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Day Three

When Miriam had finished her work we set out for the Smithsonian, to finish our survey of the National Museum of American History that we started the day before.  It was noticeably more crowded on Saturday than it had been Friday, but we were determined to see it all.

We went straight upstairs when we arrived and toured an exhibit about the military history of the United States.  Every war was represented along with its technology of battle.  They had more guns than I could count, including one used by John Brown’s men at Harper’s Ferry.  I was impressed by George Washington’s sword,  Andrew Jackson’s sword and coat, and William Tecumseh Sherman’s sword and hat.  Most amazing of all were the table and two chairs used by Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House.  In effect, the Civil War ended on that small oval-shaped table.

I was similarly thrilled to behold three Medals of Honor in a small glass case.  I had never seen one in person before.

Being the Summer of Baseball, I found myself jealous of President Warren Harding’s free pass to all National League ballparks.

There was a great deal of interest in a small exhibit of American pop culture items upstairs, and understandably so.  In separate glass cases near one another were the Ruby Slippers and Kermit the Frog.  The younger visitors seemed less interested in Fonzie’s jacket and Archie Bunker’s chair.

Still, the most memorable artifact in the entire Smithsonian Institution wasn’t the most popular.  Indeed, Julia Child’s kitchen and the exhibit of first ladies’ gowns were far and away more crowded.  In the middle of the museum is a doorway to a dark hallway.  Dim lights on the floor lead you around the corner, where, behind thick glass, spread out across a raked platform, lay the Star Spangled Banner.  The real one.  The one Francis Scott Key saw when he wrote the poem that, when set to music, later became our national anthem.  Miriam and I sat for quite a while staring at the enormous flag.  It was simply awesome.  (Photos were not allowed.  Sorry.)

Satisfied that we’d seen just about everything, we set out.  It was still light outside, so we walked down Constitution Avenue, past the National Archives and the Newseum, to the entrance to the National Gallery of Art.  I really wanted to see the Calder mobile and David’s portrait of Napoleon, but, alas, the museum was closed for the day.  (I reassure myself that the museum will always be there, and we are sure to visit Washington again in our lifetimes.)  We walked briefly along the Mall, then turned north, and enjoyed the amazing architecture of the city as we made our way back to the hotel.  I love old buildings, and Washington has lots of them.  Along our route back we ran across a shop Miriam wanted to explore, so I left her and went on to do more sight-seeing of my own.  The sun was setting, and I took a walk past our hotel and a fancy statue, down to see the White House again.  Though I think the north side is handsomer, the south lawn is impressive.

We rested in our room for a while before heading downstairs where the doorman hailed us a taxi that drove us to the FDR Memorial.  It was night, and some of the inscriptions on the memorial’s walls were difficult to read in the dim light.  But it was a large and suitably noble tribute to the man who led this country through the Depression and Second World War.  Unlike other memorials, this one attempts to place Roosevelt’s presidency in context.  Visitors move through the site–which is expansive–along a chronologically-oriented path.  The president is depicted in a wheelchair.

The night air was cool, and there were plenty of people around, so we elected to walk toward the other monuments along the western portion of the National Mall.  We arrived shortly at the Lincoln Memorial, which I suppose is busy any time of the day or night.  We sat for quite some time at the top of the steps, looking out over the reflecting pool to the Washington Monument and Capitol in the distance.  The moon was full or nearly full, and was just coming up over the line of trees to the southeast.  We walked down through the Korean War Veterans Memorial and the World War II Memorial, then across the Elipse to the northwest.

We had walked approximately six billion miles since the start of our trip, so Miriam was understandably fatigued.  Given my tendency to say things like, “oh, it’s not too far; we can walk”, and her tendency to wear stylish, yet impractical shoes, she had reason to complain.  She joked that I was subjecting her to “tourist torture”.  She felt better, though, when we made a return visit to the Old Ebbitt Grill.  It was late, and we had no reservation, but they still seated us at a lovely table within view of my new favorite painting.  I was still full from eating Five Guys (for the first time) eight hours before, so I just had ice cream and a Sprite.

We got back to our hotel room well after midnight and I slept like a baby.  In the morning we were leaving Washington.

Filed under: Dana Heritage Project, History, Travel on August 31st, 2010 | No Comments »

Day Three

Memorial Day weekend is probably always busy in Washington, D.C., but it was made more so by the presence of tens of thousands of bikers, who rode up and down the city streets–with no apparent single destination, from what I could tell–generating an incessant rumbling noise with their motorcycles.  The major attractions would be doubly crowded because it was a Saturday.  While Miriam got some important work done on the computer in the room, I left the hotel to run some important errands.

My first chore was to check on the car, parked in a garage on G Street.  They had a sign indicating something to the effect that vehicles could not be left over the weekend, or that patrons had to pay every day.  The fellow in the booth told me, however, that it was fine to leave it as long as I like and just pay on my way out.

From the garage I walked a few blocks down to try and get tickets to Ford’s Theater – not for a performance, but for the tour and museum.  The line in front of the building was quite long, but it was full of people who already had tickets.  I asked the National Park Service ranger what to do, and she told me I should see inside if anyone had returned tickets for the day.  Luckily, someone had, and we had a scheduled tour of the theater and museum later that afternoon.

On my way back to the hotel I was walking behind a tourist family with three kids.  Two girls were throwing a superball back and forth to each other.  Not surprisingly, the ball got away from one of the girls and bounced out into the street, which sloped down so that the ball began rolling away.  One of the girls, without even looking, began to run directly into the street.  Her parents caught her, thank God.  Her older brother took off down the sidewalk to grab the ball before it went into a drain, and he came back up with it.  The second of the two girls, who had been watching him, began to cross the street after her parents, also without looking.  I could not believe how foolishly the whole family was behaving.  Though I know it wasn’t what Darwin had in mind, I could not help but think that the concept of natural selection was on display at that moment.

Abraham Lincoln had been on my mind a great deal throughout the summer, and especially on this trip.  I was reading David Herbert Donald’s excellent biography at the time, and my former reverence for the great man was turning nearly to idolatry.  I was desperate to see places and things associated with Lincoln, and that is what took us that afternoon to Ford’s Theater on 10th Street.  Visitors are first led down a narrow staircase to a basement-level museum, which contains many Lincoln-era artifacts, and many items owned and used by the Lincoln family.  A shaving mug, in particular, stood out to me as an object that Lincoln would have used on a daily basis.

As you might expect, a great deal of attention is paid at Ford’s Theater to the assassination of President Lincoln, and the exhibits thereto pertaining are both fascinating and disquieting.  The conspirators who joined John Wilkes Booth were armed to the teeth, and only their cowardice and incompetence prevented the government from collapsing altogether.  Lincoln wasn’t their only target: Vice President Johnson and Secretary of State Seward were on the hit list, as well.  Of course, Booth succeeded in killing the only man who mattered, and it is hardly any mystery how he did it.  The presidential box in Ford’s Theater is amazingly accessible.  It’s impossible to imagine this today, but to reach his box that night (and every previous night he had attended), Lincoln had to walk up a flight of very public stairs, across a very public balcony, and through a door visible to half the audience.  He had one guard with him, though having more might not have kept Booth out.  He was a famous actor whose work Lincoln knew.  He would surely have been admitted.  On the other hand, had General and Mrs. Grant accepted the Lincolns’ invitation that night, security would have been much tighter, with army guards stationed inside and outside the box.  Alas, Mary Todd Lincoln’s jealous tirades had appalled Julia Grant, and she wanted nothing more to do with Mrs. Lincoln.  In a glass case in the Ford’s Theater museum, the tiny single-shot pistol that took Abraham Lincoln’s life sits inanimate.  No object so small ever caused more harm.

The most meaningful artifact at Ford’s Theater is not a gun, however.  It’s a long, black Brooks Brothers overcoat.  Abraham Lincoln wore it to Ford’s Theater the night he died, but, more importantly, he wore it a few weeks before, at his second inauguration, where he delivered the greatest address of all time – the speech in which he articulated his hope for “a just and lasting peace”.  Stitched inside the silk lining of the frock coat are two embroidered eagles and the words “One Country, One Destiny”.  It is amazingly poignant.   In the rush to keep up with the museum tour, most visitor’s to Ford’s Theater probably miss seeing that coat in its display case in the lobby.  It’s a shame, too, because it plainly symbolizes the beliefs of the man who single-handedly saved the Union.  Many other men fought and died in the Civil War, but had anyone else on earth been president of the United States between 1861 and 1865, my visit to Washington, D.C. would have required a passport.

Miriam had a great deal of work to do back at the hotel that afternoon, so I took the opportunity to walk by the White House once again.  I had never seen it in daylight.  Pennsylvania Avenue is closed in front of the Executive Mansion now, and it is actually hard to imagine that cars were ever allowed to just drive right on by, since the pedestrian traffic alone makes that a bad idea, and the short distance from the road to the north portico formerly made an Oklahoma City-type bombing distinctly possible.  (Note to Secret Service personnel reading this page because internet-crawling supercomputers flagged it for containing specific word combinations: I love America and am not threatening anything or anyone.  Please don’t come to my house.)

Speaking of maniacs, just across the street from the White House is Blair House, a handsome building with a flag hanging from just above the second floor.  That is where President Truman lived while the Executive Mansion was being renovated in the late-1940s.   One day some crazy Puerto Rican nationalists attacked the house but were repulsed by police, one of whom, Leslie Coffelt, was killed.  There is a plaque out front commemorating his sacrifice.  Next to Blair House is Lee House, built in 1858.  It’s neat to think that when Abraham Lincoln moved to Washington in 1861, he could look across the street from a White House window and see his neighbors’ brand new brick home.

And while standing in front of the White House I couldn’t help but think about the last speech Lincoln ever delivered.  It was on 11 April, 1865, less than a week before he died.  The War had just ended and the streets of Washington were full of revelers.  The president spoke from a second story window to a large crowd assembled out in front of the mansion, which in those days was open to anyone.

He alluded to the presence of the band, and said that our adversary had always claimed one old good tune–”Dixie”–but that he held that on the 8th of April we fairly captured it – in fact, he said, he had submitted the question to the attorney general, who had decided that the tune was our lawful property; and he asked that the band play “Dixie”, which they did.  The President then proposed three cheers for General Grant and the officers and men under him, then three for the navy, all of which were given heartily, and the crowd dispersed.

We see the White House on the news every day of our lives, and it is perhaps inevitable that it has mostly come to represent the idea of power, and even government itself.  So it is easy, then, to forget that the White House is a physical place – a large house in the middle of a busy city where men both corrupt and incorruptible have lived and worked.  Some of these men we think of only as two-dimensional faces on coins and currency; others we forget altogether.  We will never forget Abraham Lincoln.  He is, in a way, immortal – the embodiment of wisdom, virtue, honesty, and honor, and everything we wish America itself could be.  But Lincoln was a living, breathing man who, like all of us, had his own flaws.  We needn’t mythologize him.  On the contrary, Lincoln’s greatness stems not from some inherent perfection, but from his capacity for personal growth.  The man who had once said that he would let slavery be if it would save the Union later came to believe that the War must be about “a new birth of freedom”, and rejected Confederate proposals to rejoin the Union with slavery intact.  He worked diligently to ensure the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment.  “I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views”, he said.  And when his true views made him profoundly unpopular he said, “I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end, when I come to lay down the reins of power, I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside me”.  Abraham Lincoln was a living, breathing man, and his last home was the large white house in the middle of a busy city.

Filed under: Dana Heritage Project, History, Travel on August 31st, 2010 | No Comments »

Day Two

Miriam is obsessively thorough in her research of hotels, so we knew in advance that our room in Richmond contained a small refrigerator.  This was good news, since she always has leftovers from dinner, and getting two meals out of one is a good way to save money on the road.  Alas, we awoke to the disappointment of finding our room’s refrigerator not cold at all.  When we went to the desk to complain the clerk explained that they unplug the appliances when guests check out to save energy.  That’s a fine idea, but I wish they’d told us in advance.  Miriam’s breakfast was lost.  Fortunately, the regretful clerk offered us their buffet for free.  I made my own waffle, and placed it atop a mountain of bacon.  And, in spite of the refrigerator blunder, the hotel was quite nice and a good value.  By the end of the day, however, we’d be sleeping in a hotel so opulent that it would make even the fanciest of hotels seem like a Bangladeshi sewage treatment plant.

We were packed into the car and heading back north on I-95 as soon as we finished breakfast.  Our destination was Washington, D.C., but in the mean time I was excited to be traveling through the real heart of the Civil War.  The names of towns, counties, and rivers that we passed along our route stood out to me as landmarks in some great historical atlas.  I vividly recall the roadsigns for battlefields seeming like a chronicle of the War’s progression: Fredericksburg, Gaines’ Mill, Wilderness, Chancellorsville, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, and so on.   I remember looking out the window as we crossed the Rappahannock River.  The highway went from maybe six lanes to at least a dozen as we approached the Beltway encircling the District of Columbia.  In the middle was a lane that can be used for traffic going in either direction, which can be changed depending on the time of day.  We crossed the Potomac and got our first look at Washington.

I have driven a car in Puerto Rico, so almost no amount of traffic or dangerous road conditions can upset me too much anymore.  That said, Washington is a frustrating place to drive, if only because unpredictable road closures render almost any system of navigation, old-fashioned or electronic, useless.  Miriam is fond of using the GPS device on her phone.  In many places that gadget would suffice.  In Washington, however, it will say, “Turn right at Pennsylvania Avenue”, unaware that attempting to turn right at Pennsylvania Avenue would result in a significant Department of Homeland Security incident.  We had a hotel reservation and a car.  But we didn’t want to valet to park our car at the hotel because that would be absurdly expensive.  Finding a reasonably-priced garage near our hotel was challenging.  Meanwhile, Miriam was nervous that the hotel would demand a substantial deposit above and beyond the price of the room, which was already paid.  In Puerto Rico last year, the resort there demanded many hundreds of dollars as a deposit, which significantly depleted our walkin’ around money.  The price of our room in San Juan, however, was a bargain compared to the price of our room in Washington.  If we had to pay a thousand dollars as a deposit in D.C., our time there would be significantly less lavish.  I could not imagine how they would expect guests to front so much money, so I was not nearly as worried as Miriam.  And, thankfully for both of us, no unreasonable deposit was required.

The Willard Hotel is historic.  There is no disputing that fact.  Every important political figure of the past two centuries has either stayed there or visited.  The original building has been replaced by a far more grandiose one, which would look quite at home in Paris, but the new building has a legacy almost as rich.  The lobby is opulent, with the seals of the fifty states painted on the coffered ceiling.  Behind the reception desk are old fashioned slots for room keys.  The Pennsylvania Avenue side of the hotel is one floor lower than the F Street side: to get up to F Street you pass through a long corridor and up some steps, where there is a second small, but still fancy lobby.  Our room, No. 914, was on a high floor facing east.  You can see our room’s window, surrounded by fluted stonework, directly above the very center of this photograph.  When we first got to our room a tuxedo-clad man was exiting, having just left a basket of fruit on a table by the window.  The radio was on, and I took it as a good sign that Schumann’s Konzertstück for For Horns was playing.  The furnishings were elegant, and the bed was comfortable.  The bathroom appeared to be made entirely of marble.

We didn’t stay in the room long.  In fact, we put our bags down and almost immediately took off for the Mall.  On our previous trip to Washington, the National Museum of American History was closed.  We were so disappointed to miss it then, and our return trip was prompted, in large part, by our desire to see the treasures that great museum holds.  We walked briskly down 14th Street and entered the building along Constitution Avenue.  Inside the lobby, long glass display cases hold assorted neat things: fancy jars for leeches, pretty kitty dresses, C-3POs, shirts for Magnum, P.I.s, and so on.  The Smithsonian exhibits are arranged by subject, with a “featured artifact” displayed prominently.  At the transportation exhibit, for example, a historic locomotive sits on rails.  In that area they had an old car from the Chicago L, a D.C. streetcar, old automobiles, a ship’s engine, and several locomotives, including one spectacular early-twentieth century engine with wheels as tall as me.  The first ladies’ gowns were extremely popular, and people pressed their faces against the glass to get a look.  Everyone who passed it stopped and stared at Mrs. Obama’s dress.  Another star attraction at the Smithsonian is Julia Child’s kitchen.  We spent so much time looking at every little thing that the museum closed and we had to leave.  We weren’t willing to rush it and miss things, so we decided we’d come back the next day.

We still had hours of daylight, and I thought we might check out the view from the tower at the Old Post Office, but, alas, it was closed.  So we took a leisurely walk back to the hotel to get ready for our night out.  We were looking sharp.

I had made us reservations at the Old Ebbitt Grill on 15th Street, just a half block from our hotel.  It’s an old place, and remarkably popular.  The bar is legendary.  It had a great atmosphere, and, to my great relief, Mrs. Hill was very pleased with the menu.  She loved her meal; I loved mine.  The service was impeccable.  The prices were not obscene.  Sure, it was more than we usually spend on a meal, but it was special.  They had a painting hanging on the wall there that I loved, and were it not larger than me, I’d have been tempted to snatch it off the wall and abscond with it.   All together, the dinner was an experience we won’t forget.

Though it was after ten o’clock, we weren’t ready to turn in just yet, so we took the short walk around the White House grounds.  The skies were cloudy, but the temperature was comfortable, and the walk back to our hotel was pleasant.  The lobby was quiet at that hour, and we took the time to explore more of the hotel before heading up to our room.  Once there, we found little chocolates on our bed, and the covers had been turned down.

Filed under: Dana Heritage Project, History, Musings, Special Occasions, Transportation, Travel on August 17th, 2010 | No Comments »

In 1719, a work frequently cited by literary historians as “perhaps the first true instance in English of…the realistic novel” was published.¹ The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner, was an instant success for its author Daniel Defoe, who sought to capitalize on popular interest in the dangerous and exotic Americas.  Robinson Crusoe, written in the manner of an autobiographical journal, is the story of an ideological Englishman, stranded by a shipwreck on a deserted shore, who relies on “God’s Providence” to protect him from starvation, the elements, and cannibalistic Indian natives.  Defoe’s is a work of fiction, but one that immediately brings to mind a genuine autobiographical tale of survival published two decades before.²

God’s Protecting Providence was published in Philadelphia in 1699.³ Like Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe twenty years later, Jonathan Dickinson’s Journal attracted immediate attention in the American colonies and in Europe.  Interest in the work has been sustained, and since its first publication there have been over “twenty-two reprintings in English, Dutch, and German.”⁴ While the Journal was initially popular for its message of unwavering faith in the midst of peril—and its Quaker publishers emphasized that aspect—it is notable today for its depiction of late seventeenth century Florida, and the sometimes hostile interaction between the peninsula’s indigenous inhabitants and European settlers.

On August 23, 1696, a ship called “Reformation” sailed from Port Royal, near present-day Kingston, Jamaica.  At that time, England, Spain and others were allied against France in the Nine Years’ War, with all parties fighting for their commercial interests in the Americas.⁵ This hostile atmosphere rendered solo voyages impossible, so the Reformation traveled within a convoy, protected by an armed frigate.  “On board [the Reformation] were eight mariners besides the master [Joseph Kirle]; a Quaker missionary, Robert Barrow; a young Quaker merchant, Jonathan Dickinson; his wife and little baby; a relative named Benjamin Allen; and Dickinson’s eleven slaves.”⁶ Dickinson had chartered the vessel to carry cargo to Philadelphia, where he would establish a business.  It is clear from Dickinson’s Journal, however, that the journey was beset by trouble from its very start.

Within days after the Reformation departed Port Royal, Dickinson noted that calm winds prevented the ship from moving under sail, that the ship had been carried off its intended course by currents, and that his party had “lost sight of the Hampshire frigate.”⁷ They had even lost their ship’s anchor.  On the eighteenth of September, while the Reformation stood stalled north of Havana, a violent storm brought a boom down on the captain, Robert Kirle, breaking his leg – a substantial injury in light of their circumstances.  On September 24, a month after Dickinson’s ship left Jamaica, it ran aground during a violent storm, on the east coast of Florida, near present-day Jupiter Inlet.  In his Journal, Dickinson remarks that he and his companions “rejoiced at this our preservation from the raging seas; but at the same instant feared the sad consequences that followed.”⁸

Dickinson was evidently displeased by the Florida landscape he first observed, describing it as harsh and bleak: “the wilderness country looked very dismal, having no trees, but only sand hills covered with shrubby palmetto, the stalks of which were prickly.”⁹ Having lived for some time in the Caribbean, he was used to the heat, but the flat, treeless coastal terrain bore little resemblance to the lush topography of Jamaica.  Moreover, Dickinson believed that his party had run aground far from civilization, and deep inside territory populated by “barbarous people such as were generally accounted man-eaters.”¹⁰

Dickinson’s party was soon discovered by “the Jobeses, or dwellers of the Rio Jobe, as the Spaniards called what later came to be known first as Jupiter and later as Grenville Inlet.”¹¹ The Indians promptly stripped Dickinson’s party of their clothing and supplies, and ordered them to their village.  Dickinson had refused to allow his companions to use their guns against the Indians they first encountered.  He probably recognized the futility of such an action, but in keeping with his Quaker faith, likely opposed violence on principle.  Believing that he, his wife, child, and other companions were in imminent physical danger, Dickinson nevertheless professes in his Journal to putting his fate before God.

Still, he wasn’t above deceiving the Indians to ensure his party’s safety.  It was clear to Dickinson that the Indians harbored a violent hatred for the English.  With nearly every Indian his party encountered on their trek, a similar introduction took place:

Their Casseekey (for so they call their king) with about thirty more came down to us in a furious manner, having a dismal aspect and foaming at the mouth. … They rushed in upon us and cried Nickaleer Nickaleer.  We understood them not at first: they repeating it over unto us often.  At last they cried Epainia or Spaniard, by which we understood them that at first they meant English.¹²

Sensing the genuine risk for physical violence should the Indians believe them to be English, Dickinson persuaded Solomon Cresson, one of his companions, to address the Indians in Spanish, since only he among them understood that language.  From more than a century of interaction with the Spanish, many of the Indian tribes had acquired a limited degree of Spanish proficiency.  Still, communication between Dickinson’s party and the Indians remained awkward, and often tense.  Dickinson notes that on October 27, in the Indian village of Jece, members of the party were nearly tricked into revealing their English identity, when they were offered berries.  Dickinson’s companions, sensing that they were being tested, called the fruit by its Spanish name “vivaes,” instead of “plums.”¹³

Hoe-Bay, the town in which the Jobeses lived, consisted of “little wigwams made of small poles stuck in the ground, which they bended one to another, making an arch, and covered…with thatch of small palmetto-leaves.”¹⁴ Dickinson’s party remained at Hoe-Bay for three days, and his description of the Indians’ customs borders on condemnation.  He found their diet revolting, their manners greedy, and their singing and dancing “hideous” and “terrible,” and he was startled to hear exclaim, “English Son of a Bitch.”¹⁵¹⁶ But, both at Hoe-Bay and in other Indian villages along their route to St. Augustine, Dickinson found the Indian women to be compassionate, particularly when they nursed his child while his wife could not.  Still, the party was eager to leave Hoe-Bay.

Throughout his Journal, it appears that Dickinson and his companions were afraid to venture north without an escort.  Certainly, they needed canoes to transport the infirm of the party.  Besides Robert Kirle’s broken leg, Dickinson’s wife was weak.  Their journey was terribly dangerous.  Indeed, in mid-November, along the Atlantic coast (between present day Ormond Beach and the Matanzas Inlet), five of the party died, including Dickinson’s kinsman, Benjamin Allen.¹⁷ But soon after, the party reached the southern edge of Spanish Florida, and the sentinel posts south of St. Augustine.

Spain had had a settlement at St. Augustine since 1565, and when Dickinson’s party reached the town, they could see the newly-completed Castillo de San Marcos, finished in 1695.¹⁸ It was the height of the First Spanish Period, and Dickinson observed the power the Spanish appeared to wield in Florida.  When his party had first encountered members of a Spanish outfit sent to aid them at Jece, he observed how “the Indians were like a people amazed an overcome with fear: we perceived the noise of a gun was terrible unto them.”¹⁹ Spain had earned its fearsome reputation during the brutal adelantado period.

By early December 1695, more than two months after the Resolution had run aground, Jonathan Dickinson and the remaining members of his party slipped out of Florida en route to the Carolinas, and thenceforth to Philadelphia.  They had trekked two hundred thirty miles through a dangerous and unforgiving territory, and suffered tremendous loss.  The publication of Dickinson’s Journal in 1699 brought the incidents relayed therein vividly to life.  At a time when “private entrepreneurs and public statesmen” were advertising Florida as a land of riches, few had read “complete accounts of people who actually visited the peninsula.”²⁰ The Journal, then, was a revelation to those who read it.

In the coming decades, many more would read accounts similar to Jonathan Dickinson’s.  In 1766, a Frenchman named Pierre Viaud, sailing from Haiti to New Orleans, was shipwrecked on the Florida coast, and his account, published in 1768—with a French title that, while less overtly religious, was certainly as long as God’s Protecting Providence—was also a sensation.²¹²² The public’s appetite for adventure stories was unquenchable, and whether fiction, like Robinson Crusoe, or fact, like Dickinson’s Journal, enjoyed tremendous success – even when the Spanish and English endeavors in Florida failed.

Jonathan Dickinson was a success himself.  He reached Philadelphia, established a profitable business, and made repeat voyages to and from Jamaica, with Robert Kirle as captain.²³ Until his death in 1722, he remained convinced that he and his party had been delivered through God’s Protecting Providence. Read more »

Filed under: History on July 19th, 2010 | No Comments »

MONTICELLO – That Thomas Jefferson was a genius is self-evident at his home.  But what do we make of the man who knew slavery was wrong, but owned scores of human beings who toiled here and at his other farms?  Slave labor built this magnificent home–a UNESCO World Heritage site–situated in a stunningly beautiful part of Virginia, and yet we still revere Jefferson.  There are many good reasons for this, and I will discuss them here soon.

Filed under: History, Travel on May 31st, 2010 | 1 Comment »