but his decision comes too late and Antigone commits suicide. Her suicide triggers the suicide of two others close to King Creon: his son, Haemon, who was to wed Antigone, and his wife who commits suicide after losing her only son.

The plays were written across thirty-six years of Sophocles' career and were not composed in chronological order, but instead were written in the order Antigone, Oedipus the King, and Oedipus at Colonus.

As a result, there are some inconsistencies. Notably, Creon is the undisputed king at the end of Oedipus the King and, in consultation with Apollo, single-handedly makes the decision to expel Oedipus from Thebes. Creon is also instructed to look after Oedipus' daughters Antigone and Ismene at the end of Oedipus the King. By contrast, in the other plays there is some struggle with Oedipus' sons Eteocles and Polynices in regards to the succession.

In Oedipus at Colonus, Sophocles attempts to work these inconsistencies into a coherent whole: Ismene explains that, in light of their tainted family lineage, her brothers were at first willing to cede the throne to Creon. Nevertheless, they eventually decided to take charge of the monarchy, with each brother disputing the other's right to succeed. In addition to being in a clearly more powerful position in Oedipus at Colonus, Eteocles and Polynices are also culpable: they condemn their father to exile, which is one of his bitterest charges against them.

Other than the three Theban plays, there are four surviving plays by Sophocles: Ajax, The Trachiniae, Electra, and Philoctetes, the last of which won first prize.[16]

Ajax focuses on the prideful hero of the Trojan War. He is driven to treachery and eventually his own death. Ajax becomes gravely upset when Achilles’ armor is presented to Odysseus instead of himself. However, Odysseus persuades the kings Menelaus and Agamemnon to grant Ajax a proper burial.

Fragments of The Tracking Satyrs (Ichneutae) were discovered in Egypt in 1907. These amount to about half of the play, making it the best preserved satyr

56 play after Euripides' Cyclops, which survives in its entirety. Fragments of The Progeny (Epigonoi) were discovered in April 2005 by classicists at Oxford University with the help of infrared technology previously used for satellite imaging. The tragedy tells the story of the of Thebes. A number of other Sophoclean works have survived only in fragments, including:

 Aias Lokros (Ajax the Locrian)  Akhaiôn Syllogos (The Gathering of the Achaeans)  Aleadae (The Sons of Aleus)  Creusa  Eurypylus  Hermione  Inachos  Lacaenae (Lacaenian Women)  Manteis or Polyidus (The Prophets or Polyidus)  Nauplios Katapleon (Nauplius' Arrival)  Nauplios Pyrkaeus (Nauplius' Fires)  Niobe  Oeneus  Oenomaus  Poimenes (The Shepherds)  Polyxene  Syndeipnoi (The Diners, or, The Banqueters)  Tereus  Thyestes  Troilus  Phaedra  Triptolemus  Tyro Keiromene (Tyro Shorn)  Tyro Anagnorizomene (Tyro Rediscovered).

There is a passage of Plutarch's tract De Profectibus in Virtute 7 in which Sophocles discusses his own growth as a writer. A likely source of this material for Plutarch was the Epidemiae of Ion of Chios, a book that recorded many conversations of Sophocles. This book is a likely candidate to have contained Sophocles' discourse on his own development because Ion was a friend of Sophocles, and the book is known to have been used by Plutarch.[19] Though some interpretations of Plutarch's words suggest that Sophocles says that he imitated Aeschylus, the translation does not fit grammatically, nor does the interpretation that Sophocles said that he was making fun of Aeschylus' works. C. M. Bowra argues for the following translation of the line: "After practising to the full the bigness of Aeschylus, then the painful ingenuity of my own invention, now in the third stage I am changing to the kind of diction which is most expressive of character and best."

57 Here Sophocles says that he has completed a stage of Aeschylus' work, meaning that he went through a phase of imitating Aeschylus' style but is finished with that. Sophocles' opinion of Aeschylus was mixed. He certainly respected him enough to imitate his work early on in his career, but he had reservations about Aeschylus' style, and thus did not his imitation up. Sophocles' first stage, in which he imitated Aeschylus, is marked by "Aeschylean pomp in the language". Sophocles' second stage was entirely his own. He introduced new ways of evoking feeling out of an audience, like in his Ajax when he is mocked by Athene, then the stage is emptied so that he may commit suicide alone. Sophocles mentions a third stage, distinct from the other two, in his discussion of his development. The third stage pays more heed to diction. His characters spoke in a way that was more natural to them and more expressive of their individual character feelings.

58 The great Athenian playwright, Sophocles, as tapped by the City’s great Strategos, Cimon:

 Cimon (in Greek, Κίμων — Kimōn) (510, Athens - 450 BC, Citium, Cyprus), was an Athenian statesman, strategos and a major political figure in mid-5th century BC Greece. Cimon played a key role in creating the powerful Athenian maritime empire following the failure of the Persia invasion of Greece by Xerxes I (480 BC). Cimon became a celebrated military hero, fighting at the Battle of Salamis. After this battle, Cimon was elevated to the rank of admiral. One of Cimon’s greatest exploits was his destruction of a Persian fleet and The shield of army at the Strymon River in 466 BC. Athens He was heavily involved in Athenian and Greek politics.

In 462 BC he led an unsuccessful expedition to support the Spartans during the helot uprisings. As a result, he was dismissed and ostracized in 461 BC. However, he was recalled from exile before the end of his ten year ostracism to broker a five year peace treaty in 451 BC between Sparta and Athens. Cimon led the Athenian aristocratic party against Pericles. Cimon opposed the democratic revolution of Ephialtes seeking to retain aristocratic party control over Athenian institutions.

Cimon was born in Athens in 510 BC. He was of noble birth (his father was the celebrated Athenian general Miltiades and his mother was Hegesipyle, daughter of the Thracian king Olorus and a relative of the historian Thucydides).

While he was a young man, his father, Miltiades, was fined 50 talents after an accusation of treason by the Athenian state. As Miltiades could not afford to pay the fine, he was jailed where he died in 489 BC. Cimon inherited his father’s debt and also had to look after his sister Elpinice. According to Plutarch, the wealthy Callias took advantage of this situation, proposing that he would pay the sum if Elpinice would marry him. In response, Cimon agreed to betroth his sister to him.

Later he married Isodice, Megacles' granddaughter, and a member of the important Athenian family, the Alcmaeonidae. Their first children were twin boys and they were named Lacedaemonius (who would become an Athenian

59 commander) and Eleus. The third son was Thessalus (who would become a politician).

During the Battle of Salamis, Cimon distinguished himself by his bravery. He is mentioned as being a member of an embassy sent to Sparta in 479 BC.

Between 478 BC and 476 BC, a number of Greek maritime cities around the Aegean Sea did not wish to be under Persian control again and at Delos offered their allegiance, through Aristides, to Athens. They form the Delian League (also know as the Confederacy of Delos) and it is agreed that Cimon will be their principal commander. [4] Until 463 BC, as strategos of the League, Cimon commanded most of the League’s operations. During this period, he and Aristides drove the Spartans under Pausanias out of Byzantium, he captured Eion on the Strymon from the Persian general Boges and conquered Scyros.

With the League’s capture of Scyros, he was able to drive out the pirates who used that town as their base and he then established an Athenian colony at Eion with 10,000 settlers. The new colony was called Amphipolis. On his return, he brought the “bones” of the mythological Theseus back to Athens. To celebrate this achievement, three Herma statues were erected around Athens.

Around 466 BC Cimon carried the war against Persia into Asia Minor and won the Battle of the Eurymedon on the Eurymedon River in Pamphylia. This was a decisive defeat of the Persians as Cimon's land and sea forces captured the Persian camp and destroyed or captured the entire Persian fleet of 200 triremes (manned by Phoenicians). Many new allies of Athens were then able to be recruited by Athens into the Delian League, such as the trading city of Phaselis on the Lycian-Pamphylian border.

There is a view amongst some historians that while in Asia Minor, Cimon negotiated a peace between the League and the Persians after his victory at the Battle of the Eurymedon. This may help to explain why the Peace of Callias negotiated by his brother-in-law in 450 BC is sometimes called the Peace of Cimon as Callias’ efforts may have led to a renewal of the Cimon’s earlier treaty. He had served Athens well during the Persian Wars and according to Plutarch: "In all the qualities that war demands he was fully the equal of Themistocles and his own father Miltiades".

After his successes in Asia Minor, Cimon moved to the Thracian Chersonesus. There he subdued the local tribes and between 465 BC and 463 BC he ended the revolt of the Thasians. Thasos had revolted from the Delian League over rivalry over trade with the Thracian hinterland and, in particular, over the ownership of a gold mine. Athens under Cimon laid siege to Thasos after the Athenian fleet defeated the Thasos fleet. These actions earned him the enmity of Stesimbrotus of Thasos (a source used by Plutarch in his writings about this period in Greek history).

60 Despite these successes, he was prosecuted by Pericles for allegedly accepting bribes from Alexander I of Macedon. During the trial, Cimon said: "Never have I been an Athenian envoy, to any rich kingdom. Instead, I was proud, attending to the Spartans, whose frugal culture I have always imitated. This proves that I don't desire personal wealth. Rather, I love enriching our nation, with the booty of our victories." As a result, Elpinice convinced Pericles not to be too harsh in his criticism of her brother. Cimon was in the end acquitted.

In 462 BC, Cimon sought the support of Athens’ citizens to providing help to Sparta. Although Ephialtes maintained that Sparta was Athens' rival for power and should be left to fend for itself, Cimon's view prevailed. Cimon then led 4,000 hoplites to Mt. Ithome to help the Spartan aristocracy deal with a major revolt by its helots. However, this expedition ended in humiliation for Cimon and for Athens when, after an attempt to storm Mt. Ithome failed, the Spartans sent Cimon and his army back on suspicion of “revolutionary tendencies”.

This insulting rebuff caused the collapse of Cimon's popularity at Athens. As a result, in 461 BC Ephialtes and Pericles were able to get agreement that Cimon be ostracised for ten years. With Cimon’s departure, the reformer Ephialtes took the lead in running Athens. Ephialtes, with the support of Pericles, reduced the power of the Athenian Council of Areopagus (filled with ex-archons and so a stronghold of oligarchy) and transferred them to the people, i.e. the Council of Five Hundred, the Assembly and the popular law courts. Some of Cimon’s policies were reversed including his pro-Spartan policy and his attempts at peace with Persia.

In 458 BC, Cimon sought to return to Athens to assist it in its fight against Sparta at Tanagra but was rebuffed.

Eventually, around 451 BC, Cimon is able to return to Athens. While not allowed to return to the level of power he once enjoyed, he was able to negotiate on Athens’ behalf a five year truce with the Spartans. With a Persian fleet moving against a rebellious Cyprus, Cimon, proposed an expedition to help Cyprus. He gained Pericles' support. So Cimon sailed to Cyprus with two hundred triremes of the Delian League. From there, he sent sixty ships to Egypt to help the Egyptians under Amyrtaeus, who were fighting the Persians in the Nile Delta. Cimon used the remaining ships to aid the uprising of the Cypriot Greek city-states.

Cimon laid siege to the Persian stronghold of Citium on the south west coast of Cyprus. However, the siege failed with Cyprus remaining under Phoenician (and Persian) control. It is during the siege that Cimon died or is killed. He was buried in Athens where a monument was erected in his memory.

61 Stratego Cimon was the son of Miltiades the Younger:

 Miltiades the Younger (Greek: Μιλτιάδης ὁ Νεὠτερος; c. 550 BC–489 BC) was the step-nephew of Miltiades the Elder. He made himself the tyrant of the Greek colonies on the Thracian Chersonese around 516 BC, forcibly seizing it from his rivals and imprisoning them. He also married Hegesipyle, the daughter of king Olorus of Thrace. His son Cimon was a major Athenian figure of the 470s and 460s BC. He became a vassal of Darius I of Persia, joining Darius' expedition against the Scythians around 513 BC. He joined the Ionian

Revolt of 499 BC against Persian rule, establishing friendly relations with Athens and capturing the islands of Lemnos and Imbros (which he eventually ceded to The shield of Athens). Athens

However, the revolt collapsed in 494 BC and in 492 BC Miltiades fled to Athens to escape a retaliatory Persian invasion.

His son Metiochos was captured by the Persians and made a lifelong prisoner, but was nonetheless treated honourably as a de facto member of the Persian nobility. Arriving in Athens, Miltiades initially faced a hostile reception for his tyrannical rule in the Chersonese. However, he successfully presented himself as a defender of Greek freedoms against Persian despotism and escaped punishment. He was elected to serve as one of the 10 generals (strategoi) for 490 BC. He is often credited with devising the tactics that defeated the Persians in the Battle of Marathon later that year.

The following year, 489 BC, Miltiades led an Athenian expedition of seventy ships against the Greek-inhabited islands that were deemed to have supported the Persians. The expedition was not a success. The fleet attacked Paros, which had been conquered by the Persians, but failed to take the island. Miltiades suffered a bad leg wound during the campaign and became incapacitated. His failure prompted an outcry on his return to Athens, enabling his political rivals to exploit his fall from grace. Charged with treason, he was sentenced to death, but the sentence was converted to a fine of fifty talents. This was a huge and unaffordable sum by the standards of the time. He was sent to prison where he died, probably of gangrene from his wound. The debt was later paid by his son Cimon.

62 The name "Miltiades" derives from miltos, a red ochre clay used as paint. It was a name given to red-haired babies.

63 Miltiades the Younger was the son of Miltiades the Elder:

 Miltiades the Elder (Greek: Μιλτιάδης ὁ Πρεσβύτερος; died ca. 524 BC) was a member of an immensely wealthy Athenian noble family, the Philaids. He is said to have opposed the tyrant Peisistratus, which may explain why he left Athens around 550 BC to found a colony in the Thracian Chersonese (now the Gallipoli Peninsula). The colony was semi- independent of Athens and was ruled by Miltiades until his death around 524 BC. He died childless, leaving his lands to Stesagoras, the son of his half-brother

Cimon the Elder. Before his death he fortified the peninsula, building a wall across it to defend against incursions by hostile native peoples. The shield of Athens

His step-nephew, Miltiades the Younger, later became tyrant of the Thracian Chersonese. Named after his uncle, the junior Miltiades is best known for his victory over the Persians at Marathon. The Philaid dynasty was continued by his son, Cimon the Younger. The name "Miltiades" derives from miltos, a red ochre clay used as paint. It was a name given to red-haired babies.

Conclusion of the Athens intellectual line

So what is the lesson of the Athens line’s intellectual legacy within New York Alpha?

The Athens intellectual line recalls New York Alpha’s martial tradition in the American Civil War, as well as its intellectual roots on West Africa and classical Greece. This line reminds brothers specifically of the importance of classical historical studies to the formation of the University studies in the arts and sciences, and the roots of those studies in ancient Greece.

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The Athens intellectual line is part of New York Alpha’s local Chapter lore, first recorded by brother Cadwalader E. Linthicum (1885)(1889) and preserved by Walter Sheppard (’29)(’32) and Fred E. Hartzch (’28)(’31).

“To know the lore, is to tend the Tree.”

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