Feeling Safe and Remembering Danger
Is it possible to actually do both?
Welcome back to the This Day In Esoteric Political History newsletter. Each week, a member of our team (or a friend of the show) gathers together bits of America’s past and attempts to find a throughline that might add a little understanding to our current moment.
We can’t wait to see everyone at Friday’s live taping in Boston! You can buy last-minute tickets here! And a lot of you have asked whether this will be recorded for the podcast — the answer is yes!
Here’s what happened over the week ahead in American history…
September 12
1857: The SS Central America sinks about 160 miles east of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, drowning a total of 426 passengers and crew, including Captain William Lewis Herndon. The ship was carrying gold from the California Gold Rush
1958: The Supreme Court orders the all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, to integrate
2001: President George W. Bush tours the ruins of the World Trade Center
September 13
2016: Hillary Clinton shares comments about how half of Donald Trump’s supporters can be put into a “basket of deplorables”
September 14
1752: The British Empire adopts the Gregorian calendar, skipping eleven days
1814: Francis Scott Key writes the lyrics to "The Star-Spangled Banner" after witnessing the British bombardment of Fort McHenry during the War of 1812
1901: President William McKinley dies in Buffalo, N.Y., of gunshot wounds inflicted by an assassin eight days earlier. Vice President Theodore Roosevelt, 42, is sworn in, becoming the youngest president in U.S. history
1970: Economist Milton Friedman pens an op-ed in The New York Times making the case that a corporation’s primary goal is to increase shareholder value and profits
1986: President Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan give a prime-time television address about drugs, drug policy, and crack cocaine
September 15
1776: British forces occupy New York City during the American Revolution
1851: A dramatic showdown takes place in Christiana, Pennsylvania, over four fugitive enslaved people who were hiding in a farmhouse near the Maryland border
1896: The Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad holds a demonstration train wreck as a public spectacle, selling reduced rate tickets to those taking trains to watch in “Crush,” Texas. 40,000 people attended. Unexpectedly, the impact caused both engine boilers to explode, resulting in a shower of flying debris that killed two people
1966: President Lyndon B. Johnson, responding to a sniper attack at the University of Texas at Austin, writes a letter to Congress urging the enactment of gun control legislation
1992 : The congressional district on Manhattan’s west side holds its Democratic Primary. Incumbent Ted Weiss wins handily. There’s just one catch — Weiss had died of heart failure the day before
September 16
1920: A bomb in a horse wagon explodes in front of the J. P. Morgan building in New York City, killing 38 and injuring roughly 400
September 17
1787: The U.S. Constitution is completed and signed by a majority of delegates attending the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia
1978: Anwar Sadat, Menachem Begin, and Jimmy Carter sign the Camp David Accords, frameworks for peace in the Middle East and between Egypt and Israel
2012: During the home stretch of the presidential election, a secretly-recorded tape of Mitt Romney at a fundraiser upends the race. The video showed him talking about “47% of Americans” who don’t pay taxes, expect to live off government largesse — and are not voters that Romney is concerned with
September 18
1793: President George Washington lays the cornerstone of the U.S. Capitol
In which we take the above collection of events and find themes, throughlines, rabbit holes and more. This week it’s Kellie Carter Jackson’s turn at the typewriter.
This week on connecting the dots, I look at National Security and memory. I have vivid memories of 9/11. I was in college in Washington, DC when two airplanes hit the twin towers.
I remember being so confused. Who would fly into a building? I was a little more than panic stricken when I saw the Pentagon attacked. Cell phone lines were so overwhelmed that it took hours before I could contact my parents. I later learned that one of my cousins had been killed in the twin towers. Everything felt different. I watched TV as President George W. Bush toured the ruins of the World Trade Center and addressed rescue workers over a bullhorn. I also remember 2001 being a year when the threat of anthrax became a part of national terror. There was a definite before and after effect that could be felt across the country and throughout the world.
In American history there are turning points, violent acts, and close calls that compel us all to question our own safety. In the course of 30 years, the country witnessed three American presidents get assassinated: Abraham Lincoln (1865, by John Wilkes Booth), James A. Garfield (1881, by Charles J. Guiteau), and William McKinley (1901 by Leon Czolgosz). Many of us cannot comprehend the kind havoc an assassination can have on the public psyche. The feeling of safety cannot be underestimated. I also can’t imagine the weight of taking on the role of Commander in Chief. When Vice President Theodore Roosevelt was sworn in to replace McKinley, he was 42 years old, becoming the youngest president in U.S. history. Folks, I’m 42, and let me tell you, I can barely handle being commander in chief of my three children!
However, because Americans rarely experience presidential assassinations (only four in our country’s history) Americans tend to have general amnesia about the trauma imbedded in these events. My students were born after 9/11 and only know an airport with TSA. I’m willing to bet that few Americans know or think much about the 1920 Wall Street bombing. In New York City, a bomb in a horse wagon exploded in front of the J. P. Morgan building and killed 38 people and injured 400 people. To this day, the culprit remains a mystery.
All of this makes me wonder, is safety a component of national forgetting. How long does it take to feel safe again? As long as the wheels of democracy keep turning, how difficult is it to remember troubling times? In connecting the dots, I think about how much we can take for granted. I want to be safe, we all do. But equally important, I never want to forget the times that we were not. Perhaps this is why I am a historian.
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