ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE “NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY Alexander Dallas Bache “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE 1806 July 19, Saturday: Alexander Dallas Bache was born in Philadelphia, the son of the journalist Richard Bache, Jr. and Sophia Burrell Dallas (he was thus a great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin). Josiah Gregg was born in Overton Country, Tennessee (when he was 6 his family would trek to Missouri; he would suffer all his life from TB). IT WAS JUST A COUPLE OF BABIES. NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT Alexander Dallas Bache “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE 1807 February 10, Tuesday: The US Congress authorized a survey of the nation’s coasts and harbors: “An Act to Provide for Surveying the Coasts of the United States.” READ THE FULL TEXT Theodore Sedgwick Fay was born in New-York, a son of the attorney Joseph Dewey Fay (1779-1825). Like his father, who had studied law in the office of Alexander Hamilton, would study for the law, although he would never practice, going instead into the field of diplomacy. Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 3 day 10 of 2 M / Our friend Asa Russel of New Bedford called at the shop this afternoon, with whom I had much conversation on a subject which has deeply affected the minds of many & caused the Land to mourn for the wound which Zion has felt from the fall of a late dignified Servant Asa spoke feelingly on the subject & hoped it might be a warning to those who think they stand to take heed lest they fall. ——————————————————————————————————— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS 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. Alexander Dallas Bache “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE 1825 Alexander Dallas Bache graduated from the US Military Academy at West Point. During the following year he would function there as an assistant professor. DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD. Alexander Dallas Bache “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE 1826 Lieutenant Alexander Dallas Bache of the United States Army Corps of Topographical Engineers would be engaged for a few years in the erection of coastal fortifications including Fort Adams in Newport, Rhode Island). CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT Alexander Dallas Bache “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE 1827 Lieutenant Alexander Dallas Bache of the United States Army Corps of Topographical Engineers was nominated for the position of Professor of Natural Philosophy and Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT Alexander Dallas Bache “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE 1828 Alexander Dallas Bache began to occupy the position of Professor of Natural Philosophy and Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania, long term. THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT Alexander Dallas Bache “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE 1829 June 1, Monday: Alexander Dallas Bache resigned from the US Army. Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, was riding his horse (horse name not of record) in a review with a huge wind-catching Grenadier hat on his head, when a sudden gust knocked our guy right off said mount. TIMELINE OF ACCIDENTS Wow, talk about embarrassed! HDT WHAT? INDEX ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE 1836 Alexander Dallas Bache would be in Europe for several years on behalf of the trustees of the College and Asylum for Orphans in Philadelphia, examining European systems of education and preparing a report and recommendations (this college and asylum for orphaned white boys would rename itself, in 1848, in recognition of the support of Stephen Girard, as Girard College). The Girard College, when finished, will be a most splendid building. It is, however, as they have now planned it, incorrect, according to the rules of architecture, in the number of columns on the sides in proportion to those in front. This is a great pity; perhaps the plan will be re-considered, as there is plenty of time to correct it, as well as money to defray the extra expense. HDT WHAT? INDEX ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE 1839 Alexander Dallas Bache would be serving for a period of years as the 1st president of Central High School of Philadelphia (one of the oldest public high schools in the US). HDT WHAT? INDEX ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE 1843 Upon the death of Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler, Alexander Dallas Bache was made superintendent of the United States coast survey. Henry Thoreau would have on his shelves a collection of the annual reports of the United States Coast Survey under Bache. HDT WHAT? INDEX ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE HDT WHAT? INDEX ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE 1851 The United States Coast and Geodetic Survey issued a SKETCHES volume in conjunction with its coast survey for this year. Henry Thoreau would have a copy of this volume in his personal library. (I am unable to offer any advice as to where such a publication might now be viewed, except that an obvious place to start would be http://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/023.html.) HDT WHAT? INDEX ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE 1859 February 26, Saturday: In the midst of a storm of controversy, the Board of Overseers of the Corporation promoted George Phillips Bond to fill his father’s shoes as Director of the Harvard Observatory, and appointed him to be the Phillips Professor of Astronomy. The nominee of the “Lazzaroni,” a pressure group in science which has been sarcastically referred to as “the sacred brotherhood,” had been not Bond but Benjamin Peirce, the Perkins Professor of Astronomy and Mathematics at Harvard College.1 THE SCIENCE OF 1859 ASTRONOMY In the evening William John Broderip FRS was writing “On the Shark” for Fraser’s Magazine and broke off in the middle of a sentence. 1.The core group of the “Lazzaroni” consisted of Professors Louis Agassiz and Benjamin Peirce of Harvard, and Professor Benjamin Athorp Gould (1824-1896) of Dudley Observatory in Albany NY, plus Alexander Dallas Bache of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Washington DC. According to Edward Lurie, Agassiz’s biographer (LOUIS AGASSIZ. Chicago IL: U of Chicago P, 1960), what they were trying to do was “control the institutional forms of science in America.” The core agenda of this group was to set itself astride all channels of funding in such a manner as to take charge of what research was feasible and important and who could be relied upon to dependably perform this research. They were playing hardball: their machinations included spreading invidious and false whispers about the accuracy of the observations of the Bonds, wherever possible boycotting their membership in scientific bodies, wherever possible alleging the priority of the discoveries of others, and by the back door seizing control of government funding. For one instance, the cheap secret processes of the creation of the National Academy of Sciences in 1863. The prime offense committed at the Harvard Observatory, which so enraged the “sacred brotherhood,” seem to have consisted in the fact that since these astronomers were working to all intents and purposes for free, by financing themselves out of the cash drawer of the timekeeper manufacturing firm of William Bond & Son in Boston, therefore, practically, they had unwittingly placed themselves outside the ordinary spheres of influence of these conspirators and were in a position to treat most of their machination with Christian condescension, as if they amounted to nothing more than “water off a duck’s back.” The machinations of this group had at one point come close to destroying the Dudley Observatory. HDT WHAT? INDEX ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE 1860 F.A.P. Barnard accepted an invitation from Alexander Dallas Bache to accompany a total eclipse expedition to Labrador. Upon his return, while in Newport, Rhode Island, he would find that he had been elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. HDT WHAT? INDEX ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE 1862 Summer: The slaves of Washington DC were freed by Act of Congress (not by the President’s Emancipation Proclamation, which declared in its fine print that it had nothing whatever to do with them) with full “compensation” being awarded to their owners.2 When, during the Civil War, the federal government voted in this manner to purchase all the slaves of all the approximately 900 slavemasters residing in the nation’s capital, and issue emancipation papers to these former slaves — do you suppose that to have been merely benevolence mingled with fear? Or do you suppose that it was not only benevolence mingled with fear, but also pork-barrel politics as usual? Is there a remote possibility that such compensations issued during the Civil War to the slavemasters of the Washington DC area, “purchasing” from them their slaves and “manumitting” those slaves without following mandated procedures for providing such freed individuals with any mode of independent subsistence, amounted in actuality to some sort of payola scheme for the white federal executives and white federal legislators and white federal judiciary? It has occurred to me that such white officials of the federal government would have been among the primary beneficiaries of this government funding arrangement, and that among the beneficiaries, they were the ones who held all the political influence, influence over such decisionmaking.