Today we’re going to learn about some writers that created a different kind of writing circle. One formed out of necessity and circumstance.

Take a seat, let’s get into it.

Known as the “burnt authors,” their union was brough about by the rise of fascism and the compulsion to leave their homeland.

When Hitler became chancellor of Germany in January 1933, the ground shifted under German writers (not just writers, of course, but they are my focus here so roll with me). The first month of the new order came with a wave of arrests, construction of concentration camps, and the Reichstag Fire Decree.

Didn’t learn about the Reichstag Fire in school?

Me neither and it was a big deal.

Don’t worry, I got you.

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Reichstag = parliament building in Berlin

Though no source will say for certain, and a scapegoat was arrested, all signs pointed to the recently elected Nazi party having something to do with the Reichstag burning on Feb 27, 1933.

Hitler, little bish that he was, used the event to go bananas, threatening it was proof the Bolsheviks were coming and a violent Communist uprising was imminent.

Once people were good and frazzled about those Commies the following day, he issued the Reichstag Fire Decree. He pitched it as necessary emergency legislation to protect the German states.

Oh, and btw, it also abolished a bunch of German constitutional protections.

What kind of stuff are we talking about?

You can read it yourself here, or for the Cliff’s Notes: freedoms of assembly, speech, and the press were suspended, and it stayed that way until the war’s end in May 1945.

Other key pieces of the act were:

• no restraints on police investigations

• everybody had to be cool with confiscations of private property

• expect zero privacy in postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications

• anybody could be arrested and incarcerated without charge

• similar to pirate code, state and local laws became ‘guidelines’

Then the book burnings started.

An order came down removing certain books from bookstores and libraries for being “anti-German” and “political treachery,” torching them in public bonfires and giving rise to a list of “burnt authors.”

Writers in Germany (and shortly after the Anschluss, Austria too) saw the writing on the wall and peaced out.

About 1,500 well-known writers ditched their homelands.

Where did they go?

At first, France.

More specifically, Sanary sur Mer on the Côte d’Azur.

Between 1933 and 1940, this little fishing village served as the escape, retreat, and meeting point for writers like Thomas Mann, Lion Feuchtwanger, Franz Werfel, and Moïse Kisling.

Sanary is still referred to as “the world capital of artistic and literary exile.”

The French Riviera is a breathtaking vacation destination, but most of these writers suffered in poverty during their stay there. Many of them left home without money or (as Casa Blanca taught us to say) “letters of transit,” living in fear of deportation.

Being exiles they were not allowed to work in France, and their publications (you know, the ones that went up in flames) could no longer bring them income.

France didn’t exactly roll out the red carpet either.

Given the dangerous times, many burnt authors kept on the move.

As the war dragged on and anti-German sentiment rose, France started arrests and concentration camps of their own (about a hundred of them) for their influx of foreigners.

When France fell to the Nazis in 1940, thousands of German and Austrian exiles were interned as “enemy aliens” at the Camp des Milles.

When the Vichy government agreed to hand everyone back to the Nazis upon request in the armistice, it got dark. There were suicides.

Other captives escaped in as many creative ways as you might expect writers to come up with and fled to other countries.

Through it all, writers found a way to go on and document their experiences for the world to read.

Their stories are preserved around the town in commemorative plaques and villas where they tarried. There is also a walking tour of the spots they frequented during those dark years for us to travel back and walk in their footsteps.

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Louisa May Alcott, best known for writing Little Women, is no exception. She was a renowned author in her time, but has fallen victim to her name being mentioned only from one famous work at present.

She also wrote thrillers, poetry, children’s stories and was considered “American Bloomsbury.”

Allow me to introduce you to my favorite work of hers, a serialized newspaper series from The Commonwealth, a Boston newspaper, called Hospital Sketches where she proved her talents as both a comedy and adventure writer too.

During the Civil War, she volunteered as an army nurse, and this series is an autobiographical retelling of her adventures taken from her letters home.

Full of daring taboos, laughable mishaps, and heartbreaking accounts, the woman had gumption, and the stories of her protagonist, Nurse Periwinkle, are full of it.

Any woman who has ever attempted to make her way in a “man’s profession” can appreciate the trials that befell Alcott in her quest to join the paid side of nursing.

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Here are some great zingers from the first chapter:

• “I am naturally irascible, and if I could have shaken this negative gentleman vigorously, the relief would have been immense. The prejudices of society forbidding this mode of redress, I merely glowered at him”

• “I'm a bashful individual, though I can't get any one to believe it; so it cost me a great effort to poke about the Worcester depot till the right door appeared, then walk into a room containing several gentlemen, and blunder out my request in a high state of stammer and blush.”

• “Like an energetic fly in a very large cobweb, I struggled through the State House, getting into all the wrong rooms and none of the right, till I turned desperate, and went into one, resolving not to come out till I'd made somebody hear and answer me.”

• “I backed out, leaving him no doubt to regret that such mild maniacs were left at large.”

• “I stared at signs, inquired in shops, invaded an eating house, visited the recruiting tent in the middle of the Square, made myself a nuisance generally, and accumulated mud enough to retard another Nile.”

Not only is it an enjoyable read, it’s a first-hand account of important history. That’s right, you can do more than sift through dusty, old records or fact check Wikipedia for hours to piece together our history. Here’s another way!

While delivering belly-laughs and tears to the reader, Alcott gives summary descriptions of Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington D.C. circa 1862.

She also records multiple accounts of the Battle of Fredericksburg, the first Watch Night, and the medical practices of the time.

Hospital Sketches was so popular, and received such acclaim, the serial was compiled into an eighty-page book, the proceeds of which benefitted orphans of the Civil War.

Read it yourself, thanks to Project Gutenberg here.

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Folks, let’s talk about the publishing industry.

I know, I know, unfluff those feathers. This post isn’t about the Big 5 or their legions of imprints. They get all the attention.

I’m here to talk about everybody else. After all, an industry is made up of more than just the biggest names in the game.

And fear not, this will loop back to my usual focus of historically worthwhile things.

For those of you I’ve already lost, the “Big 5” are the largest American publishing houses (Penguin Random House, Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and HarperCollins).

Though a contract with any of them qualifies an author as “making it,” they are not without their problems. I’ll leave those discussions to the numerous books and posts by my fellow Substackers.

For us here, I’ll put it bluntly: if you aren’t a [economically] promising debut author with a fairly narrow commercially viable book represented by a literary agent, go away kid, you’re bothering them.

So, what’s a writer to do if they’ve stood in the front yard with a boom box over their head long enough and no one is coming to the window?

Well, many writers have viewed it as a duality where they either get a Big 5 deal or they self publish. That bald billionaire slowly taking over the world has made it easy for anyone to self publish a book with just a few clicks regardless of any editorial review.

But there are far more possibilities available to us as both writers and readers in literary magazines and small presses showcasing incredible literature.

Today we’re going to dive into the world of indie presses, because they’re out there fighting the good fight to keep the not-so-trendy, not-so-commercialized, odder and marginalized voices in print around the globe.

Independent publishing in America has a storied (pun intended) history dating back to the early 1800s.

While the Big 5 make their money publishing books with wide commercial appeal (deemed salable by predominantly white people in New York), indie presses do it all: short stories, poetry, flash fiction, micro fiction, nonfiction, novelettes, chapbooks, serialized stories, personal essays, and of course full manuscripts.

Many champion marginalized voices and tailor their publications to submissions from [fill in the blank] writers fitting their chosen demographic.

The two oldest independent presses are the North American Review (Boston, 1815) and The Yale Review (New Haven, 1819).

The North American Review is a fantastic example of what a small, focused press can accomplish. It has published submissions from William Cullen Bryant, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edith Wharton, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglass, Henry James, Mark Twain, John Steinbeck, Allen Ginsberg, Flannery O’Conner, Martín Espada, and Joyelle McSweeney (many before they were household names). Readers can still peruse it and writers can still submit their work to it today.

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The Yale Review is our country’s oldest continually published press. While the North American Review had to take a hiatus for a couple of decades after a scandal, the supporters of The Yale Review refused to let it see a similar fate.

When Yale University announced plans to close The Yale Review in 1990, a petition - and spicy letter from John Hersey to the Yale alumni magazine - caused the university to keep it running.

Another early notable press that’s still in operation is The Crisis (1910), the official magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), edited [initially] by W. E. B. Du Bois.

As the press gained popularity, it featured writers active in the Harlem Renaissance like Alice Dunbar Nelson, Leslie Pinckney Hill, Georgia Douglas Johnson, James Weldon Johnson and Lucian B. Watkins. Langston Hughes would describe the role of the editors of The Crisis as those “who midwifed the so-called New Negro literature into being…they nursed us along until our books were born.”

Today The Crisis is edited by award winning journalist Lottie Joiner.

The Suffragist (1913) was the official newspaper of the Congressional Union for Women’s Suffrage.

For eight dedicated years it served as the publication for women’s rights activists to freely share their feminist writings and legitimize the discussion of a suffrage amendment. It’s weekly issues featured poetry, interviews, political cartoons, and various discussions regarding women’s roles at home and abroad.

Arte Público Press (1979) is our oldest publisher of U.S.-based Latinx authors.

Founded during the Hispanic Civil Rights Movement, editor Nicolás Kanellos described, “[the press was] heavily involved…organizing blocks, marching, boycotting, producing newspapers, grassroots newspapers, publications, etc.”

In addition to their mission to give Latinx writers a printed voice, the press has also recovered and published hundreds of thousands of pieces of historical Latinx literature from colonial times up to the 1960s.

It also has a children’s and YA imprint, dedicated to printing bilingual books for young readers. A small, yet mighty publisher, Arte Público Press remains the largest licensor of Latinx literature to the U.S. textbook industry.

There are hundreds of thousands of small presses in America. These are just a few notable early superstars in their niches. A larger list is available through the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP).

If you’re a writer, I encourage you to submit to them. Make a name for yourself! Meet the editors. Convince them that manuscript you’ve got collecting dust is worth their time. Since small presses publish fewer books than the Big 5, you’ll get much more attention and effort in the editing and publicity department.

If you’re a reader, I encourage you to check out the wealth of talent available to you in these publications. You’ll find beautiful prose, breathtaking poetry, insightful personal essays, and marginalized voices in both fiction and nonfiction books not being hyped by the Big 5’s latest trend. It’s well worth your time.

[Shameless plug] Here are the small presses that have taken a chance on my work this year:

“Murder in the Skies” - suspense short story
Freedom Fiction Journal

“Diary of a Matchmaking Cat” - satirical journal entries
Little Old Lady Comedy

“Sunday Ritual” - poem
The Ranger’s Almanac

“Man with pool seeks live-in female companion, must own bikini” - comedy article
The Belladonna Comedy

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Big day for an emerging writer today. My very first short story to ever publish released in the Freedom Fiction Journal.

Take a gander!

Disclaimer: it’s dark, technically horror genre. As I’ve said before, your girl’s got range.

Murder in the Skies by Valerie Thornton

Later this week we’re going to visit the history of independent presses and literary journals so you guys can appreciate what it means to get picked up in a small press with me.

See you back here in a couple days!

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It got me thinking about writers throughout history who have formed groups to benefit from basking in their creative energy together.

Here’s a few notable examples.

The Inklings

Despite what you may have heard, The Inklings were neither a club nor a formal literary society, just a loose group of roughly twenty friends. They met on Thursday nights, originally at the University of Oxford, to read and discuss unfinished works.

The two most famous Inklings were C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. The group favored fantasy fiction and early works read aloud for critique were manuscripts for The Lord of the Rings, Out of the Silent Planet, and All Hallows’ Eve.

The Bloomsbury Group

Unlike The Inklings, this group not only welcomed women, but was started by artist Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf in their home.

Again, less a formal club than a gathering of friends and relatives, The Bloomsbury Group (or Bloomsberries) was associated with the University of Cambridge (men) and King’s College London (women). Our most famous writers from this group were Virginia Woolf, Desmond MacCarthy and E. M. Forster.

Not all of the ten core participants were writers. There was an art critic, an economist and a few painters too, but they were all in it for the love of the arts. Collectively they promoted one another’s work and were all in each other’s lives long before any of them knew fame.

They usually met in various participant’s homes but also had countryside retreats.

Though their aims were more artistic than political, movements of the day found their way into the work they shared, as was the case with Woolf’s Night and Day.

South Side Writers Group (SSWG)

A bona fide writers’ organization birthed from the Chicago Black Renaissance, the SSWG was a circle of African American writers and poets in South Side, Chicago.

Roughly twenty members large, the SSWG included Richard Wright, Arna Bontemps, Margaret Walker, Fenton Johnson, and Theodore Ward.

The group championed social realism and met at the Abraham Lincoln Center on South Cottage Grove Avenue.

A key work to come from this group was Wright’s seminal Blueprint for Negro Writing, considered the central piece of literary theory for the Chicago Black Renaissance.

“[Black writers] entered the Court of American Public Opinion dressed in the knee-pants of servility, curtsying to show that the Negro was not inferior, that he was human, and that he had a life comparable to that of other people.”

-Richard Wright

Algonquin Round Table

The fluid members of this group (also called Algonks) attended a daily weekday luncheon at the round table in the Rose Room of the Algonquin Hotel in New York.

Known for their satirical brilliance (and elaborate practical jokes), this informal literary group often referred to themselves as “The Vicious Circle.”

Members were some of the best-known writers, journalists and artists in NYC, including Dorothy Parker, Alexander Woollcott, Robert Benchley, Franklin Pierce Adams, Harpo Marx, and Edna Ferber.

“Far from boosting one another they were actually merciless if they disapproved. I have never encountered a more hard-bitten crew. But if they liked what you had done they did say so, publicly and wholeheartedly. Their standards were high, their vocabulary fluent, fresh, astringent and very, very tough. Theirs was a tonic influence, one on the other, and all on the world of American letters.”

-Edna Ferber, speaking of the Algonks in her autobiography

Spinoff groups abounded, often mimicking the same playful spirit of the luncheons. There was a poker club, a Thanatopsis Literary and Inside Straight Club, and an ‘I can give you a sentence’ game asking participants to rewrite well known expressions to include puns and pithy humor (ex: You can lead a horticulture but you can’t make her think.” - Dorothy Parker). They also had retreats on Neshobe Island in Vermont with games of wink murder and croquet.

While writing is usually viewed as a solitary journey, it doesn’t have to be! History gives us many examples of writers enjoying one another’s company, strengthening friendships, and sharpening their skill by sharing their work with a collective.

As part of a writing group, I cannot speak highly enough about this approach to the craft. What started as me at a table by myself with a sign inviting other writers to join has grown to become and Thursday night reservation for half the tables in our public venue. I encourage any writers reading this to join or start a group of their own.

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Tell me if this rings a bell:

“Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere…

Too bad that version is hogwash.

These famous words were penned by my favorite poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who was born thirty-two years after the American Revolution ended. His famous poem, Paul Revere’s Ride, was actually written in 1861, at the dawn of the Civil War.

Still, I’ll be quoting from the poem as we go because the writing slaps.

Though Longfellow’s account makes Paul Revere the sole hero of the nation, “ready to ride and spread the alarm through every Middlesex village and farm,” he had some trouble along the way the poem fails to mention.

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But somebody else had a wildly successful ride.

Think about it. For something this important, “the fate of a nation was riding that night,” would we really leave it up to one guy? No, there were multiple riders that night. History gives us at least three, Revere, Dawes and Prescott.

The dude that gets next to no historical credit for his valiant ride was one William Dawes Jr.

That fateful night, two routes were drawn out by Dr. Joseph Warren, who got word from Boston’s revolutionary underground that British troops were preparing to march to Lexington, presumably to arrest John Hancock and Samuel Adams.

“One if by land, and two if by sea” wasn’t really about lights in the belfry tower to say how the British were approaching, but did describe the two paths intended for Dawes and Revere.

Dawes was dispatched for the longer, more dangerous land route. Revere took the shorter path crossing the water up through Charlestown.

Along the way, where Dawes was able to repeatedly slip past British patrols, Revere had to turn back to evade the British once, then was captured at the second confrontation.

[cue record scratch]

Yes, Paul Revere was captured by the British that night, a far cry from only being detected by farm animals in Longfellow’s poem.

Question for Longfellow: Why write a poem that only featured Paul Revere on the night of April 18, 1776?

Gather round, readers, and you shall hear, a possible explanation to make this clear.

Paul Revere’s Ride took to paper close to one-hundred years after the events it describes. Longfellow was a scholar. He did what scholars do: research.

And guess who kept detailed, first-hand accounts of his mission for all posterity?

Paul Revere.

Longfellow likely grew up with stories about Paul Revere too. Revere had been a prominent Bostonian and active businessman in the political underground. His status as a national hero has only grown with time.

Meanwhile, scant records of Dawes exist. Some accounts say he was a grocer, others a tanner. Very little is known about his life after he hoodwinked the British just outside of Concord except that he was a quartermaster during the war.

So, did Longfellow not know about the other riders? Did he make an artistic choice to highlight only the best known rider? Was the creative journey of the story better served by skipping the setbacks?

I do not know. Sadly, Longfellow escaped this mortal flesh in 1882. In any case, he left some of the history intact.

You know the rest. In the books you have read,
How the British Regulars fired and fled,—
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farmyard-wall,
Chasing the red-coats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.

Still, the lesson we may take away is clear. If you do something important enough to be poetry-worthy in the future, write it down.

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Last week, I wrote about trench cats. Today we visit ship cats. They were a mainstay [pun intended] of nautical voyages throughout centuries of travel.

From Egyptian and Viking ships to the vessels of famous explorers, felines have earned their place on the manifest.

Primarily, cats were invited to kill rodents that not only spread disease and consumed food stores, but also wreaked havoc on ropes and woodwork. They could also deal with any birds trying to set up shop in the crow’s nest.

From hopping boat to port to boat, these little creatures sailed their way around the world and into the window hammocks where they repose now.

It certainly didn’t hurt that they loved seafood and adapted well to seafaring.

Their usefulness did not stop at vermin hunting. In the days before weather forecasts, cats were decent meteorologists. Their behavioral responses to shifts in barometric pressure put skippers on alert for incoming storms.

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Eventually, the superstitions of various sailors, and the tradition that every ship needs a mascot, cheek bumped cats into a comfortable position at the helm. Or the stern. Or the poop deck. Or wherever they wanted to be, let’s face it, cats do what they want.

When WWII increased worldwide naval engagement, a number of kitties sailed their way into stardom. My personal favorite was a cat named Oscar, dubbed ‘Unsinkable Sam.’

Oscar was the ship’s cat on the German Battleship Bismarck until it was sunk in 1941. Among the fraction (barely 100 from an original crew over 2k) of survivors left floating in the sea, the cat was picked up by on of the Bismarck’s destroyers, the HMS Cossack. When the Cossack was torpedoed and sunk a few months later, ‘Unsinkable Sam’ was rescued again and transferred service to the HMS Ark Royal, which was unfortunately torpedoed and sunk a few weeks later.

What can I say, WWII boat life was rough.

After his third rescue from shipwreck, ‘Unsinkable Sam’ was given shore duty as a land mouser in government buildings.

Another famous feline was Herman, an Expert Mouser (really, that was his job title) who worked for the Coast Guard at the busy port of Baltimore during WWII.

This cat had an official photo I.D.

“His is one of a select group issued a United States Coast Guard identification card. No longer can anyone stop the mascot at Pier 4, Pratt Street, as he goes about molesting rats.”

-The Sun

The history of the ship’s cat during wartime did not start with WWII. They have sailed with our soldiers as far back as 1888 in photographs, and likely far before that given their usefulness and resiliency (looking at you ‘Unsinkable Sam’). During World War I, the U.S. Navy banned alcohol onboard its vessels, but still allowed cats. Their ability to improve safety and morale has long been acknowledged.

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I’m talking, of course, about their feline companions in the trenches.

Yeah, trench cats were a thing in the early 1900s.

Why?

Trenches weren’t very sanitary places. The damp, subterranean environments made ideal breeding grounds for rats, and if the Bubonic Plague taught us anything, it’s where there are rats, there are infectious diseases.

Enter stage left, trench cats!

An estimated 500,000 cats (mostly strays with upward mobility) lived in the trenches along the Western Front next to our fighting men during WWI, tasked primarily with keeping the rodent population in check.

But that wasn’t their only job.

They were also couriers.

Being cats, they were naturally stealthy and could use their famous reflexes to roam freely across no man’s land. During the Christmas Truce of 1914, soldiers extended their hopes for peace by tying messages around the cats’ collars and sending their wishes for friendship over to the enemy.

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Under “other duties as assigned” the poor beasts served as canaries in a coal mine, helping troops detect near-odorless and faintly visible toxic gasses. Their swift and deadly reactions to the gas alerted the soldiers when to don their safety gear, saving countless lives.

When they were off duty, the kitties hung out around the troops’ living quarters, collecting scraps of food and improving morale one chin scratch at a time.

Stay tuned for next week’s post about ship cats!

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Today’s voyage through history surprised me, and I expect it will surprise you too. So tuck in tight because I’ve got some tea to spill.

We’re going in deep today, peeling back layers of flowery brunches and macaroni necklaces to get to the truth of this holiday’s history.

It all started with one very impressive lady named Julia Ward Howe. Her accolades go on for pages. That she isn’t a household name across America is a tragedy.

She was a published poet at twenty (anonymously, of course, everybody just knew women couldn’t write). She also wrote plays, books, lectured, co-founded the American Woman Suffrage Association, was an abolitionist, a suffragist, an active clubwoman, [deep inhale] an honorary graduate of Smith College, the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the organizer of the Association for the Advancement of Women to improve women’s education and entry into the professions, and a mother of six.

Yes, this woman did all that and raised six children. Hats off, indeed!

She was also told to stay in the kitchen at least one too many times, but we’ll get to that.

Alright, let’s revisit the Civil War once more. Our girl was busy working for the US Sanitary Commission (the forerunner of the American Red Cross, promoting hygienic conditions for soldiers and hospitals).

She saw a lot of death and dismemberment go down.

That didn’t stop her from penning a poem, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, which was later set to the tune of John Brown’s Body becoming the Union’s Civil War anthem.

Perhaps you’ve heard of it? But that’s not why we’re here today. We’re here to learn how far you’ve got to piss off a good woman before she creates a holiday in protest.

Onward!

After the war, the nation struggled to heal given the South never admitted defeat and started changing the narrative immediately after they lost.

Howe was pretty done watching young men expire from war, saw men ramping up for the next one, and got really into peace, presiding over the Women’s International Peace Association in 1871.

That’s the headspace she was in when she penned the Mother’s Day Proclamation of 1870, which I include in its entirety here, because it’s amazing.

For context, this was written back when women were not allowed to publicly exert themselves, travel without an escort, or be writers. In other words, her husband’s requests that she content herself with homemaking were given a hard pass.

After writing and delivering this proclamation, she gathered up all of her Boston socialite mothers and they held a peace celebration in May for almost forty-five years, sticking it to the man quite publicly.

Fast forward to the early 1900s and another impressive lady, Anna Jarvis, did the legwork to take Mother’s Day from a local Boston celebration to a national holiday.

Fun fact, Jarvis never had any children. She created the holiday for her own recently deceased mother after hearing her say she wished there were a day to commemorate mothers.

Here’s how she got it off the ground.

Anna started with a letter-writing and public speaking campaign in 1907, lobbying local, state, and national figures and organizations to observe a Mother’s Day celebration on the second Sunday in May.

It was a popular idea, and in a few years almost all U.S. states had their own Mother’s Day celebrations, honoring women’s selfless devotion to their families.

Before long Mother’s Day went international. It is now celebrated in well over one-hundred countries.

In 1914, Woodrow Wilson officially declared Mother’s Day a national holiday in the U.S. and, capitalists that we are, we ruined it almost immediately with commercialization.

What started as quiet family dinners and religious services honoring mom rapidly grew to obligatory gifts, flowers and cards. Today more than one-hundred million Mother’s Day cards are bought annually in the U.S.

Jarvis detested the holiday’s commercialization and put out a spicy press release. Here’s a taste:

“WHAT WILL YOU DO to rout charlatans, bandits, pirates, racketeers, kidnappers and other termites that would undermine with their greed one of the finest, noblest, and truest movements and celebrations?”

She spent the rest of her life condemning the commercialization of Mother’s Day, and like many people do when they get pissed off, picked the low road.

She came at corporate America hard, trademarking the term “Mother’s Day” and suing the companies profiting off of the holiday. She also opposed linking the holiday to charity events, even criticizing Eleanor Roosevelt for trying to raise funds for the Maternity Center Association on Mother’s Day.

By 1943, Jarvis was openly petitioning to abolish Mother’s Day.

We did to her what we did with many “troublesome” women and placed her in a sanitarium, where she died five years later, on Mother’s Day (not kidding).

There you have it, the story of the two women who brought us this holiday to tell Uncle Sam he can’t have their sons, and to honor the mothers who raised us, even after they are gone.

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In the last year we have taken behind-the-scenes looks at the making of:

• Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

• Martin Niemöller’s First they came for…

• L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Today, we’re jumping to the 1860s to look at one of America’s most famous poets and one of his best known poems.

I’m talking about Walt Whitman and his poem O Captain! My Captain!

Like many of you, I was familiar with the poem and found it emotionally robust. I had no idea until recently it was actually a powerful allegory.

In the poem, Whitman takes us to a ship that has arrived safely into the harbor. The journey was harrowing and the crew docks to great celebration. We’ve got bells, ribbons, cheering crowds, flags raised, and a bugle trilling.

The captain, however, did not make it.

Here, at the very end of this long and daring voyage, the captain lies dead and bleeding on the deck.

It’s possible to read and know the whole poem without ever understanding the history behind its penning. That’s how most of us have experienced this work. It was assigned in some class, or we stumbled upon it on our own, and no one gave us a framework for it.

Today we change that.

The poem originally appeared in Whitman’s self-published, and highly controversial, Leaves of Grass poetry collection.

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Everyone together: How controversial was it?

Well, Whitman put a bit of sensuality and gay eroticism in there and found himself out of a job with the U.S. government after the reviews came out. The work was deemed obscene and subsequently banned.

He even lost his deal with a Boston publishing house, Osgood & Company, when he denied his work was ‘obscene literature’ and refused to comply with legal requirements.

Whitman got the last laugh though. Leaves of Grass remains a popular read today.

I dare you to find a writer who hasn’t heard of it.

Suck it censors! But I digress.

Now, what is the allegory in this poem?

All right, let’s go back to the Civil War, when Whitman was still gainfully employed by the Department of the Interior.

He was a clerk in D.C. during which time he often visited soldiers. It is highly likely he bumped into our girl Clara Barton during his volunteer time dressing wounds and comforting injured troops.

He was a big supporter of the Union and of Lincoln. He even later wrote an elegy for Lincoln’s memorial.

He penned Oh Captain! My Captain! in 1865, after a significant historical event: the assassination of President Lincoln. Read the poem again, knowing the captain Whitman refers to is the recently deceased Lincoln, the ship is the Union, and the voyage is the Civil War.

Tears, you guys. Tears.

Now that we know the history, what a powerful poem!

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Today, I researched this… is officially one year in and going strong. I have a growing list of loyal readers to thank for that.

So thank you, and happy anniversary!

My very first post is still the most popular. If you missed it the first time around, here’s your chance to read it.

Now for some other historical events that happened on April 29th:

• The very first Thesaurus was published in Britain in 1852, and it has been in print ever since.

• In 1990, wrecking cranes started tearing down the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate.

• The symbolic “Golden Rivet” was driven in, completing the Golden Gate Bridge in 1937.

• In 1927, construction on the Spirit of St. Louis was completed. Shortly after, Charles Lindburgh piloted it across the Atlantic.

• In 1813, Jacob F. Hummel was granted the first U.S. rubber patent.

• 31,601 people were liberated from Dachau Nazi concentration camp in Germany in 1945.

• In 1967, Aretha Franklin released “Respect” achieving Billboard Song of the year.

• In 1983, Harold Washington was sworn in as Chicago’s first African American mayor.

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There you have it, April 29th, what a day! I’ll see you back here next week.

Cheers!

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As I mentioned last time with my comedy piece that published in The Belladonna, whenever I get published, I tell you about other places in the great wide world you can find my writing.

This time I’m proud to say I’ve been published in a new literary journal that benefits our national parks, The Ranger’s Almanac.

Compiled by two park rangers, this annual lit journal “features park and forest-inspired work from award-winning writers, poets, photographers, musicians, and artists…[and] conservation workers who protect these inspiring places.”

But Val, you ask, you write a humorous newsletter about history. What did you write for a nature publication?

Well, first of all, thank you for asking!

Second, what can I say, your girl’s got range.

I have a weekly ritual I perform with an amazing group of friends. Every Sunday we go out into nature and do a cold plunge together. I wrote a poem about the experience and that’s what will appear in this inaugural issue of The Ranger’s Almanac.

The really cool thing about this literary journal is that some of the proceeds from their sales go towards preserving our parks across the country.

Want to grab a copy? You can buy one here.

Most of the exotic beasts…ahem, pets, we’re going to talk about today were gifts, so if anybody wants to send Trump a wolverine and call it a present, there is precedent for it.

Now, let’s just jump right into it.

Jefferson kept grizzly bear cubs on the front lawn.

Back in October of 1807, Jefferson was gifted a pair of grizzly bear cubs from explorer Captain Zebulon Pike.

The cubs hung out in a cage on the front lawn for bypassers to view for two months, causing some to nickname it the “bear garden.”

But not so fast!

Teddy Roosevelt sees your two grizzlies and raises you six bears! Theodore Roosevelt, record holder for most pets in the White House, laughed, nay, scoffed, at Jefferson’s two cubs. His children kept a black bear cub in the house until it grew too large and wild and was transferred to the Bronx Zoo.

There is also record of five “gift bears” received as a set in Roosevelt’s book, The Green Roosevelt: Theodore Roosevelt in Appreciation of Wilderness, Wildlife, and Wild Places.

Bears aside, Teddy also kept a badger named Josiah (Josh for short) during his tenure (a gift from a little girl on a whistle stop tour).

As a kit, little Josh was a hit with children visiting the White House, but as he aged, his playful nips got more aggressive and sent family and staff running for cover on the daily. Eventually Josh was donated to the Bronx Zoo with frequent visitations from the Roosevelts so he wouldn’t feel abandoned.

The Roosevelts also kept horses, dogs, snakes, cats, a Hyacinth Macaw, a rabbit, two kangaroo rats, a flying squirrel, guinea pigs, [deep inhale] a lion, a hyena, a coyote, a wildcat, two parrots, a zebra, a barn owl, a lizard, a pig, a racoon, a hen, and a flock of roosters.

Andrew Jackson had an African Grey parrot named Poll who he taught all the swear words.

When Jackson passed, the bird went bananas at his funeral. The reverend officiating the service, William Menefee Norment, said:

“Before the sermon and while the crowd was gathering, a wicked parrot that was a household pet got excited and commenced swearing so loud and long as to disturb the people and had to be carried from the house.”

Martin Van Buren had a pair of tiger cubs.

The Sultan of Oman gifted them, and Marty argued with Congress to keep them at the White House. After enough back and forth with no consensus, Congress confiscated the pair and gave them to the zoo.

Let’s talk alligators.

Yes, plural. Three alligators are known to have graced the White House bathtubs.

The first came as a gift to John Quincy Adams, who housed it in the unfinished East Room and showed it off to horrified guests.

The second and third arrived under Herbert Hoover’s tenure.

While Hoover had nine dogs, his son, Allan, received two alligators, once again as presents. The two were bounced around from bathtubs to ponds. After several escapes, Bert was able to convince his son to donate them to the Smithsonian Zoo.

Abraham Lincoln had two beloved goats that rushed to his side when he called their names, Nanny and Nanko.

Apparently, it was a common sight to see Lincoln’s sons, Tad and Willie, pulled around the White House behind the goats atop kitchen chairs. Tad and one of the goats even busted through a group of visitors once.

Now, let’s talk squirrels named Pete.

There have been two.

Warren Harding had a gregarious squirrel named Pete that ate out of people’s hands on the lawn and attended news briefings. Pete stole the show so often, reporters documented his whereabouts when he attended press conferences along with the president’s remarks.

Harry Truman also had a pet squirrel named Pete.

Among his collection of cats, dogs and lovebirds, LBJ housed hamsters in the White House. Because of his love for these small creatures, in 1966 he signed the Animal Welfare Bill requiring labs performing animal research to be licensed and fully monitored and included fines and jail time for anyone engaging in cruelty experiments or fighting with animals.

Calvin Coolidge had so many pets at his White House, reporters nicknamed it “The Pennsylvania Avenue Zoo.”

In addition to the twelve dogs, three canaries, two cats, and an assortment of songbirds, there was also Enoch, the goose, Rebecca and Reuben, the racoons (who did not get along), Ebeneezer, the donkey, and let us not forget Smoky, the bobcat.

But wait, there’s more!

The Coolidges also kept lion cubs, a wallaby, a pygmy hippo, and a black bear (tut tut, just the one). And yes, the White House staff lost plenty of good clothing while begrudgingly performing their “other duties as assigned.”

Woodrow Wilson had close to fifty sheep at his White House to alleviate the federal budget after failing to keep a campaign promise to not involve America in WWI.

As the gardening staff enlisted for the war effort, a herd of sheep kept the White House lawn in shape. Wilson auctioned the flock’s fleece for $52,823 in 1919 for the Red Cross and donated 185 pounds of wool to the Salvation Army the following year.

James Buchanan kept a pair of bald eagles.

Other notable mentions:

• Old Ike, Woodrow Wilson’s aggressive, tobacco chewing Shropshire ram

• Mr. Reciprocity and Mr. Protection, Benjamin Harrison’s opossums

• Old Whiskers, Benjamin Harrison’s ornery goat

• Misty Malarky Ying Yang, Jimmy Carter’s Siamese cat

• Emily Spinach, Alice Roosevelt’s snake

• Pauline Wayne, William Taft’s prize cow that caused a national panic when it went missing from The International Dairymen’s Expo and discovered en route to a slaughterhouse

• Zsa Zsa, JFK’s rabbit

• Tiny Tim, Calvin Coolidge’s chow

• Jeff Davis, Ulysses Grant’s wartime mount

• Dick, Thomas Jefferson’s mockingbird

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The White House has a rather famous one.

The family plot that is now Arlington National Cemetery had one.

Travel to the homes (now museums) of long dead famous people and it’s pretty standard to find they include rose gardens.

Many American cities have public rose gardens. Our oldest is in West Hartford, Connecticut (Helen S Kaman Rose Garden). Travel to the other side of the country and you’ll find our International Rose Test Garden in Portland, Oregon.

So, I ask again, what’s with all the rose gardens?

Why not carnation gardens or lily gardens?

Well, rose gardens are a carryover from our European immigrants who brought roses on the journey and planted them in plain view to communicate their status.

In Europe, having a lovely rose garden at your home was a symbol you belonged to the upper crust of society.

Huh?

Stay with me here. Remember how everyone started wearing black as a fashionable way to mourn after Queen Victoria wore black for some forty years? People’s obsession to emulate the royals encouraged them to copy aristocratic rose gardens.

But why roses? Why would roses announce “I am rich” more than another flower?

Well, in 1600s Europe, royalty considered roses (and rose byproducts like rose water) legal tender. Ergo, the more roses you had - say a whole garden - the more bartering and buying you could do.

This carried over into American currency and culture. Before we were adorning change with president’s profiles, we had a coin with a five-petaled rose in the center (circa 1722).

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Speaking of presidents, several of them (Washington and Jefferson in particular) loved growing roses. Our closest semblance of royalty (presidents) were just as thick with roses as the monarchs across the pond.

But the rose’s history in the U.S. goes far beyond showing who was well-to-do.

While the pilgrims were announcing their status at the cool kids’ table with their roses, the Native Americans were planting wild roses around their homes too. Not only did they enjoy the roses’ ornamental and fragrant features, they harnessed their medicinal use.

Ergo, roses created common ground among different peoples in our country.

“I see your roses, very nice. I too have a collection of roses at my place.”

Imagine the props the European immigrants and Native Americans might have given one another in the form of ‘mad respect’ head nods on their way to the market regarding each other’s rose crops.

A few generations later, dudes started horticultural societies and botanical gardens really had their moment. Eventually, they even let women join in on the gardening fun.

It wasn’t long before people started one-upping their neighbor’s roses.

“Thank you for joining us this evening for our séance. Did you see my roses on your way in? Ah yes, I’ve just acquired the Rosa chinensis from Asia. It blooms multiple times in one season, unlike your roses that bloom once a year and retire. Now then, shall we sit and try to contact Aunt Elizabeth [or just stay in this passive aggressive gardening competition]?”

By the 1890s, Kentucky Derby winners were adorned with roses and Pasadena was hosting the Pasadena Tournament of Roses (now known as The Rose Parade), awarding floats covered in blossoms to coveted acclaim.

By 1940, winning national, or even neighborhood, prize rose blooms was the envy of the upper crust housewife.

In 1986, keeping with roses representing wealth and class, our trickle-down-economics president named roses our official national flower (Reagan guys, I’m talking about Reagan).

These days, roses have come to represent love and beauty more than wealth and status, but I still find it hard to drink tea near one without lifting a pinky.

This summer, see what rose gardens are near you and take a stroll in one to see what all the fuss is about.

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Picturing the Civil War likely draws up images of long lines of uniformed dudes marching across fields firing at one another.

I blame poorly researched movies that won critical acclaim.

Not to say this never happened, a few of our most famous battles involved shooting at one another without much cover.

But certainly not every battle.

Not even most of them.

The truth is, the majority of the roughly ten-thousand military engagements that took place during the Civil War looked nothing like this, and our teaching of the war is far from standardized to the truth.

So today, we correct our perception of the war with some quick facts.

For starters, the military looked very different back then.

There were no boot camps with drill sergeants referring to their recruits as maggots.

The medical exam to join the military involved showing the army surgeon how many teeth you had (the better to rip powder cartridges open, my dear), the dexterity of your trigger finger, and if you could hop on one leg in a circle (amputations and all).

Accounting for soldiers was not taken very seriously.

Nobody went AWOL back then.

They just got knocked out during a battle and the army had moved on by the time they came around. Or (as we saw in The Red Badge of Courage) got discombobulated, frightened, and r-u-n-n-o-f-t.

It was not uncommon to lose a fraction of the troops after every engagement.

Clara Barton ran a whole department to track down missing soldiers after the war.

The cool kids were in the cavalry.

It was a highly esteemed position. Think of it like your high school [most popular sport in your region] team.

The battlefields were plenty dangerous at close range, but not dangerous enough to keep spectators away.

People literally packed picnics and wagoned out to see nearby battles.

This practice started from the very beginning with the crowds in Charleston, SC cheering on the secessionists during the attack on Fort Sumter from their balconies.

And who was fighting these battles? A bunch of white dudes and one very brave regiment of black dudes (glaring at you for this one, Hollywood)?

Not even close!

Historically, we know one in three soldiers in the Union Army were immigrants.

We also know some twenty-thousand Native Americans, ten-thousand Jewish, and close to three-hundred Muslim troops fought on both sides.

Not to mention the at least four-hundred women (by conservative estimations) who disguised themselves as men and enlisted.

Black troops enlisted in the Navy from the start but were not allowed in other branches of the military until later in the war. Make no mistake, they served from the very beginning and did much more than that one battle you’ve seen in that one movie.

As serious as Civil War movies make things seem, we also know there was good humor on the field.

The troops were just as animated then as they are now, often giving their commanders creative nicknames. (My favorites are “Old Fuss and Feathers” for Winfield Scott, and “Little Mac” for George B. McClellan.)

While everything in the movies looks standardized and army issued, that was hardly a thing yet either.

Many troops brought their own pistols and horses into battle with them. Uniform organization was based on affordability and availability of materials and came and went in many forms throughout the war.

Troop barracks were not standardized either.

Depending on which country you hailed from, your temporary winter cabin might have been built with horizontal logs or vertical logs, and you might have had windows or you might not. Much discretion was given to troops to create their own shelters.

And if you can’t keep which battle was which straight, that’s not on you either.

Even now, we don’t agree on what to call the battles (ex: the Battle of Antietam and The Battle of Sharpsburg were the same battle. No, but like the exact same. Just like Bull Run and Manassas were the same. Just like Ball’s Bluff and Leesburg were the same. Just like so many others.)

So, there you have it. If you’re surprised by any of this, you’re not alone. Most of us were not given accurate portrayals of the deadliest official war on our soils, nor the fallout that still causes many of our troubles today.

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And right now, dissenting voices have plenty to say about how things are going around here.

Have I lost you already? Are you over there asking your computer screen what a zine is?

I’ve got you.

Zines (pronounced “zeen”) are self-published, short, paper booklets printed in small batches and distributed hyper locally. They are characteristically cheap to produce, easy to reproduce, and have a distinct “DIY” feel.

Ask the internet and you’ll get stories about them originating around 1930 as “fanzines” focused on science fiction, but the concept goes back long before that.

They are a staple (enjoy the pun, they’re often bound by staples) of the artistic community, from writers to visual artists to fashion designers, and they are often a way to say something controversial without the man suppressing you.

Zine creators (zinesters) value creativity and self-expression over profit, so zines avoid the trappings of capitalism. You won’t find ads for skin care or cleaning products in zines. You will often find ideas on the fringes of popular thought.

Since there are no gatekeepers, or conflicts of interest with advertisers, zines are one of the most popular formats for marginalized artists who aren’t free to say what they want in the commercialized press. Zines are offered for a slight fee, or as is more often the case, completely free.

“But Val,” you ask, “can I get some examples of these subcultural underground publications?”

Well of course you can! I bet you would even recognize some.

While most zines live and die in obscurity apart from their local distribution, some zines spark revolutions. Back in the day before “zine” was coined, we called these publications other things, like booklets, or pamphlets, but the idea of an independent creator spreading a self-published statement remains the same.

Some very early examples:

• Back in the 1440s, women circulated little booklets teaching the practice of witchcraft.

• Not to be outdone, a decade later dudes circulated booklets for how to catch witches.

• Ben Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac in the early 1700s. For a small, annual pamphlet distributed through the colonies, it had quite an impact.

• Common Sense by Thomas Paine. While it was just a simple pamphlet out of Philadelphia, its popularity has it still in print today.

• The Federalist Papers. Three founding fathers distributed some essays, and boy did those get some reach!

By the 1920s, the Harlem Renaissance was circulating “little magazines,” featuring prominent and amateur artists and writers side by side to undermine the established literary system.

And all of this before the first xerox machine!

By the time the first commercial photocopier hit the market in the late 1950s, there was no stopping the explosion of zines that followed.

The internet hype about sci-fi fanzines from the 1930s-1960s is not overstated.

Zines helped fans organize and lobby to get Star Trek back on the air after it was cancelled in 1968. Spockanalia, the first Star Trek zine, was so popular, Leonard Nimoy and other cast members submitted letters to it.

Many prominent sci-fi authors created zines including Ray Bradbury, Jack Williamson, and Robert A. Heinlein.

The first queer fanzine started in the 1940s by pen name “Lisa Ben” (anagram of lesbian). Nine issues of Vice Versa made their way into the world, distributed by mail and by hand, before closing up shop.

Within queer communities, zines have been used as a way to document U.S. history not captured in textbooks. Queercore culture, largely spread by zines, critiqued homophobia in mainstream society.

By the 1970s, the punk music scene, driven by overt anti-establishmentarianism, used zines to disseminate publicity for music groups, venues and events without relying on the capitalist press.

Basically, zines became the default way to spread the word for any group that rejected corporate labels and mainstream publications.

Not surprisingly, folk and rock musicians took to the medium like fish to water.

By the 1990s, feminists used political zines in the “Riot Grrrl” Movement to bring the feminist manifesto into the social consciousness.

Women with ideas have been harnessing the zine form for well over two-hundred years. The late 1800s saw a surge in tantalizing women’s pamphlets covering everything from free love to birth control to instructing women how to masturbate.

That’s right, gentlemen, be very afraid! Some of our “craft corners” are clandestine feminist presses hidden behind paper, paste, and that Cricut Cutting Machine you bought us for our birthday.

With the advent of the internet, many zines adapted to become “e-zines,” but there are still plenty out there being passed around in print today.

Maybe you’re over there pondering “there’s been an underground press in America this whole time?! That’s fascinating! How do I find out more about it?”

I highly recommend this book. It was required reading for a journalism class I took in college and has claimed a spot on my bookshelf ever since.

Today, zines enjoy a wider range of topics than ever before.

Some zines are angry, challenging the status quo and sharing voices from the fringes of society. Other zines will teach you how to bike safely in traffic or operate a successful beehive.

Any topic is allowed in a zine, even no topic at all. Some are all words. Others are all pictures, or all music. Some feature interviews, or political comics, or announce upcoming artists’ gatherings.

Which brings me to telling you about a zine I am particularly fond of, Thursday Night Pocket Poetry.

This little gem is new to the zine world. There are only two issues out there tucked away in little libraries and decorating coffee tables.

It’s the brainchild of one of the poets in my weekly writing group. She wanted to create a zine that was a collaborative effort from our group, and every quarter, that’s what this zine showcases.

While I made a big fuss about my first comedy piece appearing in The Belladonna earlier this week (it’s fussworthy, their circulation is over 70k), I’m proud to say my poetry first appeared in this little zine.

Today, there are zine fests, many libraries have zine collections, and you can find them for sale at used bookstores.

Zines remain a vital outlet for marginalized voices and have always been important to subcultural movements within the dissident press.

If you’re lucky, someone will hand you one for free to carry around in your back pocket and share with the next friend you meet.

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Just a short post today to celebrate a milestone in a writer’s career.

If you pull up The Belladonna (a comedy site) right now, yours truly is the top post on the page!

And a link directly to my piece for later, for alas, it will not stay at the top forever:

Man With Pool Seeks Live-In Female Companion, Must Own Bikini | by Valerie Thornton | Mar, 2026 | The Belladonna Comedy

I’ll do this occasionally, because I’m darn tootin’ proud of the things I write that get accepted at literary journals, and I hope you guys enjoy seeing them too.

Alright! I’ll see you back here later this week to discuss the history of zines.

Until then, I’ll be happy dancing in the corner.

Once upon a time, there was a well-respected military man named Robert E. Lee.

All together now: How respected was he?

Well, he was the superintendent at West Point that introduced equestrian instruction, training some of our nation’s greatest cavalry officers.

He was also described by his commander, General Winfield Scott, as “the very best soldier I ever saw in the field.”

Then one day, he defected from the U.S. Army, joined the Confederacy, and took up arms against the country he had sworn to protect.

This is what most folks today know him for, in less accusatory language, but nevertheless, these are the facts.

What you may not know is that when the opportunity presented itself, the U.S. government confiscated Lee’s 1,100 acre estate and…got creative.

Lee and his wife (who technically inherited the land, but Virginia spent a great deal of the 1840s deciding women couldn’t own property) had fled when the war charged its way into Virginia, leaving their estate vacant.

The U.S. government decided the iron was hot and struck.

One official reason was failure to pay taxes. Lee was close to $100 in arrears.

Another official reason was that the feds seized the land to defend Washington, D.C. If the Confederates kept it, cannons could range every important government building in the capital.

So, regardless of why it went down, the government had acquired primo land overlooking Washington, D.C. Now, what, oh what, to do with it?

I wasn’t there when the suggestion first rose to Lincoln’s ear.

I’m not sure if the attitude was one of humor or vengeance.

Maybe it was simple practicality, the cemeteries in D.C. were filling up fast on account of the rebellion of some good ‘ol Virginia boys.

I do know that Lincoln approved the idea to create a cemetery on the land, detailed to the point of altering Lee’s rose garden into a burial vault.

That story again - Lincoln: Ya dead to me Bobby! Dead!

Old white dudes name their estates, and this one was called “Arlington.”

See where this is going?

Elizabeth Brown Pryor, Lee’s biographer, explained if he should ever return to Arlington, he would “have to look at the graves and see the carnage that he had created.”

This is a fair characterization.

While Grant and Sherman often get billed as the bloodiest generals, it was actually General Lee who caused the most casualties throughout the war.

Lee loved the offensive. He often won by insisting on the attack. Sometimes, he lost hard by attacking (Gettysburg anyone?).

Win or lose, he decimated the Army of Northern Virginia by charging into battle again and again.

The war ends. The dust [somewhat] settles.

Lee dies and his eldest son sues the federal government to regain the land.

In a 5-to-4 ruling, the Supreme Court (Unites States v. Lee, 1882) ruled in his favor, returning the estate to the Lees.

Wait, so does the Lee family own Arlington today?

No. By the time they got it back, it was a legit cemetery.

Say what you will about the Victorian Era’s obsession with death, Lee Jr. had a better idea than holding onto a [guaranteed] haunted house.

He sold the land back to the U.S. government for $150,000.

Though there were already veterans buried there, Arlington officially became a national cemetery in 1864. Today, what was once the home of a leading confederate is home to thousands of fallen veterans, many of whom fought to end slavery.

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Today, we’re delving into another history-altering friendship, that of Ulysses S. Grant and Ely S. Parker.

I’ll start with the bit that caught my eye.

Did you guys know a Native American drafted the articles of surrender at Appomattox (the official document surrendering Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia during the Civil War)?

Meet Ely Samuel Parker.

A member of the Seneca tribe, Parker was a trusted member of General Grant’s staff.

Let’s go back and see how it started.

The two met when they were both down on their luck.

Grant had returned home with his tail tucked between his legs. He was working as a clerk in the family leather shop while recovering from financial ruin. I detail how he rose to military fame in my post here.

Parker, born Hasanoanda (meaning “leading man”), was a man with a foot in both the indigenous and white worlds. Because of his English skills, he was dispatched to Washington, D.C. [as a teenager] to try to regain the Seneca’s Tonawanda reservation.

He lobbied for a year only to be told ‘go away kid, ya botha me’ when the issue came to a vote.

Undeterred, and only 18-years-old, Parker moved to New York and studied law, eventually holding down a job with a NY law firm for three years.

When he applied to sit for the bar exam, the New York Supreme Court ruled ‘only natural-born or naturalized citizens could be admitted to practice, and as a Seneca, he was neither.’

Ironic, isn’t it?

His repeated efforts to take the bar were all denied.

So, he studied engineering. A contact hooked him up with a civil engineering job in Rochester, NY, expanding the Erie Canal.

Despite the career change, he never gave up the legal fight on behalf of the Seneca and Haudenosaunee people, leading to his election as sachem, or chief, of the Tonawanda in 1851. Upon his selection, Parker took the name Donehogawa, or “Open Door” and held this position for life.

Meanwhile, in white America, as Parker was building what would become a national reputation for his engineering skills, still somewhat lamenting his lack of a law career, he bumped into Grant.

He was 29, working as an engineer for the U.S. Treasury Department supervising construction on a federal customshouse in Illinois when the two became acquainted.

They were fast - and lifelong - friends and when Grant got command of his unruly volunteer regiment, he tapped Parker to join him as an army engineer, despite Parker’s prior rejection from military service on account of his race.

Parker was commissioned a lieutenant colonel and served as adjutant to then Lieutenant General Grant. An official aide-de-camp, Parker wrote most of Grant’s letters.

A few years later, when General Grant rolled up to Appomattox with his posse, Military Secretary Parker rode with him.

And who drafted up the official copy of the terms of surrender that everybody signed?

You guessed it, legally trained Ely Parker.

Legend has it General Robert E. Lee mistook Parker for a black man, but apologized saying, “I am glad to see one real American here,” to which Parker responded, “We are all Americans, sir.”

After the war, the two road tripped to Washington, D.C. where Grant vied for the presidency and Parker became a key consultant on Indian Policies.

In 1869, then President Grant appointed Parker Commissioner of Indian Affairs, the first Native American to hold the office. Parker carried out a hallmark of Grant’s presidential legacy, the Indian Peace Policy, aimed at reducing the number of military actions against Indigenous peoples in the West.

So, get out there, folks, make new friends. You never know where it will take you!

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I’ve created plenty of posts about BFFs that changed history, and next week, I’m gunna do it again with a fascinating story about the friendship between a Civil War general and a Native American.

But for now, since I’ve added so many new subscribers (thanks guys!), I’m doing a highlight reel of the posts I’ve written about BFFs to date.

If you’re new to the party, take a gander!

The five BFFs that crashed our nation’s centennial celebration

The friendship and rivalry between William Howard Taft and Teddy Roosevelt

BFFs turned frienemies Robert E. Lee and James Longstreet

Maud and Josephine, who influenced The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

The close friendship between Lord Byron and the Shelleys that birthed Frankenstein

The history of the best man at weddings

Next week we’re delving in to a Native American hidden behind his “white name” who made quite an impact on our country.

See you there!

If you enjoyed this piece, please consider supporting my work by:

• Hitting the ♡ icon below.

• Sharing your thoughts in the comments.

• Sending this to a friend who might be interested in subscribing.

• Restacking the post.