ON his first Washington visit, William A. Whitehead likely made his way to Capitol Hill as a pilgrim would, on foot. His approach from the west began at “two flights of steps laid in the slope of the eminence.” Above and before him, crowned by Charles Bulfinch’s copper-clad wooden dome–not the massive cupola familiar to … More 097–Pantheon
DELEGATES, invigorated by a recent electoral victory, gathered in Columbia in November 1832 and decreed that federal tariffs would be null and void within the borders of their state. In so doing, they brought South Carolina to the threshold of armed conflict with Washington. On the heels of another election, twenty-eight years later, a similar … More 096–The fall line
“OLD Neptune,” for most of the five-day sail, kept William A. Whitehead firmly “under his thumb.” The collector, no doubt relieved to plant his feet on terra firma once more, savored this moment even in his weakened state. He had endured the first leg of a long-anticipated homeward journey (to his parents’ home, at least, … More 095–Charleston 1832
SUBLIME as her mysterious nickname, the Lady of the Green Mantle swept into Charleston harbor late in November 1830, there to replenish her supplies of fresh water, salt pork, cheese, hardtack, whiskey and other staples before departing on the next coastwise cruise.1 The crew on board Marion, as the swift vessel was officially called–a tribute to … More 094–Marion
EFFORTS to comprehend their plight, at the moment when long-looming dread turned to unimaginable terror, leave one at a loss for words. Five hundred people, shackled for weeks in the lightless, airless hold of a ship, are startled by the boom of cannons above deck. They hear and feel the creak of straining timbers as … More 093–Out of the depths
“MEN, even of the better class, are apt to become regardless,” William A. Whitehead once cautioned, “of both the outward and the inward elements of true manliness when left to themselves.” To this admonition, Whitehead joined a commendation of what he believed were effective inducements to “true manliness”: “the restraining and modifying influences” exerted by … More 092–An exacting business
DEPENDENCE for a living on a share of the national revenue, its continuance threatened only by the “periodical terrors” of a quadrennial election, is an affliction that most government functionaries somehow manage to endure. But in the custom house surveyor who will unwind the tale of Hester Prynne and the Scarlet Letter, his character a … More 091–Serving Uncle
DENIZENS of Perth Amboy in the late summer of 1830 could have had a glimpse, at about 6 o’clock one evening, of a most peculiar passerby, but only if they looked skyward. There floated the young balloonist Charles F. Durant, drifting on a straight but swiftly descending course toward the far shore of the Raritan … More 090–Ascension
NOT until the end of its second century could New Jersey’s oldest permanent English settlement and first seat of government begin to call itself, officially, the City of Elizabeth. Through a referendum and an act of the state legislature in the 1850s, the Township and Borough of Elizabeth came together at last under a unified … More 089–If so many
THE night sky gives us great cause for wonder: the more so, if we consider the vastness of the universe, an infinitesimal part of which is visible to our eyes. Those of us who scan the heavens for clues to the cosmos grapple with even deeper truths about space and time: by earthly measures, the … More 088–Dark matter