JOSIAH GREGG “NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Josiah Gregg HDT WHAT? INDEX JOSIAH GREGG JOSIAH GREGG 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). NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT Josiah Gregg “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX JOSIAH GREGG JOSIAH GREGG 1831 From this year until 1837, Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevski and his older brother Mikhail (who had been born during 1820) would be attending boarding schools together in Moscow. After the loss of their mother to tuberculosis in 1837, they would be sent together to a preparatory school in St. Petersburg. Josiah Gregg had training in both law and medicine and had practiced both as a lawyer and as a physician. At this point, however, due to worsening tuberculosis, the young lawyer/physician joined a caravan that was heading out on a new trail, from Van Buren in the Arkansas Territory to Santa Fe in northern Mexico. His hope was that his consumptive condition would be ameliorated in some warm, dry climate. He would settle in New Mexico Territory, finding local work as a bookkeeper, and in 1844 would publish about his experiences between 1831 and 1840 in this region of the world. A Mexican official, Senator Francisco de Tagle, suggested that they might be able to set up an effective barrier against further white immigration from the USA (white “wetbacks” sneaking south? –that’s a fancy thought!), by allowing American fugitive slaves to settle along their northern frontiers.1 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. 1. Ronnie C. Tyler. “Fugitive Slaves in Mexico,” Journal of Negro History, Volume 57, Issue 1 (January 1972), page 2. HDT WHAT? INDEX JOSIAH GREGG JOSIAH GREGG 1844 Josiah Gregg’s COMMERCE OF THE PRAIRIES: OR, THE JOURNAL OF A SANTA FE TRADER, DURING EIGHT EXPEDITIONS ACROSS THE GREAT WESTERN PRAIRIES, AND A RESIDENCE OF NEARLY NINE YEARS IN NORTHERN MEXICO (New York: Henry G. Langley) COMMERCE OF THE PRAIRIES MAP OF THE INDIAN TERRITORY By “northern Mexico” this tuberculosis sufferer intended what today we would consider as Oklahoma, Arizona, New Mexico, and southern California, although he did indeed during the War on Mexico enter the Mexican state of Chihuahua (no, we’re not referring to that little dog). Henry Thoreau would in about 1854 copy from these two volumes of real-life hands-on adventure into his Indian Notebook #8.2 The sarape saltillero, or fancy blanket completes the picture. This peculiarly useful garment is commonly carried dangling carelessly across the pommel of the saddle except in bad weather when it is drawn over the shoulders, or the rider puts his head through a slit in the middle, while his whole person is thus effectually protected. 2. The original notebooks are held by the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, as manuscripts #596 through #606. There are photocopies, made by Robert F. Sayre in the 1930s, in four boxes at the University of Iowa Libraries, accession number MsC 795. More recently, Bradley P. Dean, PhD and Paul Maher, Jr. have attempted to work over these materials. HDT WHAT? INDEX JOSIAH GREGG JOSIAH GREGG HDT WHAT? INDEX JOSIAH GREGG JOSIAH GREGG 1846 January 13, Tuesday: The 1st legislation to provide for separate treatment of people with mental retardation was introduced in the New York State Senate by E. F. Backus. Backus introduced a resolution calling for purchase of land and construction of buildings. It was not until 1851 that an experimental school was established in Albany. It proved so successful that a permanent state facility was established in 1854.3 PSYCHOLOGY The U.S. formally declared war on Mexico. US MILITARY INTERVENTIONS President James Knox Polk had secretly ordered General Zachary Scott to “defend American soil” by occupying contested territory between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande River, right up to the town limits of Matamoros. WAR ON MEXICO President Polk would duplicitously inform Congress that the war was because Mexico “had invaded our territory and shed American blood upon the American soil.” That of course was a fraud. Why, really, were we declaring war on Mexico? –Consider what Glenn W. Price had to offer on page 18 of his ORIGINS OF THE WAR WITH MEXICO: THE POLK-STOCKTON INTRIGUE (Austin TX: U of Texas P, 1967): In 1829 slavery was abolished in Mexico, but the remonstrance in Texas was so vigorous that the province was excepted from the decree. The threat of the loss of their “chattel property” thenceforth hung over the heads of the Americans in Texas. Historians, intent upon disentangling themselves from the thesis of a conspiracy of the slaveocracy in the Texas affair, have muted this note as a factor in the Texas Revolution; but there is no question whatsoever but that it played a part. 3. Street, W.R. A CHRONOLOGY OF NOTEWORTHY EVENTS IN AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGY. Washington DC: American Psychological Association, 1994 HDT WHAT? INDEX JOSIAH GREGG JOSIAH GREGG The Concord Freeman would report that the battles fought by Zachary Taylor on the Rio Grande in Mexico were “among the most gallant” that have “anywhere ever” been fought. That’s not hard to believe, if you think about it, but the local paper also opinioned that the American Army was covered with gore — oops, that’s a typo, they said glory. “[A nation is] a group of people united by a mistaken view about the past and a hatred of their neighbors.” — E. Renan, QU’EST-CE QU’UNE NATION? March 11, 1882 Salmon Portland Chase would favor the idea of our going to war with Mexico. He would regard this as a good chance for us to extend the southern boundary of the United States of America all the way down “to the Isthmus.” In other words, for him this was, pure and simple, not any matter of “defending American soil,” but instead a straightforward a war of conquest. The Harbinger, published at Brook Farm, would declare that the war against Mexico, although due to the basest of motives, needed to be understood as an act of Providence. By this iniquitous means, Providence was moving under the covers to extend the intelligence of advanced civilized nations WAR ON MEXICO and break down barriers to the future progress of knowledge. Properly understood, the war represented a great subversive movement towards unity among nations. The problem arose, how to keep women from enlisting in the US military, and how to keep men of mixed race from enlisting. Sometimes the rules about requiring each recruit to strip for examination were not carefully followed, and in fact several women were discovered during the course of the war against Mexico, serving in men’s clothing as common soldiers. You can consult, for instance, THE FEMALE VOLUNTEER; OR, THE LIFE HDT WHAT? INDEX JOSIAH GREGG JOSIAH GREGG AND WONDERFUL ADVENTURES OF MISS ELIZA ALLEN, A YOUNG LADY OF EASTPORT, MAINE. It was easy enough to keep full-blooded non-Caucasoids out of the army, from general appearance, but there was a perceived need, a perceived need strongly felt, to exclude also any man who had any degree of contamination in his blood. In a manual of instruction for the medical examination of army recruits, we find the army surgeon being cautioned to be diligent in this area, for “soldiers would not tolerate the mixed breeds as comrades.”4 When in doubt, throw the bastard out. The surgeon was advised to be alert to other racial characteristic, over and above mere skin color. Thus the surgeon was to be alert not only for hair that suggested kinkiness, but also to the shape of the skull itself, and was to reject any applicant whose skull shape seemed in any way negroid. At Fort Monroe VA, in regard to one applicant during the first year of the war, the surgeon was suspicious but in consultation with the commanding officer decided to allow a man to enlist as a white man, and then Some weeks after, a person of respectable standing called on the officer, and claimed the man as his slave and his son. Not a doubt could be entertained of the credibility of the gentleman who applied for the youth, who was his son by a bright mulatto woman, his slave. If you want to see what a white man’s army looks like, consult EYEWITNESS TO WAR: PRINTS AND DAGUERREOTYPES OF THE MEXICAN WAR, 1846-1848. The screwball thing about this race consciousness thing is, that unless someone mentions that these are pictures of a racial army, this matter would never come to anyone’s consciousness. While you’re looking at the pictures, notice the black-powder clouds hanging in the air, obscuring the view after each volley. In this year of 1846, guncotton had just been invented by Schönbein and its use was not yet widespread. The question has been raised, why were there so many atrocities perpetrated by US soldiers against Mexican civilians during the US’s invasion of Mexico? Some psychological studies of atrocities committed in our more recent wars have indicated that a disproportionate number of the soldiers committing atrocities had had an older brother killed in the war, prior to their commission of their crime.