On this day after 10 years, a beloved teacher of mine from High School died

On this day 10 years ago, a man who influenced me into the world of politics, passed away after playing a charitable basketball game for the heart! Here is to you, Mister Kevin Sheehy, thanks for the great memories!


Beloved Tottenville High School teacher Kevin Sheehy, 57, collapses during a faculty-student basketball game for the Heart Association.

Tottenville High School teacher and community activist Kevin L. Sheehy, 57, collapsed and died of a heart attack yesterday afternoon in the school gymnasium while playing a benefit basketball game for the American Heart Association.

Stunned students and colleagues watched from the stands as school officials tried to revive Sheehy, who had crumpled to the floor just before he was to come out of the student-faculty game in the third period.

The students were ushered out of the gym when medics arrived. Continued resuscitation efforts failed to revive him.

A native Staten Islander and Tottenville graduate who spent more than 30 years in front of the blackboard of his alma mater, Sheehy was pronounced dead at 2:26 p.m. in Staten Island University Hospital, Prince's Bay.

Recognized as a man who devoted unimaginable hours of time and energy to his students and his community, Sheehy, the recipient of the 2000 Patrick Daly Memorial Award, was always ready to respond above and beyond to a worthy cause.

Yesterday, the cause was Hoops for Hearts Day at Tottenville, the day the school's faculty challenges a team of students in a basketball game with all proceeds benefiting the American Heart Association. He was to continue his Valentine's celebration last night by surprising his wife, Elaine, with dinner at Snug Harbor Cultural Center, where cabaret legend Bobby Short was giving a benefit concert.

Instead, the Island was left mourning the man who gave his heart to everything he did.

With a smile on his face yesterday afternoon, Sheehy, the faculty team coach, shuffled around the court, enjoying the camaraderie more than the competition. He suddenly crouched over during the third period and fell to the gym floor.

The cheering stopped. Stunned and silent, the audience watched as school officials rushed to the court to administer CPR.

When medics arrived, students were ushered out of the school, and technicians repeatedly tried to revive Sheehy. Scared and concerned, students continuously called the school for updates.

Jim Munson, coach of the Tottenville Pirates football team, described the atmosphere in the gym as somber.

"It happened in front of a gymnasium full of kids," he said. "The kids were unbelievable. They just sat there pulling for him to come through. He was Tottenville High School." Classes were scheduled to resume today and grief counselors were expected to be on hand for students and faculty.

Sheehy's goal was to get one foul shot in during the game, according to John Tuminaro, Tottenville's principal. While Tuminaro couldn't recall if Sheehy scored during the game, it is clear he won the hearts of the Tottenville and Staten Island community.

Sheehy had been perfecting his jump shot in the days leading up to the game on the playground of PS 4 in Arden Heights while waiting for his wife to finish her day of teaching.

Munson, a Tottenville graduate, said Sheehy was prepping to take his last foul shot and was then planning to sit out the rest of the game when he collapsed.

"We immediately started to attend to him," Munson said. "It was a tough day for all of us. You can't replace guys like Kevin Sheehy. He was a dear man, a very good man."

Student Prathima Nandivada was holding Sheehy's keys and a gold ring when he collapsed on the gym floor.

"He gave me his ring and his keys to hold while he played because he said he didn't want to hurt his hand," said the 16-year-old junior, who was selling tickets at the door. "I have a similar ring on my finger and of course mine is much smaller than his. When it happened, I put his over my ring and I just held it there. They tried to take it twice, but I wouldn't let go of it."

Eventually, Prathima turned over the keys and the ring to an assistant principal, but said Sheehy will always hold a special place in her heart.

"What can I say about Mr. Sheehy," said the Young Ambassador and treasurer of the junior class. "He is by far the most amazing man I have ever met in my entire life. Up until the minute he left us, he was always thinking about tomorrow. It was always more, more, more. Nothing he did was ever enough. He always had new hopes, new plans, it was always about the future and never about himself."

Community activist Sheehy was a Renaissance man who balanced his career with politics and community activism. He earned a bachelor of science degree in biology from Wagner College, where he also received a master of science degree in science education, a master's degree in business administration and an honorary doctorate of science degree. His love for Wagner, where he was a longtime member of the board of trustees, was much like his love for Tottenville.

"We had a board of trustees meeting and I was with him yesterday all day and he looked quite chipper," said Dr. Norman Smith, the president of Wagner College who considered Sheehy a close friend. "He had been on our board 14 years, one of the longest serving members. He was an icon and a tremendous cheerleader on the Wagner campus."

Smith said it was Sheehy's spirit he will remember the most.

"He had such a positive attitude, was a great guy in every way," he said. "I don't know how he did it all, between the high school and Wagner College and all the other things he was doing in the community. He was a role model for generations of students who graduated Wagner College."

In 1959, while still a student at Wagner, Sheehy began working at Dean Witter Co. on Wall Street. By 1961, he was working 12- to 14-hour days and co-founded the company's mutual funds sales division. Still, his love of Tottenville nagged at him and he was active in the school's alumni association.

In 1967, he gave up Wall Street and began teaching at New Dorp High School. Three years later, he returned to Luten Avenue and never looked back.

In December, Sheehy was award the Patrick Daly Memorial Award by Borough President Guy V. Molinari. The award was established eight years ago following the 1992 murder of New Dorp resident Patrick Daly, who was principal of PS 15 in Brooklyn.

"Kevin was always there at so many different things at the same time," Molinari said. "He was my Patrick Daly winner and I don't know of anybody who was recognized that was more humble and grateful. I look back and I am so grateful that I was able to get him that award. This is an enormous loss."

In August, Sheehy accepted the Harry Van Arsdale Jr. Community Services Award, the New York State AFL-CIO's highest honor, which is bestowed on a union leader who addresses union and community issues through service and volunteerism. He was Tottenville's chapter leader to the UFT and a national delegate to the American Federation of Teachers.

Sheehy was also a delegate to the New York State United Federation of Teachers and a member of the citywide United Federation of Teachers Finance Committee. He was named to "Who's Who Among America's Teachers" and was often voted Tottenville's teacher of the year.

He served as chairman of the school's Mentor Committee and headed the school's Young Ambassadors program, which pairs students with elected officials and takes trips to City Hall, Albany and Washington.

Sheehy played a key role last March in Project Hospitality's Dine Out Against Hunger event by assembling 25 Tottenville High School students to act as volunteer "ambassadors" at participating Island restaurants.

He instilled a sense of community spirit and obligation in many students by inviting community leaders to the school to celebrate Women in History Month and by organizing a walk around the school grounds to acknowledge Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Sheehy demonstrated a compassion for students with special needs and challenges. Several years ago, he helped Jack Ameduri, a student at the Hungerford School, receive a diploma from Tottenville High School. He mentored the young man and saw that he was duly acknowledged for his participation in a school beautification program.

With his students, he held fund-raisers each year for the Staten Island Children's Campaign.

"He was a lovely man," said Mike Fortunato, campaign president. "He got his children involved with us and gave us a generous donation every year. This is a huge loss for all of Staten Island."

Sheehy served as president of the Greenbelt Conservancy, and was the former president of the Friends of Snug Harbor and the South Shore Junior Chamber of Commerce. He was a member of Molinari's Greenbelt advisory committee and a member of the board of trustees and a founding member of the Noble Maritime Collection. He owned a large set of original John Noble lithographs.

"He was very devoted to John Noble," said Erin Urban, director of the Noble Museum. "He was devoted to the museum. He was a warm, friendly person who loved children especially."

In many ways, Sheehy was Staten Island's unofficial mayor, meeting and greeting people wherever he went with a warm smile and a strong handshake or gentle hug. Though he dabbled in politics, he never won an elected post.

Sheehy was rare gem, showing up at then-Republican Rep. Guy Molinari's victory party in 1984 with a bottle of champagne to toast his opponent in the congressional race.

"He was a very good campaigner, a tough opponent," Molinari recalled. "He blew me away on election night, when who walks in but my opponent. It was unheard of. He was a real person and that's the measure of the man. That's what this guy was all about. He exuded class and dignity. He toasted me in front of everybody. Very few people in our society have the class and dignity to do something like this."

Coining him "Mr. Tottenville" and a "true purple," the school color, faculty, both past and present!


February 15, 2000

Kevin Sheehy, 57, collapses during a faculty-student basketball game for the Heart Association.


Tottenville High School teacher and community activist Kevin L. Sheehy, 57, collapsed and died of a heart attack yesterday afternoon in the school gymnasium while playing a benefit basketball game for the American Heart Association.

Stunned students and colleagues watched from the stands as school officials tried to revive Sheehy, who had crumpled to the floor just before he was to come out of the student-faculty game in the third period.

The students were ushered out of the gym when medics arrived. Continued resuscitation efforts failed to revive him.

A native Staten Islander and Tottenville graduate who spent more than 30 years in front of the blackboard of his alma mater, Sheehy was pronounced dead at 2:26 p.m. in Staten Island University Hospital, Prince's Bay.

Recognized as a man who devoted unimaginable hours of time and energy to his students and his community, Sheehy, the recipient of the 2000 Patrick Daly Memorial Award, was always ready to respond above and beyond to a worthy cause.

Yesterday, the cause was Hoops for Hearts Day at Tottenville, the day the school's faculty challenges a team of students in a basketball game with all proceeds benefiting the American Heart Association. He was to continue his Valentine's celebration last night by surprising his wife, Elaine, with dinner at Snug Harbor Cultural Center, where cabaret legend Bobby Short was giving a benefit concert.

Instead, the Island was left mourning the man who gave his heart to everything he did.

With a smile on his face yesterday afternoon, Sheehy, the faculty team coach, shuffled around the court, enjoying the camaraderie more than the competition. He suddenly crouched over during the third period and fell to the gym floor.

The cheering stopped. Stunned and silent, the audience watched as school officials rushed to the court to administer CPR.

When medics arrived, students were ushered out of the school, and technicians repeatedly tried to revive Sheehy. Scared and concerned, students continuously called the school for updates.

Jim Munson, coach of the Tottenville Pirates football team, described the atmosphere in the gym as somber.

"It happened in front of a gymnasium full of kids," he said. "The kids were unbelievable. They just sat there pulling for him to come through. He was Tottenville High School." Classes were scheduled to resume today and grief counselors were expected to be on hand for students and faculty.

Sheehy's goal was to get one foul shot in during the game, according to John Tuminaro, Tottenville's principal. While Tuminaro couldn't recall if Sheehy scored during the game, it is clear he won the hearts of the Tottenville and Staten Island community.

Sheehy had been perfecting his jump shot in the days leading up to the game on the playground of PS 4 in Arden Heights while waiting for his wife to finish her day of teaching.

Munson, a Tottenville graduate, said Sheehy was prepping to take his last foul shot and was then planning to sit out the rest of the game when he collapsed.

"We immediately started to attend to him," Munson said. "It was a tough day for all of us. You can't replace guys like Kevin Sheehy. He was a dear man, a very good man."

Student Prathima Nandivada was holding Sheehy's keys and a gold ring when he collapsed on the gym floor.

"He gave me his ring and his keys to hold while he played because he said he didn't want to hurt his hand," said the 16-year-old junior, who was selling tickets at the door. "I have a similar ring on my finger and of course mine is much smaller than his. When it happened, I put his over my ring and I just held it there. They tried to take it twice, but I wouldn't let go of it."

Eventually, Prathima turned over the keys and the ring to an assistant principal, but said Sheehy will always hold a special place in her heart.

"What can I say about Mr. Sheehy," said the Young Ambassador and treasurer of the junior class. "He is by far the most amazing man I have ever met in my entire life. Up until the minute he left us, he was always thinking about tomorrow. It was always more, more, more. Nothing he did was ever enough. He always had new hopes, new plans, it was always about the future and never about himself."

Community activist Sheehy was a Renaissance man who balanced his career with politics and community activism. He earned a bachelor of science degree in biology from Wagner College, where he also received a master of science degree in science education, a master's degree in business administration and an honorary doctorate of science degree. His love for Wagner, where he was a longtime member of the board of trustees, was much like his love for Tottenville.

"We had a board of trustees meeting and I was with him yesterday all day and he looked quite chipper," said Dr. Norman Smith, the president of Wagner College who considered Sheehy a close friend. "He had been on our board 14 years, one of the longest serving members. He was an icon and a tremendous cheerleader on the Wagner campus."

Smith said it was Sheehy's spirit he will remember the most.

"He had such a positive attitude, was a great guy in every way," he said. "I don't know how he did it all, between the high school and Wagner College and all the other things he was doing in the community. He was a role model for generations of students who graduated Wagner College."

In 1959, while still a student at Wagner, Sheehy began working at Dean Witter Co. on Wall Street. By 1961, he was working 12- to 14-hour days and co-founded the company's mutual funds sales division. Still, his love of Tottenville nagged at him and he was active in the school's alumni association.

In 1967, he gave up Wall Street and began teaching at New Dorp High School. Three years later, he returned to Luten Avenue and never looked back.

In December, Sheehy was award the Patrick Daly Memorial Award by Borough President Guy V. Molinari. The award was established eight years ago following the 1992 murder of New Dorp resident Patrick Daly, who was principal of PS 15 in Brooklyn.

"Kevin was always there at so many different things at the same time," Molinari said. "He was my Patrick Daly winner and I don't know of anybody who was recognized that was more humble and grateful. I look back and I am so grateful that I was able to get him that award. This is an enormous loss."

In August, Sheehy accepted the Harry Van Arsdale Jr. Community Services Award, the New York State AFL-CIO's highest honor, which is bestowed on a union leader who addresses union and community issues through service and volunteerism. He was Tottenville's chapter leader to the UFT and a national delegate to the American Federation of Teachers.

Sheehy was also a delegate to the New York State United Federation of Teachers and a member of the citywide United Federation of Teachers Finance Committee. He was named to "Who's Who Among America's Teachers" and was often voted Tottenville's teacher of the year.

He served as chairman of the school's Mentor Committee and headed the school's Young Ambassadors program, which pairs students with elected officials and takes trips to City Hall, Albany and Washington.

Sheehy played a key role last March in Project Hospitality's Dine Out Against Hunger event by assembling 25 Tottenville High School students to act as volunteer "ambassadors" at participating Island restaurants.

He instilled a sense of community spirit and obligation in many students by inviting community leaders to the school to celebrate Women in History Month and by organizing a walk around the school grounds to acknowledge Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Sheehy demonstrated a compassion for students with special needs and challenges. Several years ago, he helped Jack Ameduri, a student at the Hungerford School, receive a diploma from Tottenville High School. He mentored the young man and saw that he was duly acknowledged for his participation in a school beautification program.

With his students, he held fund-raisers each year for the Staten Island Children's Campaign.

"He was a lovely man," said Mike Fortunato, campaign president. "He got his children involved with us and gave us a generous donation every year. This is a huge loss for all of Staten Island."

Sheehy served as president of the Greenbelt Conservancy, and was the former president of the Friends of Snug Harbor and the South Shore Junior Chamber of Commerce. He was a member of Molinari's Greenbelt advisory committee and a member of the board of trustees and a founding member of the Noble Maritime Collection. He owned a large set of original John Noble lithographs.

"He was very devoted to John Noble," said Erin Urban, director of the Noble Museum. "He was devoted to the museum. He was a warm, friendly person who loved children especially."

In many ways, Sheehy was Staten Island's unofficial mayor, meeting and greeting people wherever he went with a warm smile and a strong handshake or gentle hug. Though he dabbled in politics, he never won an elected post.

Sheehy was rare gem, showing up at then-Republican Rep. Guy Molinari's victory party in 1984 with a bottle of champagne to toast his opponent in the congressional race.

"He was a very good campaigner, a tough opponent," Molinari recalled. "He blew me away on election night, when who walks in but my opponent. It was unheard of. He was a real person and that's the measure of the man. That's what this guy was all about. He exuded class and dignity. He toasted me in front of everybody. Very few people in our society have the class and dignity to do something like this."

Coining him "Mr. Tottenville" and a "true purple," the school color, faculty, both past and present, said no one will ever love the school more than Mr. Sheehy.

"He lived and breathed this building," said Steven Roseman, assistant principal.

The school will be forever scarred by his death, said Linda Barbato, a former Parent Teacher Association president who worked closely with Sheehy from 1997 to 1999. "There was not enough he could do for the kids, the parents, the teachers. He was the quintessential example of dedication."

His death was totally unexpected, noted Michael Marotta, principal from 1992 to 1999. An unmatched model for students, he was also a strong advocate for teachers, Marotta said.

Eleanor O'Connor, principal of Staten Island Technical High School, arrived at Tottenville yesterday shortly after she received word of Sheehy's death. "He was the heart of so many programs on Staten Island. He was a tremendous human being, vibrant and charming."

"The school is like a family and this death is like losing a family member," she said.

Sheehy has left behind dozens of students who will remember him as an inspiration and a guiding light.

"He was like a grandfather to me," said Jessica Belnavis, a 17-year-old junior who was one of Sheehy's Young Ambassadors.

"I am just in shock he is no longer living," said Jessica, who ran for freshman class president at Sheehy's prodding. Jessica won her first campaign and went on to become president of the sophomore and junior class. "He was such a big influence on my life. School will be so much more different without him, without popping my head into his office and saying 'Hi, Mr. Sheehy.' It's going to be really hard."

Councilman Jerome X. O'Donovan (D-North Shore), a longtime friend, recalled the days when Mr. Sheehy tended bar at Demyan's Hofbrau, a popular restaurant and tavern in Stapleton owned by the late Jack Demyan, the restaurateur, artist and prankster.

"He worked in the old Hofbrau in our college days," O'Donovan said. "When I came home from college, I was always there. He was just a wonderful person, a man of great Irish wit, an intelligent man. I know in my heart all of the Tottenville students and alumni will miss him."

Republican Rep. Vito Fossella called Sheehy "one of a kind."

"I was fortunate to have spent a good deal of time working with Kevin on many projects," Fossella said. "For Kevin, teaching was not just his profession, but a passion that seemed to grow stronger with the years. The mark of a truly special teacher is one who leaves an impression on his students that lasts a lifetime. Kevin's legacy will be the thousands of young men and women who had the good fortune to call him their teacher."

Councilman James Oddo (R-Mid-Island) said he was "absolutely floored" when he was told of Sheehy's death.

"He was simply one of the nicest human beings I have ever met in my life, in or out of government," he said. "I went to the Daly Awards and it was one of those nights I didn't have any other meetings and I could have taken the night off, but I thought it's about Kevin, let me go. I went and he was such an inspiration in his speech that I walked out of there with a bounce in my step. I wrote him a handwritten note the next day telling him that."

Oddo said he hopes the tragedy will propel his effort to have automatic external defibrillators (AEDs) portable devices used to shock a heart back into rhythm in city buildings, mass transportation hubs, fitness centers and other public places.

"Maybe in his own unique way, now he is going to push the issue to the forefront," he said. "Maybe Kevin Sheehy's last contribution to the Staten Island community will be the highlighting of the need to have these things in schools and public buildings."

"One word to sum up Kevin Sheehy is class, all-around class" said Councilman Stephen Fiala (R-South Shore), who was to attend a Black History Month event with Mr. Sheehy at Tottenville tomorrow. "I know they say we are all expendable, but not everyone is and Tottenville just lost a very, very important figure in its community."

Fiala had recently agreed to fund $250,000 this year and next year to bring a regulation pool to the school if Sheehy's Young Ambassadors could match the funds.

"I just had a meeting with Kevin and the Young Ambassadors and they jokingly said we should name it the Sheehy Center, so this is kind of scary," Fiala said. "Kevin was a great lobbyist for Tottenville. I am really shocked and saddened."

The school is no stranger to tragedy, as many are still mourning the loss of Andrea Melendez, a recent graduate who fell eight stories to her death down the stairwell of her dormitory at Columbia University in December. She was one of Sheehy's favorites.

As with Ms. Melendez's death, students and faculty will grieve as a school and support one another, Tuminaro noted. "There will be a void, but we'll pull together," he said.

"I never saw anyone as interested and caring as he was in making sure his students did well and were just a part of the community," said Eleanor Conforti, District 31 community school board chairwoman. "I know Tottenville High School will miss him terribly. You know, it is fitting how he died. He died exactly the way he lived with his students."

In addition to his wife, Elaine, Sheehy is survived by one son, Kevin. The family lives in Smoke Rise, N.J.

120 years ago today, General William Tecumseh Sherman died

General, thank you serving this nation in the time of need during the Civil War, you were truly a brillant mind in defeating the enemy, remembering you after 120 years ago today, may you rest in peace!


William Tecumseh Sherman (February 8, 1820 – February 14, 1891) was an American soldier, businessman, educator and author. He served as a General in the Union Army during the American Civil War (1861–65), for which he received recognition for his outstanding command of military strategy as well as criticism for the harshness of the "scorched earth" policies that he implemented in conducting total war against the Confederate States. Military historian B. H. Liddell Hart famously declared that Sherman was "the first modern general."

Sherman served under General Ulysses S. Grant in 1862 and 1863 during the campaigns that led to the fall of the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg on the Mississippi River and culminated with the routing of the Confederate armies in the state of Tennessee.

In 1864, Sherman succeeded Grant as the Union commander in the western theater of the war. He proceeded to lead his troops to the capture of the city of Atlanta, a military success that contributed to the re-election of President Abraham Lincoln. Sherman's subsequent march through Georgia and the Carolinas further undermined the Confederacy's ability to continue fighting. He accepted the surrender of all the Confederate armies in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida in April 1865.

When Grant assumed the U.S. presidency in 1869, Sherman succeeded him as Commanding General of the Army (1869–83). As such, he was responsible for the U.S. Army conduct in the Indian Wars over the next 15 years, in the western United States. He steadfastly refused to be drawn into politics and in 1875 published his Memoirs, one of the best-known firsthand accounts of the Civil War.

Strategies:

General Sherman's record as a tactician was mixed, and his military legacy rests primarily on his command of logistics and on his brilliance as a strategist. The influential 20th century British military historian and theorist B. H. Liddell Hart ranked Sherman as one of the most important strategists in the annals of war, along with Scipio Africanus, Belisarius, Napoleon Bonaparte, T. E. Lawrence, and Erwin Rommel.

Liddell Hart credited Sherman with mastery of maneuver warfare (also known as the "indirect approach"), as demonstrated by his series of turning movements against Johnston during the Atlanta Campaign. Liddell Hart also stated that study of Sherman's campaigns had contributed significantly to his own "theory of strategy and tactics in mechanized warfare", which had in turn influenced Heinz Guderian's doctrine of Blitzkrieg and Rommel's use of tanks during the Second World War.

Another WWII-era student of Liddell Hart's writings about Sherman was George S. Patton, who "'spent a long vacation studying Sherman's campaigns on the ground in Georgia and the Carolinas, with the aid of [LH's] book'" and later "'carried out his [bold] plans, in super-Sherman style'".

Sherman's greatest contribution to the war, the strategy of total warfare—endorsed by General Grant and President Lincoln—has been the subject of much controversy. Sherman himself downplayed his role in conducting total war, often saying that he was simply carrying out orders as best he could in order to fulfill his part of Grant's master plan for ending the war.


Like Grant, Sherman was convinced that the Confederacy's strategic, economic, and psychological ability to wage further war needed to be definitively crushed if the fighting were to end. Therefore, he believed that the North had to conduct its campaign as a war of conquest and employ scorched earth tactics to break the backbone of the rebellion, which he called "hard war".

Sherman's advance through Georgia and South Carolina was characterized by widespread destruction of civilian supplies and infrastructure. Although looting was officially forbidden, historians disagree on how well this regulation was enforced. The speed and efficiency of the destruction by Sherman's army was remarkable. The practice of bending rails around trees, leaving behind what came to be known as Sherman's neckties, made repairs difficult. Accusations that civilians were targeted and war crimes were committed on the march have made Sherman a controversial figure to this day, particularly in the South.


The damage done by Sherman was almost entirely limited to the destruction of property. Though exact figures are not available, the loss of civilian life appears to have been very small.

Consuming supplies, wrecking infrastructure, and undermining morale were Sherman's stated goals, and several of his Southern contemporaries noted this and commented on it. For instance, Alabama-born Major Henry Hitchcock, who served in Sherman's staff, declared that "it is a terrible thing to consume and destroy the sustenance of thousands of people", but if the scorched earth strategy served "to paralyze their husbands and fathers who are fighting ... it is mercy in the end."

The severity of the destructive acts by Union troops was significantly greater in South Carolina than in Georgia or North Carolina. This appears to have been a consequence of the animosity among both Union soldiers and officers to the state that they regarded as the "cockpit of secession". One of the most serious accusations against Sherman was that he allowed his troops to burn the city of Columbia.

In 1867, Gen. O.O. Howard, commander of Sherman's 15th Corps, reportedly said, "It is useless to deny that our troops burnt Columbia, for I saw them in the act." However, Sherman himself stated that "[i]f I had made up my mind to burn Columbia I would have burnt it with no more feeling than I would a common prairie dog village; but I did not do it ..."

Sherman's official report on the burning placed the blame on Confederate Lt. Gen. Wade Hampton III, who Sherman said had ordered the burning of cotton in the streets. In his memoirs, Sherman said, "In my official report of this conflagration I distinctly charged it to General Wade Hampton, and confess I did so pointedly to shake the faith of his people in him, for he was in my opinion a braggart and professed to be the special champion of South Carolina." Historian James M. McPherson has concluded that:

The fullest and most dispassionate study of this controversy blames all parties in varying proportions—including the Confederate authorities for the disorder that characterized the evacuation of Columbia, leaving thousands of cotton bales on the streets (some of them burning) and huge quantities of liquor undestroyed ... Sherman did not deliberately burn Columbia; a majority of Union soldiers, including the general himself, worked through the night to put out the fires.

In this general connection, it is also noteworthy that Sherman and his subordinates took steps to protect Raleigh, North Carolina, from acts of revenge after the assassination of President Lincoln.


Autobiography and memoirs:

Sheet music for "Sherman's March to the Sea"Around 1868, Sherman wrote (or at least began) a "private" recollection for his children about his life before the Civil War–identified now as his unpublished "Autobiography, 1828-1861". This manuscript is held by the Ohio Historical Society. Much of the material in it would eventually be incorporated in revised form in his memoirs.

In 1875, ten years after the end of the Civil War, Sherman became one of the first Civil War generals to publish a memoir.[118] His Memoirs of General William T. Sherman. By Himself, published by D. Appleton & Co., in two volumes, began with the year 1846 (when the Mexican War began) and ended with a chapter about the “military lessons of the [civil] war” (1875 edition: Volume I; Volume II ).

The memoirs were controversial, and sparked complaints from many quarters. Grant (serving as President when Sherman’s memoirs first appeared) later remarked that others had told him that Sherman treated Grant unfairly but "when I finished the book, I found I approved every word; that ... it was a true book, an honorable book, creditable to Sherman, just to his companions — to myself particularly so — just such a book as I expected Sherman would write."

In 1886, after the publication of Grant’s memoirs, Sherman produced a "second edition, revised and corrected" of his memoirs with Appleton. The new edition added a second preface, a chapter about his life up to 1846, a chapter concerning the post-war period (ending with his 1884 retirement from the army), several appendices, portraits, improved maps, and an index (1886 edition: Volume I, Volume II).

For the most part, Sherman refused to revise his original text on the ground that "I disclaim the character of historian, but assume to be a witness on the stand before the great tribunal of history" and "any witness who may disagree with me should publish his own version of [the] facts in the truthful narration of which he is interested." However, Sherman did add the appendices, in which he published the views of some others.


Sherman in his later years, in civilian evening clothesSubsequently, Sherman shifted to the publishing house of Charles L. Webster & Co., the publisher of Grant’s memoirs. The new publishing house brought out a "third edition, revised and corrected" in 1890. This difficult-to-find edition was substantively identical to the second (except for the probable omission of Sherman's short 1875 and 1886 prefaces).

After Sherman died in 1891, there were dueling new editions of his memoirs. His first publisher, Appleton, reissued the original (1875) edition with two new chapters about Sherman’s later years added by the journalist W. Fletcher Johnson (1891 Johnson edition: Volume I, Volume II).

Meanwhile, Charles L. Webster & Co. issued a "fourth edition, revised, corrected, and complete" with the text of Sherman’s second edition, a new chapter prepared under the auspices of the Sherman family bringing the general’s life from his retirement to his death and funeral, and an appreciation by politician James G. Blaine (who was related to Sherman's wife). Unfortunately, this edition omits Sherman’s prefaces to the 1875 and 1886 editions (1891 Blaine edition: Volume I, Volume II).

In 1904 and 1913, Sherman’s youngest son (Philemon Tecumseh Sherman) republished the memoirs, ironically with Appleton (not Charles L. Webster & Co.). This was designated as a "second edition, revised and corrected". This edition contains Sherman’s two prefaces, his 1886 text, and the materials added in the 1891 Blaine edition. Thus, this virtually invisible edition of Sherman's memoirs is actually the most comprehensive version.

There are many modern editions of Sherman’s memoirs. The edition most useful for research purposes is the 1990 Library of America version, edited by Charles Royster. It contains the entire text of Sherman’s 1886 edition, together with annotations, a note on the text, and a detailed chronology of Sherman’s life. Missing from this edition is the useful biographical material contained in the 1891 Johnson and Blaine editions.

Published correspondence:

Many of Sherman's official war-time letters (and other items) appear in the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion. Some of these letters are rather personal in nature, rather than relating directly to operational activities of the army. There also are at least five published collections of Sherman correspondence:

Sherman's Civil War: Selected Correspondence of William T. Sherman, 1860–1865, edited by Brooks D. Simpson and Jean V. Berlin (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1999) – a large collection of war-time letters (November 1860 to May 1865).


Sherman at War, edited by Joseph H. Ewing (Dayton, OH: Morningside, 1992) – approximately thirty war time letters to Sherman's father-in-law, Thomas Ewing, and one of his brothers-in-law, Philemon B. Ewing.
Home Letters of General Sherman, edited by M.A. DeWolfe Howe (New York: Charles Scribner's Son, 1909) – edited letters to his wife, Ellen Ewing Sherman, from 1837 to 1888.


The Sherman Letters: Correspondence Between General Sherman and Senator Sherman from 1837 to 1891, edited by Rachel Sherman Thorndike (New York: Charles Scribner's Son, 1894) – edited letters to his brother, Senator John Sherman, from 1837 to 1891.
General W.T. Sherman as College President, edited by Walter L. Fleming (Cleveland: The Arthur H. Clark Co., 1912) – edited letters and other documents from Sherman's 1859–1861 service as superintendent of the Louisiana Seminary of Learning and Military Academy.

Death and posterity:

Sherman died in New York City on 14 February 1891.

On 19 February, there was a funeral service held at his home, followed by a military procession. Sherman's body was then transported to St. Louis, where another service was conducted on 21 February 1891 at a local Catholic church. His son, Thomas Ewing Sherman, a Jesuit priest, presided over his father's funeral mass.

General Joseph E. Johnston, the Confederate officer who had commanded the resistance to Sherman's troops in Georgia and the Carolinas, served as a pallbearer in New York City. It was a bitterly cold day and a friend of Johnston, fearing that the general might become ill, asked him to put on his hat.

Johnston famously replied: "If I were in [Sherman's] place, and he were standing in mine, he would not put on his hat." Johnston did catch a serious cold and died one month later of pneumonia.

Sherman is buried in Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis. Major memorials to Sherman include the gilded bronze equestrian statue by Augustus Saint-Gaudens at the main entrance to Central Park in New York City and the major monument by Carl Rohl-Smith near President's Park in Washington, D.C. Other posthumous tributes include the naming of the World War II M4 Sherman tank and the "General Sherman" Giant Sequoia tree, the most massive documented single-trunk tree in the world.

WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN was born at Lancaster, Ohio, on 8 February 1820; upon his father's death, was adopted into the family of Thomas Ewing, 1829; was educated in a local academy, then attended the United States Military Academy, 1836-1840; was commissioned a second lieutenant, July 1840, and posted to the 3d Cavalry in Florida; was promoted to first lieutenant, November 1841, and served at various southern stations; served in California during the Mexican War as adjutant and aide to Generals Stephen W. Kearny, Persifor F. Smith, and Richard B. Mason, 1847-1850; married Ellen Ewing, 1850; was appointed captain, September 1850, and assigned to commissary duty in St. Louis and New Orleans, 1850-1853; resigned his commission, September 1853; engaged unsuccessfully in banking and law, 1853-1859, then successfully as superintendent of a military college at Alexandria, Louisiana, 1859-1861; was reappointed in the Regular Army as colonel, 13th Infantry, May 1861; was appointed brigadier general of volunteers, May 1861, and commanded a brigade at Bull Run in July; served in Missouri and Kentucky and commanded the Department of the Cumberland and the District of Paducah, 1861-1862; was appointed major general of volunteers, May 1862; commanded a division in the Tennessee-Mississippi campaigns and was wounded at Shiloh, April 1862; commanded the District of Memphis and the Vicksburg expedition 1862; commanded the XV Corps in the Vicksburg operations to its surrender and was appointed brigadier general in the Regular Army, July 1863; commanded the Army of the Tennessee in the Chattanooga-Knoxville operations, 1863-1864; commanded the Division of the Mississippi, 1864-1865, leading the Union forces in the invasion of Georgia; was promoted to major general, August 1864; commanded the Armies of the Ohio, Tennessee, and Georgia in the final operations in the South, receiving the surrender of Confederate forces there, April 1865; was promoted to lieutenant general while in command of the Division of the Mississippi, July 1866; was on a special mission to Mexico, November-December 1866; commanded the Division of the Missouri, 1866-1869; was promoted to general, March 1869; was commanding general of the United States Army, 8 March 1869-1 November 1883; was acting secretary of war, 6 September-25 October 1869; sought to establish senior officer control over bureau heads, pressed for Army control over Indian affairs, urged consolidation of troops at strategic locations, and established a school for infantry and cavalry; retired from active service, February 1884; died in New York City on 14 February 1891.


The Artist

Daniel Huntington (1816-1906) painted the portraits of presidents and generals, writers and artists, Astors and Vanderbilts during seventy productive years as a working artist. About a thousand of his twelve-hundred known works are portraits; of these, fifteen are of secretaries of war and two of secretaries ad interim who also were incumbent commanding generals (Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman). Army records indicate that Huntington painted Sherman and Grant from life at a fee of $300 per portrait. His portrait of General William T. Sherman came into Army holdings in 1875, and is reproduced from the Army Art Collection.

Today is the 82nd birthday of Servant of God Father Vincent Capodanno

Servant of God Father Vincent Capodanno:

As an Staten Islander and a Catholic, I am honored to hear about your story throughout different counts about your life especially on this day, remembering you today, thank you for your bravery and courage and will of God in helping other soliders in the time of the Vietnam War. Thank you and I hope that the Vatican gets your approval and you can become a saint! happy 82nd birthday!




Servant of God Vincent Robert Capodanno (February 13, 1929 – September 4, 1967) was a United States Navy Roman Catholic chaplain and a posthumous recipient of America's highest military decoration — the Medal of Honor — for actions during the Vietnam War.

BiographyVincent R. Capodanno was born in Staten Island, New York, on February 13, 1929. He graduated from Curtis High School, Staten Island, and attended Fordham University for a year before entering the Maryknoll Missionary Seminary in Ossining, New York. He was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in June 1957.

Father Capodanno's first assignment as a missionary was with aboriginal Taiwanese in the mountains of Taiwan where he served in a parish and later in a school. After seven years, Father Capodanno returned to the United States for leave and then was assigned to a Maryknoll school in Hong Kong.

Capodanno's relatives now reside in New York, New Jersey, Florida and Arizona.

Military service:
In December 1965, Father Capodanno received his commission as a lieutenant in the Navy Chaplain Corps. He was assigned to the First Marine Division in Vietnam in April 1966.

At 4:30 am, September 4, 1967, during Operation Swift in the Thang Binh District of the Que Son Valley, elements of the 1st Battalion 5th Marines encountered a large North Vietnamese unit of approximately 2500 men near the village of Dong Son. The outnumbered and disorganized Company D was in need of reinforcements. By 9:14 am, twenty-six Marines were confirmed dead and another company of Marines was committed to the battle. At 9:25 am, the commander of 1st Battalion 5th Marine requested further reinforcements.

Father Capodanno went among the wounded and dying, giving last rites and taking care of his Marines. Wounded once in the face and having his hand almost severed, he went to help a wounded corpsman only yards from an enemy machinegun and was killed. His body was recovered and interred in his family's plot in Saint Peters Cemetery, West New Brighton, Staten Island, New York.

On December 27, 1968, then Secretary of the Navy Paul Ignatius notified the Capodanno family that Lieutenant Capodanno would posthumously be awarded the Medal of Honor in recognition of his selfless sacrifice. The official ceremony was held January 7, 1969.

Cause for Canonization:
On May 19, 2002, Capodanno's Cause for Canonization was officially opened, and so he is now referred to as a Servant of God.

In May 2004 the Initial Documentation was submitted to The Congregation for the Causes of Saints with CatholicMil acting as Petitioner and Father Daniel Mode named Postulator.

On May 21, 2006 a Public Decree of Servant of God was issued by the Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA. The statement was made by Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien in Washington D.C.

Today is the 100th birthday of President Ronald Wilson Reagan

This is one of my favorite photographs of Blessed Pope John Paul II and President Ronald Wilson Regan



Mr. President, When I was born during your presidency in 1982, I remember seeing on tv and doing remarkable speeches, you are truly a gifted actor and president, thank you for breaking the infamous "0" curse and defeating the Communism,you are one of my top favorite presidents, remembering you today, happy 100th birthday!


Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was the 40th President of the United States (1981–1989), the 33rd Governor of California (1967–1975) and prior to that, a Hollywood actor.

Reagan was born in Tampico in Whiteside County, Illinois, reared in Dixon in Lee County, Illinois, and educated at Eureka College in Eureka, Illinois, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and sociology. Upon his graduation, Reagan first moved to Iowa to work as a radio broadcaster and then in 1937 to Los Angeles, California. He began a career as an actor, first in films and later television, appearing in over 50 movie productions and earning enough success to become a famous, publicly recognized figure.

Some of his most notable roles are in Knute Rockne, All American and Kings Row. Reagan served as president of the Screen Actors Guild, and later spokesman for General Electric (GE); his start in politics occurred during his work for GE. Originally a member of the Democratic Party, he switched to the Republican Party in 1962. After delivering a rousing speech in support of Barry Goldwater's presidential candidacy in 1964, he was persuaded to seek the California governorship, winning two years later and again in 1970. He was defeated in his run for the Republican presidential nomination in 1968 as well as 1976, but won both the nomination and election in 1980.

As president, Reagan implemented sweeping new political and economic initiatives. His supply-side economic policies, dubbed "Reaganomics," advocated reducing tax rates to spur economic growth, controlling the money supply to reduce inflation, deregulation of the economy, and reducing government spending. In his first term he survived an assassination attempt, took a hard line against labor unions, and ordered military actions in Grenada. He was reelected in a landslide in 1984, proclaiming it was "Morning in America."

His second term was primarily marked by foreign matters, such as the ending of the Cold War, the bombing of Libya, and the revelation of the Iran-Contra affair. Publicly describing the Soviet Union as an "evil empire," he supported anti-Communist movements worldwide and spent his first term forgoing the strategy of détente by ordering a massive military buildup in an arms race with the USSR. Reagan negotiated with Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, culminating in the INF Treaty and the decrease of both countries' nuclear arsenals.

Reagan left office in 1989. In 1994, the former president disclosed that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease earlier in the year; he died ten years later at the age of 93. He ranks highly in public opinion polls of U.S. Presidents, and is a conservative icon.


Early life
Ronald Reagan as a teenager in Dixon, IllinoisRonald Wilson Reagan was born in an apartment on the second floor of a commercial building in Tampico, Illinois on February 6, 1911, to John Edward "Jack" Reagan and Nelle Wilson Reagan. Reagan's father was of Irish Catholic ancestry, while his mother had Scots-English ancestors.

Reagan had one older brother, Neil "Moon" Reagan (1908–1996), who became an advertising executive. As a boy, Reagan's father nicknamed his son "Dutch," due to his "fat little Dutchman"-like appearance, and his "Dutchboy" haircut; the nickname stuck with him throughout his youth.

Reagan's family briefly lived in several towns and cities in Illinois, including Monmouth, Galesburg and Chicago, until 1919, when they returned to Tampico and lived above the H.C. Pitney Variety Store. After his election as president, residing in the upstairs White House private quarters, Reagan would quip that he was "living above the store again".

According to Paul Kengor, author of God and Ronald Reagan, Reagan had a particularly strong faith in the goodness of people, which stemmed from the optimistic faith of his mother, Nelle, and the Disciples of Christ faith,which he was baptized into in 1922.

For the time, Reagan was unusual in his opposition to racial discrimination, and recalled a time in Dixon when the local inn would not allow black people to stay there. Reagan brought them back to his house, where his mother invited them to stay the night and have breakfast the next morning.

Following the closure of the Pitney Store in late 1920, the Reagans moved to Dixon; the midwestern "small universe" had a lasting impression on Reagan. He attended Dixon High School, where he developed interests in acting, sports, and storytelling.

His first job was as a lifeguard at the Rock River in Lowell Park, near Dixon, in 1926. Reagan performed 77 rescues as a lifeguard, noting that he notched a mark on a wooden log for every life he saved. Reagan attended Eureka College, where he became a member of the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity, and majored in economics and sociology. He developed a reputation as a jack of all trades, excelling in campus politics, sports and theater. He was a member of the football team, captain of the swim team and was elected student body president. As student president, Reagan notably led a student revolt against the college president after he tried to cut back the faculty.


Death:
Death and state funeral of Ronald Reagan
Reagan died at his home in Bel Air, California on the afternoon of June 5, 2004. A short time after his death, Nancy Reagan released a statement saying: "My family and I would like the world to know that President Ronald Reagan has died after 10 years of Alzheimer's Disease at 93 years of age. We appreciate everyone's prayers." President George W. Bush declared June 11 a National Day of Mourning, and international tributes came in from around the world.

Reagan's body was taken to the Kingsley and Gates Funeral Home in Santa Monica, California later in the day, where well-wishers paid tribute by laying flowers and American flags in the grass. On June 7, his body was removed and taken to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, where a brief family funeral was held. His body lay in repose in the Library lobby until June 9; over 100,000 people viewed the coffin.

On June 9, Reagan's body was flown to Washington, D.C. where he became the tenth United States president to lie in state; in thirty-four hours, 104,684 people filed past the coffin.

On June 11, a state funeral was conducted in the Washington National Cathedral, and presided over by President George W. Bush. Eulogies were given by former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, and both Presidents Bush. Also in attendance were Mikhail Gorbachev, and many world leaders, including British Prime Minister Tony Blair, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, and interim presidents Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, and Ghazi al-Yawer of Iraq.

After the funeral, the Reagan entourage was flown back to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California, where another service was held, and President Reagan was interred. At the time of his death, Reagan was the longest-lived president in U.S. history, having lived 93 years and 120 days (2 years, 8 months, and 23 days longer than John Adams, whose record he surpassed). He is now the second longest-lived president, just 45 days fewer than Gerald Ford. He was the first United States president to die in the 21st century, and his was the first state funeral in the United States since that of President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1973.

His burial site is inscribed with the words he delivered at the opening of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library: "I know in my heart that man is good, that what is right will always eventually triumph and that there is purpose and worth to each and every life."

Legacy;

Ronald Reagan Presidential Library was dedicated on November 4. 1991. Supporters have pointed to a more efficient and prosperous economy and a peaceful end to the Cold War.

Critics argue that his economic policies caused huge budget deficits, quadrupling the United States national debt, and that the Iran-Contra affair lowered American credibility.

As time has passed, he has generally come to be viewed in a more positive light, and ranks highly among presidents in many public opinion polls.[268] In presidential surveys he has consistently been ranked in the first and second quartiles, with more recent surveys generally ranking Reagan in the first quartile of U.S. presidents.

Edwin Feulner, President of The Heritage Foundation, said that Reagan "helped create a safer, freer world" and said of his economic policies: "He took an America suffering from 'malaise'... and made its citizens believe again in their destiny."

However, Mark Weisbrot, co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said that Reagan's "economic policies were mostly a failure," and Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post stated that Reagan was "a far more controversial figure in his time than the largely gushing obits on television would suggest".

Many conservative and liberal scholars agree that Reagan has been the most influential president since Franklin D. Roosevelt, leaving his imprint on American politics, diplomacy, culture, and economics. Since he left office, historians have reached a consensus, as summarized by British historian M. J. Heale, who finds that scholars now concur that Reagan rehabilitated conservatism, turned the nation to the right, practiced a pragmatic conservatism that balanced ideology and the constraints of politics, revived faith in the presidency and in American self respect, and contributed to victory in the Cold War.


List of honors named for Ronald Reagan

Reagan received a number of awards in his pre- and post-presidential years. Following his election as president, Reagan received a lifetime gold membership in the Screen Actors Guild, as well as the United States Military Academy's Sylvanus Thayer Award.

In 1989, Reagan was made an Honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, one of the highest British orders (this entitled him to the use of the post-nominal letters "GCB" but, as a foreigner, not to be known as "Sir Ronald Reagan"); only two American presidents have received this honor, Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

Reagan was also named an honorary Fellow of Keble College, Oxford. Japan awarded him the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Chrysanthemum in 1989; he was the second American president to receive the order and the first to have it given to him for personal reasons (Dwight D. Eisenhower received it as a commemoration of U.S.-Japanese relations).


Former President Ronald Reagan returns to the White House to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George H.W. Bush in 1993.

On January 18, 1993, Reagan's former Vice-President and sitting President George H. W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor that the United States can bestow. Reagan was also awarded the Republican Senatorial Medal of Freedom, the highest honor bestowed by Republican members of the Senate.

On Reagan's 87th birthday, in 1998, Washington National Airport was renamed Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport by a bill signed into law by President Clinton.

That year, the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center was dedicated in Washington, D.C. He was among 18 included in Gallup's List of Widely Admired People of the 20th Century, from a poll conducted of the American people in 1999; two years later, USS Ronald Reagan was christened by Nancy Reagan and the United States Navy. It is one of few Navy ships christened in honor of a living person and the first aircraft carrier to be named in honor of a living former president.


A bronze statue of Reagan stands in the Capitol rotunda as part of the National Statuary Hall Collection.Congress authorized the creation of the Ronald Reagan Boyhood Home National Historic Site in Dixon, Illinois in 2002, pending federal purchase of the property.

On May 16 of that year, Nancy Reagan accepted the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor bestowed by Congress, on behalf of the president and herself.

Following Reagan's death, the United States Postal Service issued a President Ronald Reagan commemorative postage stamp in 2005. Later in the year, CNN, along with the editors of Time magazine, named him the "most fascinating person" of the network's first 25 years; Time listed Reagan one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th century as well. The Discovery Channel asked its viewers to vote for The Greatest American in an unscientific poll on June 26, 2005; Reagan received the honorary title.

In 2006, Reagan was inducted into the California Hall of Fame, located at The California Museum for History, Women, and the Arts.

Every year since 2002, California Governors Gray Davis and Arnold Schwarzenegger have proclaimed February 6 "Ronald Reagan Day" in the state of California in honor of their most famous predecessor.[331] In 2010, Schwarzenegger signed Senate Bill 944,authored by Senator George Runner, to make every February 6 Ronald Reagan Day in California.

In 2007, Polish President Lech Kaczyński posthumously conferred on Reagan the highest Polish distinction, the Order of the White Eagle, saying that Reagan had inspired the Polish people to work for change and helped to unseat the repressive communist regime; Kaczyński said it "would not have been possible if it was not for the tough-mindedness, determination, and feeling of mission of President Ronald Reagan". Reagan backed the nation of Poland throughout his presidency, supporting the anti-communist Solidarity movement, along with Blessed Pope John Paul II.

On June 3, 2009, Nancy Reagan unveiled a statue of her late husband in the United States Capitol rotunda. The statue represents the state of California in the National Statuary Hall Collection. Following Reagan's death, both major American political parties agreed to erect a statue of Reagan in the place of that of Thomas Starr King.[335] The day before, President Obama signed the Ronald Reagan Centennial Commission Act into law, establishing a commission to plan activities to mark the upcoming centenary of Reagan's birth.



April 04, 2005, 7:53 a.m.
Freedom’s Men
The Cold War team of Pope John Paul II and Ronald Reagan.

By Mark Riebling

Though Pope John Paul II and Ronald Reagan will be remembered as the pope and the president who defeated Communism, the exact nature of their relationship has remained elusive. Some journalists have posited a “holy alliance” between the two, with the CIA briefing the pope each Friday. Others, like George Weigel writing in National Review, have argued that “there was neither alliance nor conspiracy [but] a common purpose born of a set of shared convictions.”

Which view is more correct? The documentary record is incomplete, but clues to the answer may be found in formerly top-secret National Security Council files, now available at the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California. These materials reveal, often in granular detail, how the U.S. Vatican relationship evolved during Reagan’s first term. The documents describe the first contacts between the pope and the president; nuclear brinksmanship and disarmament; the Solidarity crisis in Poland; and Vice President George Bush's private 1984 meeting with the pope.

These papers yield tantalizing snapshots of buoyant goodwill and tireless diplomacy on both sides. There was, sometimes, a de facto alliance between this president and pope. But relations were not so close that they could be taken for granted by the president's men. In fact, the documents reveal a continuous scurrying to shore up Vatican support for U.S. policies. They also reveal a Vatican which acts politically, but always in a highly spiritual way.

Perhaps most surprisingly, the papers show that that, as late as 1984, the pope did not believe the Communist Polish government could be changed.


First Contacts
In February 1981, just over a year following his first triumphal visit to the U.S, Pope John Paul II planned to refuel for three hours in Anchorage, Alaska, en route home following a major pastoral trip to the Philippines, Japan, and Guam. National Security Council staffers recommended to Reagan, who had been in office only a few weeks, that he "establish an early, personal relationship with the Pope while welcoming him back to North American soil."

On February 5, NSC staffer James M. Rentschler proposed that a "Nanook-of-the-North mission" be mounted during the pope's Alaskan layover. Accordingly, when John Paul landed in Anchorage on February 25, the envoy-designate to the Vatican, William Wilson, handed him a letter from Reagan, stating: "...I hope you will not hesitate to use him [Wilson] as the channel for sensitive matters you or your associates may wish to communicate to me."


Nuclear Brinksmanship
On May 22, 1981, the pope's 61st birthday, Reagan sent Congressmen Peter Rodino to Rome with a personal letter for the pope, who was still hospitalized after the attempt on his life. "The qualities you exemplify," Reagan wrote, "remain a precious asset as we confront the growing dangers of the moment." Yet by November, as U.S.- Soviet negotiations on intermediate-range nuclear missiles began in Geneva, Switzerland, relations between the White House and Vatican were strained.

The Vatican Academy of Sciences was preparing a study on the dangers of nuclear war and the pope was preparing letters to Reagan and Brezhnev, urging disarmament. On November 11, U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig appealed to the pope, through Cardinal Achille Silvestrini of the Vatican secretariat of state, not to morally equate U.S. and Soviet military might. The White House was worried, as Haig confided in a memo, about the "possible impact on support for defense programs needed in the west."

"It would be misleading, we believe, to imply in any way that the U.S. and the Soviet Union are equally responsible for having created the conditions that pose a danger of nuclear war," Haig wrote on November, 11, instructing Ambassador Wilson on the line to take with Silvestrini. "We would hope that His Holiness would give due weight to this consideration as he determines the most appropriate means of giving expression to the Church's views. "

The Vatican would not budge, however. The pope's November 25 letter on nuclear war, delivered simultaneously to Reagan and Brezhnev, implicitly blamed both the U.S. and the Soviets for moving the world toward Armageddon. The Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, attempted to diffuse the tensions in a December 15 visit to the Oval Office. But the White House did not reply to the pope's letter for nearly two months, when Reagan finally tried to put the best face on what was clearly a diplomatic defeat. "Your words of encouragement were welcome as we begin negotiations with the Soviet Union in Geneva for the elimination of all intermediate range nuclear missiles," Reagan wrote John Paul on January 16, 1982. "I reject, as you also do, Your Holiness, the doctrine that sees us as helpless creatures of inexorable fate."

This was the low point of Vatican-White House relations during the Reagan years. Yet tensions over the nuclear issue soon evaporated, as the pope's and the president's men made common cause against a Communist crackdown in the pope's homeland.


The Polish Crisis
On December 12-13, 1981, the Communist government of Poland arrested thousands of thousands of activists of the workers' movement known as Solidarnosc, or Solidarity. Over the next weeks the White House and the Vatican consulted closely on the events in Poland by telephone, cable, and through diplomatic representatives. "We seem to be overloading the Vatican circuits of late," Rentschler cautioned in one memo during this period. But a back channel for especially sensitive messages to the pope, established through his secretary, Father Stanislaw Dziwisz, in fact proved vital in coordinating Western sanctions against the Polish government and its Soviet sponsors.

"The United States will not let the Soviet Union dictate Poland's future with impunity," Reagan wrote the pope on December 29, 1981.

I am announcing today additional American measures aimed at raising the cost to the Russians of their continued violence against Poland. … Unfortunately, if these American measures are not accompanied by other Western countries, the Russians may decide to pursue repression, hoping to provoke a rupture within the Western world, while escaping the consequences of our measures. … I therefore ask your assistance in using your own suasion throughout the West in an attempt to achieve unity on these needed measures [economic sanctions on Poland and the Soviet Union]… I hope you will do whatever is in your power to stress these truths to the leaders of the West.

A week later, Cardinal Silvestrini called in Ambassador Wilson and handed him a letter from the pope, pledging support for the U.S. sanctions. Though John Paul worried about the impact of sanctions on the Polish people, he would stand with the president, even if he could not say so publicly.

Wilson's account of Silvestrini's remarks, in a January 6, 1982 cable to Haig, offers a rare window on the Vatican's philosophy of church-state relations.

The Vatican recognizes that the U.S. is a great power with global responsibilities. The United States must operate on the political plane and the Holy See does not comment on the political positions taken by governments. It is for each government to decide its political policies. The Holy See for its part operates on the moral plane. The two planes (politics and morality) can be complementary when they have the same objective. In this case they are complementary because both the Holy See and the United States have the same objective: the restoration of liberty to Poland.

The White House was ecstatic. "The Pope's letter makes it clear that he supports our policies and shares our goals," National Security Adviser William P. Clark wrote in a memo to Reagan January 11.

Reagan breached protocol, however, by referring to the pope's confidential letter in a January 20 press conference — citing it to refute German press reports that the Vatican did not support the hardline U.S. stance on Poland. The Vatican backed away from Reagan's statement, and Wilson had to sit down with John Paul to straighten matters out. "[T]he Pope made it clear he does in fact support our Polish policy, and sees his actions as complementary to ours," an NSC memo on the meeting reported. "However, he cannot be as publicly forthcoming in expressing this support as we would wish."

On February 23, NSC staffer Dennis C. Blair advised Clark: "You may wish to mention personally to the President that in the case of letters from friendly heads of state, it is safest to check with the sender before talking about the contents publicly."


Bush and the Pope
On February 15, 1984, Vice President George H. W. Bush concluded a trip to Europe and the USSR by meeting with the pope in Rome. As he flew back across the Atlantic on Air Force 2, Bush recorded his impressions in a secret cable to National Security Adviser Bud McFarlane.
I just had a visit with the Holy Father which lasted about 55 minutes. The Holy Father looked well, spoke softly but with a great sincerity, leaning forward across the desk and looking right into my eyes. ....

I was received alone by the Holy Father [and] gave [him] our views on East-West with some emphasis on my meetings with [Soviet President Constantin] Chernenko yesterday. The Holy Father opined Chernenko was close to [former Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev; maybe that will be helpful. He [the Holy Father] was interested in lower [sic] of rhetoric. A lower tone of rhetoric, etc.

I then asked him if he had any advice for us on Poland. He discussed this for some time. … The most important problem is the question of human rights. … The government cannot be changed. Therefore you must influence [Polish leader General Wojciech] Jaruzelski to "have a more human face."


In light of the credit that has since been given the pope for influencing Poland's political evolution — an evolution widely seen as causing the collapse of the East Bloc and the end of the Cold War — his own assertion that the Polish government "cannot be changed" is intriguing. Perhaps it is a function of his greatness that this pope did not realize how powerful he truly was. Yet it is important to remember that his remarks were made a year before Gorbachev took power; and it was only with Gorbachev’s ascent that the Polish government could be changed.

The pope and vice president also discussed America's worsening relations with much of the Muslim world. "I brought him up to date on Lebanon," Bush recorded. "The Holy Father emphasized the importance of the Democratic character of the [Lebanese] state. He emphasized the need for coexistence between Christians and Moslems. He came back to the theme of coexistence several times."



The Verdict of History
Among the more lasting impressions conveyed by these papers is the sheer deference showed by Reagan’s working-level staffers toward the pope, even when the two sides were at odds over policy. Admiration for this pope’s spiritual leadership has stripped Protestant White House staffers of any evident cynicism. They pun about a papal "missile" on disarmament, but are in dead earnest in their respect, and at times even reverence, for the Holy Father. Reagan himself, in his letters to Pope John Paul II, admits to being uniquely inspired by the leadership of the pope. The letters have an intensely personal quality, a warmth and light, which is striking when compared to the no less sincere, but far more formalistic, expressions of solidarity made by FDR to the World War II pope, Pius XII.

The geopolitical dynamic would of course soon change, during Reagan's second term, with the 1985 ascent of Gorbachev. Historians will debate the extent to which Soviet changes were sparked by the insistence, of both Reagan and John Paul, on the fundamental importance of the dignity of the human person. But when the Soviets faced these two leaders of shared purpose and conviction, they faced their worst-case scenario: a moral-political meta-power. As Cardinal Silvestrini had said, “The two planes (politics and morality) can be complementary when they have the same objective.” That there was no formal Vatican alliance with the West only gave the pope’s moral stance all the more weight. Perhaps, ultimately, that was part of the essential genius of his policy.

— Mark Riebling

Happy 200th Birthday Horace Greeley

Horace Greeley:You were a famous journalist in America and also a interesting candidate to run for president against Ulysses S. Grant in the election of 1872, thanks your powerful words like "Go west, young man! happy 200th birthday!



This is a Statue of Horace Greeley in Manhattan on 34th Street in Midtown

Greeley statue in Manhattan to be rededicated in honor of publisher’s 200th birthday

I guess occasionally Chappaqua has to share Horace Greeley with his other home, New York City.

Tomorrow, Greeley’s 200th birthday will be celebrated in New York with the rededication of his statue in Greeley Square. Two of his great great great grandsons will be there. Chappaqua’s Horace Greeley High School will be represented by the Madrigal Choir and drama students. Read the announcement below:

HORACE GREELEY’S GREAT-GREAT-GREAT GRANDSONS

TO ATTEND REDEDICATION OF STATUE IN GREELEY SQUARE

Event to Celebrate Greeley’s 200th Birthday

WHAT: The statue of Horace Greeley in Greeley Square will sport a giant white top hat on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Greeley’s birth. Greeley descendants, including two triple-grandsons and local officials will be present for the re-dedication of the statue and to celebrate the legacy of the 19th century journalist, politician, and activist.

WHO:

§ Alexander Horace Greeley, 24 and Matthew Horace Greeley, 22, triple great grandsons of Horace Greeley and their families

§ Commissioner Adrian Benepe, New York City Dept. of Parks & Recreation

§ Daniel Biederman, president, 34th Street Partnership

§ Drama students from Horace Greeley High School (Chappaqua, NY) will present “A Tribute to Horace Greeley”

§ Horace Greeley High School Madrigal Choir will sing “Happy Birthday”

more->

WHERE: Greeley Square

W. 32nd St. at Broadway/Sixth Ave.

WHEN: Thursday, February 3

11:00 a.m.

HORACE GREELEY FACTS & FACTOIDS:

· There are two statues of Greeley in Manhattan: one in Greeley Square and another in City Hall Park.

· His newspaper, the New York Tribune, was known as the “great moral organ,” and served as a platform for his anti-slavery crusade. Greeley and the Tribune also spoke out in opposition to government support of railroads, the massive accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few, monopolies, and land speculators. He was an avid supporter of women’s and workers’ rights.

· He served as a US representative in the 6th Congressional district for a mere three months, and was the Liberal Republican Party’s presidential candidate in 1872. He lost in a landslide to Ulysses S. Grant. (He also is the only presidential candidate to have died prior to the electoral votes being counted).

· He is depicted in the Martin Scorsese film Gangs of New York.

· Places named after him include: Greeley, Pennsylvania; Greeley, Colorado; Greeley, Texas; Greeley County, Kansas (where there is also a city of Horace, and the county seat is Tribune); and Greeley County, Nebraska. Horace Greeley High School in Chappaqua, New York where his house was, is also named after him.

· He never spent much time with his wife at their home in Chappaqua and stayed in a boarding house while in New York.

· Greeley was noted for his eccentricities. Besides what has been described as high-pitched, squeaky voice, he always wore a full-length coat (even in hot weather), and was never without an umbrella (even when precipitation seemed unlikely). He was also a fad-dieter.

· In 1869, Harper’s Weekly called Horace Greeley “the most perfect Yankee the country has ever produced.”

· He employed Mark Twain and Karl Marx as foreign correspondents.

· Greeley is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn and there is a bust atop his tombstone.

HORACE GREELEY QUOTES:

“The darkest hour of any man’s life is when he sits down

to plan how to get money without earning it.”

“The illusion that times were are better than those that

are has probably pervaded all ages.”

“Common sense is very uncommon.”

“The best use of a journal is to print the largest practical amount of important truth: truth which tends to make mankind wiser, and thus happier.”

“Go west, young man, and grow up with the country.” (Disputed by some historians).




Horace Greeley (February 3, 1811 – November 29, 1872) was an American newspaper editor, a founder of the Liberal Republican Party, a reformer, and a politician. His New York Tribune was America's most influential newspaper from the 1840s to the 1870s and "established Greeley's reputation as the greatest editor of his day."

Greeley used it to promote the Whig and Republican parties, as well as opposition to slavery and a host of reforms ranging from vegetarianism to socialism.

Crusading against the corruption of Ulysses S. Grant's Republican administration, he was the new Liberal Republican Party's candidate in the 1872 U.S. presidential election. Despite having the additional support of the Democratic Party, he lost in a landslide. He is currently the only presidential candidate to have died prior to the counting of electoral votes.

Early life:
Greeley was born on February 3, 1811, in Amherst, New Hampshire, the son of poor farmers Zaccheus and Mary Greeley. He declined a scholarship to Phillips Exeter Academy and left school at the age of 14. After serving as a printer's apprentice to Amos Bliss, editor of the Northern Spectator, a newspaper in East Poultney, Vermont, and working as a printer on the Erie Gazette in Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1831 he went to New York City to seek his fortune as an editor. Three years later, having worked as a printer for the Evening Post and several other newspapers, he had accumulated enough capital to launch a weekly literary and news journal, the New Yorker, and, in 1840, a Whig campaign weekly, the Log Cabin.


United States presidential election, 1872


After supporting Ulysses Grant in the 1868 election, Greeley broke from Grant and the Radicals. Opposing Grant's re-election bid, he joined the Liberal Republican Party in 1872. To everyone’s astonishment, that new party nominated Greeley as their presidential candidate. Even more surprisingly, he was officially endorsed by the Democrats, whose party he had denounced for decades.

As a candidate, Greeley argued that the war was over, the Confederacy was destroyed, and slavery was dead–and that Reconstruction was a success, so it was time to pull Federal troops out of the South and let the people there run their own affairs.

A weak campaigner, he was mercilessly ridiculed by the Republicans as a fool, an extremist, a turncoat, and a crank who could not be trusted. The most vicious attacks came in cartoons by Thomas Nast in Harper's Weekly. Greeley ultimately ran far behind Grant, winning only 43% of the vote.

This crushing defeat was not Greeley's only misfortune in 1872. Greeley was among several high-profile investors who were defrauded by Philip Arnold in a famous diamond and gemstone hoax. Meanwhile, as Greeley had been pursuing his political career, Whitelaw Reid, owner of the New York Herald, had gained control of the Tribune.

Death:

Not long after the election, Greeley's wife died. He descended into madness and died before the electoral votes could be cast. In his final illness, allegedly Greeley spotted Reid and cried out, "You son of a bitch, you stole my newspaper."

Greeley died at 6:50 p.m. on Friday, November 29, 1872, in Pleasantville, New York at Dr. George C. S. Choate’s private hospital. Greeley would have received 66 electoral votes; they were scattered among others because of his death. However, three of Georgia's electoral votes were left blank in honor of him. (Other sources report Greeley receiving three electoral votes posthumously, with those votes being disallowed by Congress.)

Although Greeley had requested a simple funeral, his daughters ignored his wishes and arranged a grand affair. He is buried in New York's Green-Wood Cemetery.

The Greeley House in Chappaqua, New York, now houses the New Castle Historical Society. The local high school is named for him. Paying homage to the 19th-century paper owned by Greeley, the high school named its newspaper the Greeley Tribune. The Greeley House was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

Legacy
In 1856, he designed and built Rehoboth, one of the first concrete structure in the United States.

Johnson's New Universal Cyclopaedia is dedicated to Greeley. In the Publisher's Announcement in Volume I, A.J. Johnson stated that Horace Greeley suggested the plan for the work and urged its publication, and was a primary advisor. Greeley is listed as an associate editor.

The New York Tribune building was the first home of Pace University. Today, the site where the building stood is now the One Pace Plaza complex of Pace's New York City campus. Dr. Choate’s residence and private hospital, where Horace Greeley died, today is part of Pace's campus in Pleasantville.


Places named after him include:Greeley, Pennsylvania, Greeley, Colorado, Greeley, Texas, Greeley (City), Kansas, Greeley (County), Kansas (where there is also a city of Horace, and the county seat is Tribune), and Greeley County, Nebraska (which also has a town named Horace). Horace Greeley High School in Chappaqua, New York where his house is also named after him.

Horace Greeley Square is a small park in the Herald Square area of Manhattan featuring a seated statue of Greeley. The park is next to the site of the former New York Herald building. There is a second seated statue of Greeley in Manhattan, this one in City Hall Park downtown.

Mount Horace Greeley is one of the highest points in the Keweenaw Peninsula of Michigan.

Horace Greeley is depicted in the film Gangs of New York in his capacity as publisher of the Tribune.



Horace Greeley

Horace Greeley (February 3, 1811-November 29, 1872), Universalist journalist, reformer, and politician, is best known as the longtime, innovative publisher and editor of the New York Tribune. In 1872 he campaigned unsuccessfully for the United States presidency as the candidate of the Liberal Republicans and Democrats, running against incumbent Republican Ulysses S. Grant.
Horace was born in Amherst, New Hampshire, the third child of Zaccheus Greeley, a farmer and day-laborer, and Mary Woodburn. His family moved often, and he was erratically home-schooled until the age of 14. A voracious reader, he was largely self-educated. Although he had never heard of Universalism, through reflection and Bible-reading, he early adopted a Restorationist theology. "Upon re-reading that book in the light of my new convictions, I found therein abundant proof of their correctness," he later wrote. He saw the scriptures as "so happily blending inexorable punishment for every offense with unfailing pity and ultimate forgiveness for the chastened transgressor."

After serving as a printer's apprentice to Amos Bliss, editor of the Northern Spectator, a newspaper in East Poultney, Vermont, and working as a printer on the Erie Gazette in Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1831 he went to New York City to seek his fortune as an editor. Three years later, having worked as a printer for the Evening Post and several other newspapers, he had accumulated enough capital to launch a weekly literary and news journal, the New Yorker, and, in 1840, a Whig campaign weekly, the Log Cabin.

Greeley was introduced to Universalism, first by reading periodicals, and then by hearing a sermon preached around 1830 in Buffalo, New York. In 1831, soon after coming to New York City, he visited, and quickly joined, Thomas Jefferson Sawyer's Universalist church on Orchard Street. "Horace Greeley was generally present [at weekly Bible class]," Sawyer recalled, "and entered with great interest into the discussions to which our lessons gave rise. He soon distinguished himself by the quickness of his apprehension, the pertinence of his observations and inquiries, and by the general grasp of his mind upon every topic that came before us."

In 1836 Greeley married school teacher Mary Youngs Cheney, with whom he shared a passion for poetry and the vegetarian dietary reforms of Dr. Sylvester Graham. Horace's home life proved comfortless. The Greeleys had seven children, only two of whom, Gabrielle and Ida, lived to adulthood. Mary did not give him the kind of love he had hoped for, had frequent nervous ailments, and neglected the household. Calling their country home outside New York City, "Castle Doleful," he slept most nights in lodgings close to work.

During their early married life the Greeleys often stayed with the Sawyers. Rev. Sawyer's wife Caroline had been a frequent contributor to Greeley's New Yorker and in 1841 in the New Yorker he had just praised her first book as "the gentle teachings of an earnest and holy spirit." Greeley discussed plans for a new daily newspaper, the New York Tribune, at the Sawyers' dinner table. When he handed Caroline the first issue of the paper, he told her, "It shall be a power in the land!"

In 1841 Greeley founded the New York Tribune, which he edited and operated the rest of his life. The New Yorker and the Log Cabin were soon absorbed into the Tribune to become a weekly edition for out-of-town subscribers. Over the next two decades circulation rose to more than a quarter of a million, and the Tribune became the most influential newspaper in the country. To customary news reports, Greeley added editorials and commentary on social and political issues. He hired some of the best newspaper men and a few literary luminaries like Margaret Fuller, George Ripley, and Richard Hildreth.

Margaret Fuller wrote featured literary reviews and commentary on social issues, lived in Greeley's household, 1844-45, and later acted as a European correspondent for the Tribune. He taught her to write rapidly and tersely; she competed with Mary Greeley for the affection of the Greeleys' infant son, Arthur, and lectured Horace on woman's rights. He was at first skeptical about the practicality of gender equality: "so long as she shall consider it dangerous or unbecoming to walk half a mile alone by night—I cannot see how the 'Woman's Rights' theory is ever to be anything more than a logically defensible abstraction." Eventually, in part because of Fuller's influence, his opinion began to shift. In 1850, shortly after Fuller's death, he gave the First National Woman's Rights Convention a moderate endorsement in the Tribune. Although he thought the women who demanded equality were misguided, "However unwise or mistaken the demand, it is but the assertion of a natural right, and as such must be conceded." In 1858 he praised the preaching of feminist Lydia Ann Jenkins in the Orchard Street Universalist pulpit.

In the course of his journalistic career Greeley espoused a wide variety of liberal causes, including the abolition of slavery and capital punishment, communitarianism, socialism, improvement of working conditions, and free-soil homesteading. He was well known as a writer and in demand as a lecturer. One of his assistants, John Russell Young, later wrote, "Greeley labored with the world to better it, to give men moderate wages and wholesome food, and to teach women to earn their living."

Greeley was famous for promoting western development and emigration. Although he may not have originated the slogan, "Go west, young man, go west," often attributed to him, he frequently gave that advice in person and in print. "If any young man is about to commence in the world," he wrote, "with little in his circumstances to prepossess him in favor of one section above another, we say to him publicly and privately, Go to the West; there your capacities are sure to be appreciated and your industry and energy rewarded."

Greeley had first entered the political arena in 1840, promoting the candidacy of William Henry Harrison. He remained a politician for the rest of his life, promoting first Whig and, later, Republican causes. He helped to organize the Republican Party in 1856 and campaigned for Abraham Lincoln in 1860. Having developed a "thirst for public office" while serving three months in Congress in 1848-49, he ran unsuccessfully for the Senate in 1863, for the House in 1868 and 1870, and the presidency in 1872. Greeley's political and social views reflected his strongly held religious views. His reforms aimed at creating a society in which men and women would be less inclined toward moral transgressions and more inclined toward actions that "shall ultimately result in universal holiness and consequent happiness."

A pacifist who believed in the right of states to secede from the United States, in 1861 Greeley nevertheless came to believe that the South had to be resisted with force. He applied public pressure on Lincoln to immediately emancipate the slaves. In an 1862 editorial addressed to the president, "The Prayer of Twenty Millions," he wrote that he was "sorely disappointed and deeply pained by the policy you seem to be pursuing with regard to the slaves of rebels." Lincoln answered, "If I could save the Union without freeing any slaves, I would do it—if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it—and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that." When Lincoln in 1862 published the Emancipation Proclamation—at a time of his own choosing and not of Greeley's—Greeley rejoiced: "it is the beginning of the new life of the nation."

During the 1863 New York draft riots, an anti-Greeley mob nearly succeeded in storming the Tribune building. When weapons were brought into the building to stave off attack, Greeley exclaimed, "Take 'em away! I don't want to kill anybody!" Discouraged by the progress of the war and conflicted about the use of deadly force, Greeley made several attempts during 1863-64 to bring about peace. Each effort resulted in personal embarrassment when the parties with whom he had been negotiating became known. Throughout the war Greeley alternately castigated and lauded Lincoln, sometimes supported him and at other times undermined his policies. "I do not suppose I have any right to complain," Lincoln remarked. "Uncle Horace agrees with me pretty often after all; I reckon he is with us at least four days out of seven."

When Sawyer left the Orchard Street church in 1845, Greeley found the new minister too rationalistic and dropped away, returning only when Sawyer himself returned in 1852. After Sawyer's second departure in 1861, Greeley remained an active Universalist for the rest of his life. In 1864 he preached a sermon from Edwin H. Chapin's pulpit at the Church of the Divine Paternity in New York. As a delegate to the 1870 General Convention in Gloucester, celebrating the centennial of John Murray's arrival in America, Greeley attempted unsuccessfully to divert funds raised for other purposes to creating a Universalist publishing house.

There were both Transcendentalist and anti-trinitarian elements in Greeley's Universalism. Among his friends were Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Greeley had a Transcendentalist belief that "an Omniscient Beneficence presides over and directs the entire course of human affairs, leading ever onward and upward to universal purity and bliss, and all evil becomes phenomenal and preparative." Illustrative of Greeley's anti-trinitarianism is his assertion in his later years that, along "with the great body of Universalists of our day (who herein differ from the earlier pioneers of our faith), I believe that 'our God is one Lord' . . . and I find the relation between the Father and the Saviour of mankind most clearly and fully set forth in that majestic first chapter of Hebrews, which I cannot see how any Trinitarian can ever intently read, without perceiving that its whole tenor and burden are directly at war with his conception of 'three persons in one God.'" Having recorded his decided belief, he added tolerantly, "I war not upon others' convictions, but rest satisfied with a simple statement of my own."

In 1872 Greeley's life came to a sad and bitter end. During his campaign for the presidency Republicans had ridiculed him for his clothes, shambling gait, and absent-minded manner and portrayed him as a traitor (for his earlier criticisms of President Lincoln), a fool, an ignoramus, and a crank, weak in judgment and nerve. He was pilloried in merciless cartoons by Thomas Nast and others. Grant won the election in a landslide, with Greeley victorious in only six border and Southern states. He described himself as the "worst beaten man who ever ran for high office." While he was campaigning, his colleague at the Tribune, Whitelaw Reid, stripped him of his editorial powers. Just before the election his wife died. The combined effect of these disasters led to a complete physical and mental breakdown. He died soon afterwards.

Greeley's funeral, led by Chapin at the Church of the Divine Paternity on December 4th, was attended by many notables, including the president, vice president, members of the cabinet, the mayor, and three governors. On that occasion, and since that time, Greeley has been remembered as his country's greatest newspaper editor, an outstanding popular educator, and a notable champion of the downtrodden and dispossessed.

Today the world lost Mary Shelley after 160 years

Mary Shelley: thank you for the penmanship of your famous work is "Frankenstein." I truly enjoyed reading it, remembering you after 160 years, may you rest in peace!


Mary Shelley (Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus( 1818).

She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin, and her mother was the philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft.

Mary Godwin's mother died when she was eleven days old; afterwards, she and her older half-sister, Fanny Imlay, were raised by her father. When Mary was four, Godwin married his neighbour, Mary Jane Clairmont. Godwin provided his daughter with a rich, if informal, education, encouraging her to adhere to his liberal political theories.

In 1814, Mary Godwin began a romantic relationship with one of her father’s political followers, the married Percy Bysshe Shelley. Together with Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont, they left for France and travelled through Europe; upon their return to England, Mary was pregnant with Percy's child. Over the next two years, she and Percy faced ostracism, constant debt, and the death of their prematurely born daughter. They married in late 1816 after the suicide of Percy Shelley's first wife, Harriet.

In 1816, the couple famously spent a summer with Lord Byron, John William Polidori, and Claire Clairmont near Geneva, Switzerland, where Mary conceived the idea for her novel Frankenstein. The Shelleys left Britain in 1818 for Italy, where their second and third children died before Mary Shelley gave birth to her last and only surviving child, Percy Florence.

In 1822, her husband drowned when his sailing boat sank during a storm in the Bay of La Spezia. A year later, Mary Shelley returned to England and from then on devoted herself to the upbringing of her son and a career as a professional author. The last decade of her life was dogged by illness, probably caused by the brain tumour that was to kill her at the age of 53.

Until the 1970s, Mary Shelley was known mainly for her efforts to publish Percy Shelley's works and for her novel Frankenstein, which remains widely read and has inspired many theatrical and film adaptations. Recent scholarship has yielded a more comprehensive view of Mary Shelley’s achievements.

Scholars have shown increasing interest in her literary output, particularly in her novels, which include the historical novels Valperga (1823) and Perkin Warbeck (1830), the apocalyptic novel The Last Man (1826), and her final two novels, Lodore (1835) and Falkner (1837). Studies of her lesser-known works such as the travel book Rambles in Germany and Italy (1844) and the biographical articles for Dionysius Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia (1829–46) support the growing view that Mary Shelley remained a political radical throughout her life.

Mary Shelley's works often argue that cooperation and sympathy, particularly as practised by women in the family, were the ways to reform civil society. This view was a direct challenge to the individualistic Romantic ethos promoted by Percy Shelley and the Enlightenment political theories articulated by her father, William Godwin.


Final years and deathIn 1840 and 1842, mother and son travelled together on the continent, journeys that Mary Shelley recorded in Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842 and 1843 (1844).

In 1844, Sir Timothy Shelley finally died at the age of ninety, "falling from the stalk like an overblown flower", as Mary put it.For the first time, she and her son were financially independent, though the estate proved less valuable than they had hoped.


In order to fulfil Mary Shelley's wishes, Percy Florence and his wife Jane had the coffins of Mary Shelley's parents exhumed and buried with her in Bournemouth.

In the mid-1840s, Mary Shelley found herself the target of three separate blackmailers. In 1845, an Italian political exile called Gatteschi, whom she had met in Paris, threatened to publish letters she had sent him. A friend of her son's bribed a police chief into seizing Gatteschi's papers, including the letters, which were then destroyed.

Shortly afterwards, Mary Shelley bought some letters written by herself and Percy Bysshe Shelley from a man calling himself G. Byron and posing as the illegitimate son of the late Lord Byron.[126] Also in 1845, Percy Bysshe Shelley's cousin Thomas Medwin approached her claiming to have written a damaging biography of Percy Shelley. He said he would suppress it in return for £250, but Mary Shelley refused.

In 1848, Percy Florence married Jane Gibson St John. The marriage proved a happy one, and Mary Shelley and Jane were fond of each other. Mary lived with her son and daughter-in-law at Field Place, Sussex, the Shelleys' ancestral home, and at Chester Square, London, and accompanied them on travels abroad.

Mary Shelley's last years were blighted by illness. From 1839, she suffered from headaches and bouts of paralysis in parts of her body, which sometimes prevented her from reading and writing.

On 1 February 1851, at Chester Square, she died at the age of fifty-three from what her physician suspected was a brain tumour. According to Jane Shelley, Mary Shelley had asked to be buried with her mother and father; but Percy and Jane, judging the graveyard at St Pancras to be "dreadful", chose to bury her instead at St Peter's Church, Bournemouth, near their new home at Boscombe.

On the first anniversary of Mary Shelley's death, the Shelleys opened her box-desk. Inside they found locks of her dead children's hair, a notebook she had shared with Percy Bysshe Shelley, and a copy of his poem Adonaïs with one page folded round a silk parcel containing some of his ashes and the remains of his heart.