ISAAC ISRAEL HAYES
“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Isaac Israel Hayes HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1832
March 5, Monday: Isaac Israel Hayes was born in Chester County, Pennsylvania. With a name like that, one might presume that this Hayes family was Jewish — but no, this family was Orthodox Quaker, out of Oxfordshire in England.
His education would be at the Westtown Academy, a school of the Religious Society of Friends.
NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT
Isaac Israel Hayes “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1853
After completing a 3-year course of medical studies at the University of Pennsylvania in 2 years, Isaac Israel Hayes signed on as ship’s surgeon for a 2d fruitless expedition led by Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, to search for the Sir John Franklin party of lost explorers (at no point of his life would Hayes seek to earn his living as a medical doctor). His 1854 exploration of the east coast of Ellesmere Island north of 79° North would result in new and accurately mapped geographical discoveries.
A popular song of this year was making use of the Lady Jane Franklin / Sir John Franklin lonely-lady / lost- laddie scenario of the Franklin case: I wonder if my faithful John Is still battling with the breeze; Or, if he e’er will return again, To these fond arms once more To heal the wounds of dearest Jane, Whose heart is grieve’d full sore.
“Is Franklin the only man who is lost, that his wife should be so earnest to find him? Does Mr. Grinnell know where he himself is?” — Henry Thoreau
THE FROZEN NORTH Upon his return from this expedition with one foot mutilated, Hayes would attempt to earn his living as a HDT WHAT? INDEX
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lecturer, but this would not go well and it would take him five years to accumulate enough support for him to create another sailing-ship expedition toward the North Polar Ocean.
LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.
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1860
Isaac Israel Hayes’s AN ARCTIC BOAT-JOURNEY, IN THE AUTUMN OF 1854 (London: Richard Bentley, New Burlington Street / Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty; Boston: Brown, Taggard & Chase).
ISAAC ISRAEL HAYES As his book was being offered in the bookstores, the intrepid author went off from Boston harbor with the sailing schooner United States, on another venture into the frozen northlands (Henry Thoreau would copy materials from this book into his Indian Notebook #12). HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1861
The expedition led by Isaac Israel Hayes returned from the frozen Arctic to announce that they had journeyed farther north than any white men had ever achieved before, to wit to the northern coast of Ellesmere Island at 81°35' North, 70°30' West, and there had viewed the Open Polar Sea that had been reported by Dr. Elisha Kent Kane in 1855 (it would later be realized that these GPS readings are actually for an inland location not close to the coast, that the farthest north they had actually traveled was Cape Collinson, less than 10 miles north of 80°, and that their mapping of Ellesmere north of 80° North is inaccurate — and it would come to be speculated that they had achieved these false or inaccurate results by recording as being taken at noon some sextant observations of the Sun that must actually have been made well into the afternoon).
THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
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1862
During this year the 42d Indiana Volunteers participated in battles at:
1861 Mustered-in
1862 Wartrace TN Perryville KY Murfreesboro TN
1863 Elk River TN Chickamauga GA Lookout Mountain GA Missionary Ridge GA
1864 Ringgold GA Rocky Face Ridge GA Resaca GA Altoona Mountains GA Kennesaw Mountain GA Chattahoochee River GA Peachtree Creek GA Atlanta GA Jonesboro GA
1865 Savannah GA Charleston SC Averysboro NC Bentonville NC Mustered-out
William Whiting became solicitor of the War Department in Washington DC, a capacity in which he would serve for three years. His THE WAR POWERS OF THE PRESIDENT AND THE LEGISLATIVE POWERS OF CONGRESS IN RELATION TO REBELLION, TREASON, AND SLAVERY, in which he declared the attitudes that he had begun to urge at the start of the civil war –that the United States government had full belligerent rights against the inhabitants of the states which had seceded and could, without going beyond the Constitution, treat these citizens as public enemies, confiscating their property and emancipating their slaves– was printed in Boston during this year. His advice, although at first taken with a grain of salt by most public men, would eventually become the northern government’s official policy. For the duration of the American Civil War, Isaac Israel Hayes would be in command at a Union army 4,500- bed temporary hospital camp just to the west of Philadelphia, designated as “Satterlee U.S.A. General Hospital.” He had been chosen by President Lincoln himself. Although he had secured a medical degree from HDT WHAT? INDEX
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the University of Pennsylvania, his work at this largest hospital facility in the world would be largely administrative. He would rise during the war from the rank of major to the rank of brevet-colonel.
In 1852 a law had been passed restricting the flogging of seamen of the US Navy, and in this year such flogging was entirely outlawed. During the civil war the man who had been most responsible for this easing of brutality, Commodore Uriah Phillips Levy, would be unable to reside on his country estate, Monticello, with his child bride, not only because as a sympathizer with the North he was barred from the South, but also because the estate had been confiscated by the Confederate States of America and its contents mostly auctioned off. President Abraham Lincoln (it is said, perhaps with a quiet smile) appointed this often-courtmartialed Jew to the US Navy’s Court-Martial Board.
J.B. Jones, in his A REBEL WAR CLERK’S DIARY, would recount how during this year his detachment had “found that they had been awed by a few quaker guns — logs of wood in position, and so painted as to resemble a cannon” (such phony cannon were referred to as Quaker cannon because they would not speak).
The Union soldier typically went into combat with a rifle musket manufactured in the federal arsenal at Springfield MA, that cost $14.93 each and was accurate enough for long-distance shooting, up to about 300 yards, because its projectile, a Minié ball, was imparted with spin as it passed through the barrel. This muzzle- loading weapon could discharge no more than two such projectiles per minute, due to an alarmingly complicated and lengthy loading procedure: 1.) The infantryman was to draw the ramrod from its position of storage under the weapon, 2.) bring the end of the weapon’s barrel within his reach, 3.) use his teeth to rip open a paper cartridge containing powder and ball, 4.) pour the powder down the barrel, 5.) pop the ball into the end of the barrel with his thumb, 6.) push the ball down the barrel with the ramrod, 7.) remove the ramrod from the barrel, 8.) pull back the hammer three clicks, 9.) fish around and retrieve a percussion cap from wherever he was carrying these items, 9.) place the percussion cap on the nib beneath the hammer, 10.) take aim, and 11.) on command for volley, or at will, pull the trigger. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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In the noise and smoke and terror of combat, quite often, firing volleys, such an infantryman might suppose that his rifle had discharged when it had not, and might ram a second charge of powder and a second ball down the barrel, and a third charge of powder and a third ball on top of that, etc. One such rifle was recovered from a Civil War battlefield, with the condition of its barrel indicating that had been thus charged six times in succession before its rifleman had been killed by the approaching enemy.
Not everybody in Indiana had gone off to the war. Some had stayed to engage in hand-to-hand combat of a sort, at home on the farm.
! OHNE MICH
Here is a description of Quaker events in Indiana during the Civil War from the AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALLEN JAY, Philadelphia PA: John C. Winston, pages 95-7: Those in charge of conducting the war proposed that a draft be made upon those who were conscientiously opposed to fighting and that they thus be called upon either to enter the service or pay the sum of three hundred dollars to carry forward the war. When the draft was made, my name was one that was drawn along with those of several other young Friends, two others in our little meeting. It created a good deal of excitement among some of our Friends. The two other young Friends paid their three hundred dollars each, but I felt it right to do nothing, feeling that I could not go myself nor give money to hire others to go. The proper military officer came out and notified me that I would be expected to report in the military training camp at Lafayette, Indiana, for training, on a certain day. I told him that I could not conscientiously be there, that as I could not fight it would not do any good for me to report. Then he demanded three hundred dollars. To this I replied: “If I believed that war was right I would prefer to go myself rather than to hire someone else to be shot in my place.” I said that I believed our Saviour meant what he said when he said: “Thou shalt not kill,” HDT WHAT? INDEX
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and “My kingdom is not of this world,” and therefore his followers could not fight, and that I took the position of the Christians during the first century, when called upon to bear arms, whose simply reply was, “I am a Christian and therefore cannot fight.” After a long conversation he left. A few days later he returned and asked me to reconsider my decision and place three hundred dollars so be could find it [here he is suggesting that Jay leave the amount of money on the table, so that he could pick it up but Jay wouldn’t actually have given it to him]. He came the third time, to the orchard where I was gathering apples, and told me I would either have to come or pay the three hundred dollars, or he would be forced to sell my property and collect the money. As I was firm in my decision, he went into the house and tried to get my wife to tell him where he could find the money. She told him she felt as I did and that she could do nothing but suffer. He then went out and looked over the farm, selecting the stock that he proposed to sell and then sat down and commenced writing bills for the public sale of our horses, cattle and hogs. While he was writing, dinner was ready, and when we sat down at the table we insisted on his eating with us. We tried to keep up a pleasant conversation on various subjects, making no reference to the work he was engaged in. After dinner he turned to me and said, “If you would get made and order me out of the house, I could do this work much easier, but here you are feeding me and my horse while I am arranging to take your property from you. I tell you it is hard work.” We told him we had no unkind feelings toward him, as we supposed he was only obeying the orders of those who were superior to him. I went out again to my work and when he had prepared the sale bills he placed one on a large tree by the roadside in front of the house and then rode around and placed the others in different places in the neighborhood. A few days before the time had arrived for the sale, I was at Lafayette. He came to me and said, “The sale is postponed. I don’t know when it will be. You can go on using your horses.” I heard nothing more about it for several years. After the war closed I learned that Governor Morton, who was in Washington about that time, spoke to President Lincoln about it and he ordered the same stopped. My dear wife and I never worried a moment about it, for we felt that we were doing the will of Him who had condemned all war. So we were kept in peace and quietness though it all. But some of our neighbors who were not Friends were much troubled, and when the war was over we were informed that three or four of our wealthy farmer neighbors had agreed among themselves that when the sale came off they would buy up the horses for three hundred dollars, pay the money over to the officer and leave the horses on the farm as mine, so that we should not be at a serious loss on account of our religious principles. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1869
Isaac Israel Hayes’s CAST AWAY IN THE COLD: AN OLD MAN’S STORY OF A YOUNG MAN’S ADVENTURES, AS RELATED BY CAPTAIN JOHN HARDY, MARINER (London: Sampson Low, Son, and Marston, Crown Buildings, 188 Fleet Street), a children’s book. The author, and the painter William Bradford, went off aboard the brig Panther on a summer cruise to Greenland. CAST AWAY IN THE COLD
THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
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1874
Isaac Israel Hayes visited Iceland.
DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.
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1875
Isaac Israel Hayes would represent, until early in 1881, a district of New-York in the state assembly at Albany. In his 4th and 5th years of service as an assemblyman he would begin to be subject to intemperate outbursts and his orations would begin to ramble to the point at which, after winning six elections, the Republican Party would decline to support him in another bid for re-election. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1881
December 17, Saturday: Isaac Israel Hayes died in poverty at the age of 49, probably due to heart disease. He had never married.
CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT
Isaac Israel Hayes “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
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2009
Douglas W. Wamsley’s POLAR HAYES: THE LIFE AND CONTRIBUTIONS OF ISAAC ISRAEL HAYES, M.D. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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(Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society). HDT WHAT? INDEX
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This volume goes into great detail to reconstruct the nature of the explorer’s early education at the Westtown Academy, a Quaker school in Chester County, Pennsylvania.
“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Isaac Israel Hayes HDT WHAT? INDEX
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COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2015. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at
“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST
Prepared: January 21, 2015 HDT WHAT? INDEX
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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT
GENERATION HOTLINE
This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.
First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with