Birth of American Meteorologist Cleveland Abbe

December 3: On this day in 1838, American meteorologist Cleveland Abbe was born in New York City into the prosperous merchant family of George Waldo and Charlotte Colgate Abbe.

Cleveland Abbe

In school, Cleveland excelled in mathematics and chemistry and graduated in 1857 from the Free Academy (now the City College of New York). He taught engineering for two years at the University of Michigan while studying astronomy under Franz Brünnow.

In 1868 he was hired by the Cincinnati Astronomical Society, but the organization lacked consistent funding and he lost his job less than a year later. This event convinced him to change his career path.

Remembering that meteorological conditions directly affected the work of astronomers, he began working in the field of meteorology. He won approval to report on and predict the weather, working on the premise that forecasts could and should be generated at minimal expense and in such a way as to perhaps even produce income.

While director of the Cincinnati Observatory in Cincinnati, Ohio, he developed a system of telegraphic weather reports, daily weather maps, and weather forecasts.

Abbe was appointed chief meteorologist at the National Weather Service in 1871 – that the time this was part of the U.S. Signal Corps.

On February 19, 1871, Abbe personally gave the first official weather report. He continued to forecast alone for the next six months, while he worked to train others.  Abbe demanded precise language in the forecasts and ensured that every forecast covered four key meteorological elements:

• Weather (clouds and precipitation)
• Temperature
• Wind direction
• Barometric pressure.

The First Presidential Nominating Convention

The Anti-Masonic Party was founded as a populist movement opposed to the supposed power of Freemasonry in the US. In the 1820s opponents of Freemasonry alleged that Masons were deeply insinuated into national, state, and local government where they used their secret organization to expand their influence. Things came to a head in 1826 when William Morgan, a former Mason in Upstate New York, planned to publish a book exposing Masonic secrets and rituals. Morgan disappeared and was presumed by many to have been murdered by Masons — though this was never proven.

Anti-Masonic organizers used the Morgan incident to bolster their message. Support ballooned as the party embraced the use of local and state conventions to plan their activities. The party held a national convention in Philadelphia in 1830. 96 delegates from 10 states and 1 territory met on Saturday September 11th. At this meeting the delegates resolved to meet in 1831 to nominate candidates for president and vice president for the 1832 elections.

So from 26 through 28 September 1831 the Anti-Masonic Party met at the “grand saloon” of the Athenæum in Baltimore. 114 delegates from 12 states attended.

Organizers had sent an invitation to 94-year old Marylander Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence. Mr. Carroll declined to attend.

But among the delegates were Thaddeus Stevens and William H. Seward who later became nationally prominent Republicans.

In Baltimore delegates excoriated Freemasonry and passed resolutions. Procedural matters at the convention would have seemed familiar to presidential convention attendees into the 1970s.

This collection of resolutions by the convention is not unlike a party platform.

The convention chose former Attorney General William Wirt as their candidate for president. His margin of victory was overwhelming:

William Wirt of Maryland – 108
Richard Rush of Pennsylvania – 1
blank ballots – 2

William Wirt

Amos Ellmaker was chosen as Wirt’s running mate by a similar margin.

Amos Ellmaker

Wirt did not give an acceptance speech but he sent the convention this acceptance letter.

The Anti-Masonic Party’s convention made quite a splash, even if the party itself captured only 7 of 275 electoral votes in the 1832 election.

The National Republicans (unrelated to the later Republican Party), composed largely of supporters of former President John Quincy Adams, decided to hold their own convention. Between 12 and 15 December 1831 they too met at the Athenæum in Baltimore where they nominated Henry Clay for president and John Sergeant for vice president.

It was assumed that incumbent President Andrew Jackson would be the standard bearer for the Democratic Party as he sought a second term. Though Jackson needed a running mate to replace the truculent nullificationist John C. Calhoun. So the first ever Democratic National Convention was held from 21 to 23 May 1832 at Baltimore’s Athenæum where Calhoun’s rival Martin Van Buren got the nod for VP. Jackson was the unanimous choice for the presidential nomination.

Before 1830 the party caucuses in Congress would choose presidential candidates. But with the dawn of nominating conventions “King Caucus” was dead.

John Brown was Executed in Charles Town, Virginia

December 2: On this day in 1859 the militant abolitionist leader John Brown was hanged for his October 16, 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry in what is now West Virginia.

John Brown in 1859

John Brown had asked both Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, both of whom he had met in his early years as an abolitionist in Springfield, Massachusetts, to join him in his raid. Tubman was prevented by illness, and Douglass declined because he believed Brown’s plan would fail.

The raid on Harpers Ferry was an attempt by the John Brown to start an armed slave revolt in 1859 by seizing the United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Brown’s party of 21 men was defeated by a detachment of U.S. Marines led by Col. Robert E. Lee.

The burning of the United States arsenal at Harper’s Ferry – April 18, 1861

Brown and the seven others who were captured were held in the office of the armory. Although the attack had taken place on Federal property, Virginia Governor Henry A. Wise ordered that Brown and his men be tried in Virginia in Charles Town, the nearby county seat seven miles west of Harpers Ferry.

The trial began October 27, after a doctor pronounced the still-wounded Brown fit for trial. Brown was charged with murdering four whites and a black, with conspiring with slaves to rebel, and with treason against Virginia.

A series of lawyers were assigned to Brown but it was Hiram Griswold, a lawyer from Cleveland, Ohio, who concluded the defense on October 31. In his closing statement, Griswold argued that Brown could not be found guilty of treason against a state to which he owed no loyalty and of which he was not a resident, and that Brown had not personally killed anyone himself, and also that the failure of the raid indicated that Brown had not conspired with slaves. Andrew Hunter, the local district attorney, presented the closing arguments for the prosecution.

After a week-long trial and 45 minutes of deliberation, the Charles Town jury found Brown guilty on all counts on November 2nd. Brown was sentenced to be hanged in public on December 2nd.

“Treason” Broadside, 1859 November 4.

On the morning of his execution, Brown wrote,

“I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think, vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done.”

The Last Moments of John Brown, by Thomas Hovenden

At 11:00 a.m. he was escorted from the county jail to a small field nearby where the gallows were built. Among the soldiers in the crowd were future Confederate general Stonewall Jackson and John Wilkes Booth, who had borrowed a militia uniform to gain admission to the execution.

The raid on Harpers Ferry is thought to have played a major role in setting the nation on a course toward civil war. Southern slaveowners feared other abolitionists would emulate Brown and try to lead additional slave rebellions. States throughout the South reorganized their weak militia system. These rebuilt and rearmed militias were firmly established by 1861 and became the backbone of the new Confederate army.

Mario Cuomo, Governor of New York 1983-1994, on tolerance.

“We know that the price of seeking to force our beliefs on others is that they might some day force theirs on us.”

– Mario Cuomo

Illinois Group Working to Overhaul Civics Education

One of the Illinois Task Force on Civic Education’s main recommendations is the creation of a  state requirement that students take a “stand-alone” civics class in high school that includes discussions of controversial issues, simulations of political/civic processes, and community service.

Adding this requirement would require approval by lawmakers. The task force hopes state lawmakers will take up the matter in the spring session.

Considered marginalized in an era of high-stakes testing in reading and math, civics is gaining attention as a state-appointed task force of lawmakers, educators and advocacy groups pushes reforms to bring the subject to prominence in the public school curriculum.

The goal is to help students become thoughtful, informed, involved and responsible citizens, through instruction that moves away from memorizing facts and focusing on government institutions.

Read about the Task Force’s work
and recommendations here.

The group’s final report will be submitted to the General Assembly by Dec. 31 and will include input from public hearings and comments submitted to the Illinois State Board of Education.

An earlier preliminary report from last May can be viewed here (PDF).