LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS “NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Lt. James Melville Gillis HDT WHAT? INDEX LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS 1811 September 6, Friday: James Melville Gilliss was born at Georgetown. Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 6th day 6 of 9 Mo// This evening we called on our old neighbors Sam Gibbs & Mary Billings with whom we lived together in one house about 4 & an half years in pretty good friendship. They looked old fashioned, & my mind was turn’d to reflect on the days that we spent under their roof with much feeling — We had some trials, but we had also as much pleasure & enjoyed ourselves, with as much innocency as falls to the lot of common people —There we commenced house keepers, there we were blessed with as fine a little son as need be, & while living there we were deprived of him. The rememberance of his sweet & innocent engaging little ways, still affects me with Sensations which are trying to human nature, altho it is more than a year ago since he left us for a better parent, & is now no doubt a little Angel in heven, & what if I say, singing praises to the most high before his throne. — ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT Lt. James Melville Gilliss “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS 1827 At the age of 15, James Melville Gilliss joined the US Navy as a midshipman. He would serve on the Delaware, the Java and the Concord. 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. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Lt. James Melville Gillis HDT WHAT? INDEX LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS 1830 December 6, Monday: By the order of Secretary of the Navy John Branch, what eventually would become the US Naval Observatory began as a straightforward Depot of Charts and Instruments with an annual budget of $330, under the direction of Lieutenant Louis M. Goldsborough. Its function was merely the restoration, repair, and rating of navigational instruments. Charles Wilkes, put to work at the new Depot, would begin to build a rudimentary astronomical observatory which would become, in 1842 with an appropriation of $25,000, the National Observatory, forerunner of the US Naval Observatory. During the early 1800s American sealing and whaling ships had been harvesting huge rewards. Demand was insatiable for furs, whale bone, lamp oil, and ambergris as a base for perfumes. Unfortunately, the hunting grounds off Chile and Peru were quickly diminishing and by the 1820s the New England sailors had been forced farther and farther to the south in search of their reward. Penetration into the icy seas had created diverse problems for the sailors as the captains were reluctant to share information as to the location of their new hunting grounds. Ships would suddenly find themselves in danger of running against unreported and uncharged islets and submerged reefs. A number of vessels foundered or were wrecked. Demands came that the US Government sponsor exploring expeditions to the Antarctic to make all this information public knowledge for the good of commerce. There was a private expedition led by Benjamin Pendleton and Nathaniel Palmer from 1829 to 1831 — but the reports of this expedition had not met the need. Lt. James Melville Gilliss would take charge of the project at the National Observatory, which would be completed in 1844. The US federal Congress convened for its 2d session. A package containing an expensive score of Olimpie arrived at the Paris home of Hector Berlioz. The score was signed “your affectionate Spontini” by the composer. An interim administration was set up in Poland under Adam Jerzy, Prince Czartoryski. The 1st astronomical observatory in the United States was set up by the Navy in Washington. Documentation of the international slave trade, per W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: “Report of the Secretary of the Navy.” –HOUSE DOCUMENT, 21st Congress 2d session I. Number 2, pages 42-3; AMERICAN STATE PAPERS, HDT WHAT? INDEX LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS NAVAL AFFAIRS, III. No. 429 E. “Documents communicated to Congress by the President at the opening of the Second Session of the Twenty-first Congress, accompanying the Report of the Secretary of the Navy: Paper E. Statement of expenditures, etc., for the removal of Africans to Liberia.” –HOUSE DOCUMENT, 21st Congress 2d session I. Number 2, pages 211-8. The 2nd session of the 21st US Congress convened. John Randolph wrote from London, ill, on his way back from Russia: “... Congress and the Virginia Assembly both meet this day, and I pray God to send us, the people, a safe deliverance. It will be very unlucky in case of a general war in Europe, which some look forward to, that we shall have eaten all our wheat, for I learn that there is a total destruction of Indian corn.... A great discovery has been made on the Continent, far surpassing any of Archimedes or Newton. The people have discovered the secret of their strength; and the military have found out that they are the people. Commend me earnestly to all my old friends... I shall be among them (dead or alive) next Summer. I have provided for a leaden coffin, HDT WHAT? INDEX LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS feeling as I do an inexpressible desire to lie by the side of my dear mother and honored father at old Matoax.” President Andrew Jackson’s Message to 2d session, 21st Congress, arguing the right to use the veto at will: The tribes which occupied the countries now constituting the Eastern states were annihilated or have melted away to make room for the whites. The waves of population and civilization are rolling to the westward, and we now propose to acquire the countries occupied by the red men of the South and West by a fair exchange, and, at the expense of the United States, to send them to a land where their existence may be prolonged and perhaps made perpetual. We may note that Jackson was proposing that the American folk do more for Cherokees than Adolf Hitler was willing to do for Jews. –Because the Nazi Party’s uniformed Schutzstaffel confiscated Jewish assets and used the resulting funds to purchase excursion-rate railroad tickets for them to Auschwitz, Poland (true fact). Whereas we generous Americans sent the Cherokees off to a concentration camp called Oklahoma, paying their tickets with federal tax money at no charge whatever to them for their excursion-rate tickets –even at a point in history before there were any railroad boxcars into which we could shut them without food or water– with a gratis escort service of US Cavalry to protect them and care for them on their journey. HDT WHAT? INDEX LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS 1831 Midshipman James Melville Gilliss started his studies at the University of Virginia. THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Lt. James Melville Gillis HDT WHAT? INDEX LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS 1832 Midshipman James Melville Gilliss went to Paris to study. THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Lt. James Melville Gillis HDT WHAT? INDEX LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS 1836 Midshipman James Melville Gilliss obtained a position as an assistant at the Depot of Charts and Instruments in Washington DC (he would be made responsible for astronomical observations). DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD. Lt. James Melville Gilliss “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS 1837 Midshipman James Melville Gilliss went under Captain Charles Wilkes with the United States South-Sea Exploring Expedition, to cruise the South Pacific and Antarctic region for five years while making observations on differences of longitude by means of moon-culminations (he would make metrological observations and work on new instruments). Franklin Pierce and other friends of Nathaniel Hawthorne attempted to obtain an appointment for him as historian of this expedition, known informally as the “Ex. Ex.” It would only be a political accident, that the expedition, which would be derogated by Thoreau in WALDEN as “that South-Sea Exploring Expedition, with all its parade and expense,” would not avail itself of the services of Hawthorne. WALDEN : What was the meaning of that South-Sea Exploring PEOPLE OF Expedition, with all its parade and expense, but an indirect recognition of the fact, that there are continents and seas in WALDEN the moral world, to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him, but that it is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one’s being alone.– “Erret, et extremos alter scrutetur Iberos. Plus habet hic vitæ, plus habet ille viæ.” Let them wander and scrutinize the outlandish Australians. I have more of God, they more of the road. CHARLES WILKES HDT WHAT? INDEX LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS LT. JAMES MELVILLE GILLISS WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF Lt.