Historically Scary Shit. Because Happy Halloween!

   I have gotten many a Halloween blog suggestion and I want to say THANK YOU to all that took the time to message me-- I am keeping the messages in my inbox, hoping to get to them in due time!  Due to some circumstances outside of my control I was bogged down with work recently and not able to do the proper research necessary to do any of those subjects justice, however.  So I decided to compile a list of what I like to call "Historically Scary Shit". 

Because what could be better on Halloween than the scary, scary shit that history can serve up? 

*Note*  If you're looking for the run of the mill Elizabeth Bathory, ghosts of Gettysburg, Ed Gein, etc shit, I'm hoping to disappoint you.  As these topics have been done often and very well I am attempting to stay away from them and share some similarly scary, yet not as nearly well known, shit.   

 

Enjoy.  

The Dyatlov Pass Incident

Image credit: wikipedia.org

   It's always creepy when weird synchronicity starts to surround my history stuffs.  The Hubs and I rented a movie a few weeks ago loosely based on the incidents of Dyatlov Pass.  A few days later my favorite thing to listen to in the car (the Stuff You Missed In History Class Podcast) did an episode on Dyatlov Pass.  Then someone emailed me the suggestion to chronicle the incident as a Halloween blog all on its own.  So here I am writing about the Dyatlov Pass Incident as I'm pretty sure the Universe is telling me I have to.  So here goes.  

   In January 1959 ten students from the Ural Polytechnical Institute set off on what was supposed to be a two (ish) week hike through the Ural Mountains.  Nearly a month after they had departed they still had not returned and it was determined that something must have happened.  A search party was mounted and of the nine that actually set out (one stayed back due to illness) all were found dead on the east side of a mountain known, ironically, as The Dead Mountain, or Mountain of the Dead, by the native peoples in that area.  Tragic but not terribly creepy, right?  Keep reading. 

   The search team did not just find the students, they also found their camp which had been destroyed by the hikers themselves.  All of the tents were found with evidence that the hikers had ripped or cut them open from the inside out.  All of the supplies the hikers had brought with them had been left behind, and footprints leading away from the camp showed that most left barefoot, some wearing only a single shoe or socks alone.  At this time in the Ural Mountains, the temperatures were around -22 F.  

   What was found at the camp sets up a scenario that something frightened the hikers to the point where their *best option* was to cut themselves out of their tents and leave with whatever clothing they had on in -22 degree weather.  The bodies of the scantily clad (for winter in Russia, anyway) hikers offered more questions than answers.  Three bodies were found between a wooded area and the camp; early searchers believe that these hikers appeared to have been attempting to return to camp.  Two of the bodies were found under a tree near the remains of a fire barefoot and in only their underwear.  The branches of the tree were broken up to ten feet above the ground, leading to the belief that the two hikers, at some point, climbed the tree.   The four other hikers were found about two months later down a ravine.  All were seriously injured and one even had a portion of her tongue removed.  The official cause of death was given as a “compelling force” (their words) and the investigation was ended.  

  

But that’s not the end of the weird shit.  

   Some of the hikers clothes were found to be radioactive, people in a nearby village reported seeing a series of orange lights in the sky around the time the hikers were presumed to have been killed, and it appeared the hikers died at different times as some were found to be wearing what appeared to be clothing ripped from those that had died previously. 

   So what the fuck happened in those mountains?  Well, tragically, ten hikers died.  And that’s really all we know for sure.  Theories have been offered ranging from attack by the natives (the Mansi; however, the original investigators concluded that the injuries were too severe to have been caused by humans), to a yeti attack, to an avalanche, to aliens.  And if we’re going based on the historical record, we don’t know what happened.      

Ring Around The Rosy

Image credit: learnnc.org

   As if little kids weren’t creepy enough, amirite?  But throw in this horrifying nursery rhyme and why I’m childless becomes immediately apparent.  Anyone that’s actually paid attention to the words to this little gem has probably noticed that they are… Well… Different.  The words that we now know and love are as follows: 

Ring around the rosy

Pocket full of posy

Ashes, ashes, we all fall down

   Fucking weird, right?  The origins of Ring Around The Rosy lie in a plague.  Most cite the Black Death, or Bubonic Plague, however there is evidence that its origins are even earlier than that.  Either way, the “ring around the rosy” is in reference to the red rings that would form on the skin before the buboes (pustules) would rise and fill with puss; the “pocket full of posy” refers to the pouches of fragrant herbs that people would carry to ward off the plague; last but not least, the last line, which originally read “ashitoo” instead of “ashes” in reference to the sneezing that would occur as part of the plague, implies that said pockets of posy did not work and everyone got plague and “fell down”…. 

Meaning they fucking died. 

 

   Because little kids will make up games about anything.  Because they’re fucking creepy. 

The Werewolf of Bedburg

   This is a pretty famous folklore in the countryside of Germany and Great Britain, though the actual historical record is pretty sparse.  However, it is fucking Halloween, so take it with a grain of salt.  Supposedly, a man named Peter Stump (we think) was arrested sometime in 1589 on suspicion of being a werewolf.  While being tortured on a rack he confessed everything.  And by “everything”, I mean all the cool ways Satan helped him turn into a werewolf (one involved a magic girdle!).  He also confessed to killing and eating fourteen young children, including his own son, and two pregnant women.  The proof of all of this?  The werewolf had had his left paw cut off somehow, and Mr Stump also was missing his left hand.  Bam.  Werewolf.  Oh, and he was sleeping with his daughter.  

  

Image credit: wikipedia.org

Mr Stump was thusly stretched on the rack, pieces of his flesh were pulled off of him with hot pinchers, drawn and quartered, and beheaded, with his head subsequently mounted on a pike outside of town as a warning to other to not… Become werewolves.  And then his daughter was strangled and burned on the same pyre as he was because, you know, she was involved in the incest, too. 

All of what we know on the Werewolf of Bedburg comes from an English pamphlet that was, supposedly, based on an earlier German pamphlet that is now lost to history.  So take this story with some healthy skepticism.  But tell it at a bonfire at some point to scare your friends.  Tell them it’s true, because TUH told you so. 

Image Credit: bethshort.com

The Black Dahlia

   I’m throwing this one into the “scary historical shit” pile because I just love this story, in a very dark and probably unhealthy sort of way.  There’s something very scary to me about some unknown figure that committed a terrifying act of depravity and then was never caught, left to roam the streets in anonymity.  

   Before she was known as the Black Dahlia, she was known as Elizabeth Short.  An aspiring actress, Short made her way to LA in 1943.  What she did in LA is relatively anonymous, we know that she rubbed elbows with some relatively sophisticated people, dated, got arrested for underage drinking and tried to get her acting career off the ground.  Until January 1947 when her body was found in a drainage ditch just outside of LA.  She was badly beaten, cut in half, nude, her lips cut to the cheekbones, and there was evidence of sexual assault.  And from there the trail goes cold.  

   Men that she had dated were investigated.  People that she had last been seen with at the Biltmore Hotel were questioned.  None of the leads panned out.  Over the years many people have come up as suspects, but no one was ever convicted and for every good reason one person is the killer of the Dahlia, someone else has two good reasons why it was someone else.  We know that whoever it was never was convicted.  Thus, whomever was depraved enough to rape, murder, cut a woman in half, mutilate her face and dump her in an empty lot, nude, walked the streets afterward and, possibly, is still walking around. 

The Lions of Tsavo

   Way back in 1898 the British set to work building a bridge over the Tsavo River in Kenya.  All was going well until one dark night when a young Indian construction worker was dragged from his tent and devoured by lions.  Which totally put a damper on everyone’s night.  This was not to be the last encountered with what would eventually become known as the Tsavo Lions. 

Lions in the Tsavo region are now pretty well known due to these two man-eating lions that stalked and killed throughout the construction camp.  All methods of barriers and traps were used by the head of the project, Lieutenant Colonel John Patterson, to try to stop the maneless male lions, including fences made of thorns and large bonfires, but the lions continued to drag workers off in the middle of the night and devour them.  Often within ear shot of their compatriots.  

   At the end of the day the Lions of Tsavo were rumored to have killed over 135 men before being shot.  New research now maintains that they probably killed closer to 35, but their ravenous feeding on humans actually halted construction on the railroad for a short time since so many workers had fled in terror.  When the lions were killed they measured over nine feet from nose to tail.  After spending some time as John Patterson’s floor rugs, they were eventually turned over to the Chicago Field Museum for exhibition and study.  Which is great!  Except that all this modern research has still failed to answer one very important question:  Why were these lions eating people instead of hippos or rhinos or whatever the fuck lions normally eat? 

   There are theories, however.  Some believe that the lions were infirm in some way, which caused the need for large, slow, clumsy prey which, let’s be honest here folks, in the wild that’s exactly what we are.  Others have pointed to a disease outbreak that devastated the lions’ normal food supply, and still others have come up with the idea that, chillingly, due to the amount of slaves that died in the Tsavo River the lions simply decided they really liked the taste of humans.  

They look kind of cute here actually, don't they? 

Image Credit: Chicago Field Museum

For further reading on the Dyatlov Pass Incident the internet is a treasure trove as this happening has gained some popularity in recent years.  Also, I would seriously direct anyone to the podcast “Stuff You Missed In History Class” as it is simply fantastic.  Also, there’s a completely historically incorrect movie called Devil’s Pass that is in no way educational, but is very entertaining.    

Ring Around The Rosy is featured, amongst other nursery rhymes, in the book The Secret History of Nursery Rhymes by Linda Alchin.  While I have not yet had the pleasure to read the book, her website (rhymes.org/uk) did help me greatly in this research.  For more information on the Bubonic and other plagues, a great resource is When Plague Strikes by James Cross Giblin, the man that also brought you Let There Be Light: A Book About Windows.  Which I hear is a real page turner. 

There’s not a ton out there on the Werewolf of Bedburg, however, but horrorpedia.com does a good write up.  The pamphlet A True Discourse. Declaring the Damnable Life and Death of One Stubbe Peeter, a Most Wicked Sorcerer is the only historical record we have of Mr Stump, or Stubbe, or Stub, or Griswold (seriously).  But, if you’re interested, the heavy metal band Macabre did a song called the Werewolf of Bedburg in honor of Mr Stump.  I think it’s crap, but The Hubs says it’s pretty “killer”.  No pun intended.  I think…

The website bethshort.com has been created in honor of the Black Dahlia and is where many of the arm chair detectives still working the sixty plus year old case go to discuss leads, evidence, etc and is a great resource for all things Dahlia related. 

The Lions of Tsavo have been featured in the movie The Ghost And The Darkness (1996).  The Smithsonian Institute makes a living out of fantastic research and a great article on the species of lions known as Tsavo Lions can be found here http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/man-eaters-of-tsavo-11614317/?no-ist. 

Also, the article describing the new research on how many victims the lions actually had can be found here: http://news.ucsc.edu/2009/11/3316.html

Now have a happy fucking Halloween!

Image Credit: nyhistory.org

  

Why Ebola Is Not The Spanish Flu

Ebola-mania is sweeping the nation right now as more and more cases are discovered in Africa those two people were diagnosed in Texas.  This has caused many god fearing Americans to liken those two cases of Ebola the Ebola outbreak to everything from Zombie Plague to Bubonic Plague.  And even, most notably, to the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918. 
 
To that I say one thing:  No.  No. Just no.  Those two cases of Ebola in Texas are not the Spanish flu.  And here's why:

 
The Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918-1919 was a global disaster.  As World War I began winding down and soldiers starting returning to their countries of origin, the stage was set for virus transmission on a scale the world hadn't really seen before.  The Spanish Flu killed between 10%-20% of those that were infected, usually within hours of first showing symptoms.  What made the Spanish Flu especially terrifying is that it was transmitted by "breathing infected air"-- which meant that literally anyone could become infected super easily.  The particular strain of the Spanish Flu (H1N1... We think) was also especially deadly to people in the prime of life-- between 20 and 40 years old-- contrary to most strains, which are particularly deadly to the elderly and infants. 
 
When all was said and done, between 30-50 million people were dead between the two waves of flu that struck during this time.  In the United States alone over 675,000 died-- for context, World War I killed a tenth of that.  In fact, so many people died that the average life span was lowered by 10 years in the wake of the flu. 
 
I'm trying to keep this brief, so just a quick extra note here:  H1N1 was probably not Spanish.  And there's a chance that it wasn't even H1N1-- the strain was recently reconstructed from the tissue of a dead soldier (how fucking bad ass is that?!) and is currently being genetically analyzed.  The reason it's called "Spanish" is because many of the earliest casualties occurred in Spain, however, it's more likely that the strain originated in China and then was passed along trade routes, on which Spain was a huge stop over. 


 

Ebola became a buzzword in the States in September.  Since that fateful day that a young Liberian man was admitted to a Texas hospital with severe diarrhea and vomiting, two young nurses that were treating him have been diagnosed with the disease.  Ebola is a virus that causes Ebola Haemorrhagic Fever.  It is spread via direct contact with infected bodily fluids such as blood, urine, feces, breast milk... You know... Fluidy things.  IT IS NOT SPREAD BY "INFECTED AIR".  I feel like that needs to be in all caps because somehow my sister some people have gotten under the impression that Ebola is airborne.  While airborne Ebola is quite possibly the tenth plague of the Apocalypse, the thought of which I would assume scares the everliving shit out of the good people at the CDC, it is not a thing at this point. 
 
Airborne Ebola.  Not a thing. 
 
However, while the death toll in the US is small, Ebola has hit West Africa like it owes it money.  It began in 2013 in Guinea and has spread quickly killing nearly ten thousand people in its wake.  There are four viruses classified as "Ebolavirus" and, unfortunately for the people of West Africa, the one devastating their homeland currently is the most deadly form of the virus.  Also unfortunate is that the drugs that can be used to treat Ebola (nearly a dozen, none of which are FDA approved in the US) aren't available in Africa.  There is a process for treatment in place, however, which does greatly improve the odds of survival. 

 
So Ebola is not the Spanish Flu.  Ebola is much more difficult to transmit, which means a seriously lower number of people are actually at risk for infection.  The Ebola outbreak started nearly a year ago and we've seen thousands of tragic deaths in West Africa, however, by this point in the Spanish Flu Pandemic millions had been killed world wide.  It's just a different animal all together.   I'm not minimizing the Ebola outbreak here-- it's a horrific disease that should be taken seriously-- the fatality rate in Africa is nearly fifty percent.  But the Spanish Flu it is not. 
 
I, for one, am not worrying too much about catching Ebola, as I have recently stopped my habit of rolling in the blood and vomit of others in the wake of the outbreak; however, for fuck's sake could we get one of those DOZEN antibiotics pushed through the FDA please? 

For more info on the Spanish Flu Pandemic see the following:
https://virus.stanford.edu/uda/
http://www.flu.gov/pandemic/history/1918/index.html  (this one is interactive!)

For more info on the Ebola outbreak check out the websites for the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO), as they have the most up to date info, and the least bias. 

Lost Presidents II: Chaz Mustache You A Question.....

  So for the last two weeks I have been tirelessly researching and reading article after article trying to figure out the answer to one simple question:

    Is there anything cool about Chester A. Arthur?
 
   I mean, his name is Chester, for Christ sake.  How cool could he possibly be?  Well, as it turns out, he seriously has his moments.  I mean, at the very least, I'd nominate him for most killer mustache to ever grace the White House.  But that's not all.  For someone widely considered a party hack at the time he took office, he did some pretty progressive shit that would reverberate through American politics and society into the present day.   
 
   So that brought me to the next question:
 
    Why is Chaz and his presidency so overlooked and forgotten?
 
   The easy answer is that he didn't really try to even get nominated for a second (ish) term and then, the day before he died, he burned all of his personal papers.  Sketchy shit, isn't it?  We'll explore this more later.  For now, let's look at Chaz before he became the leader of the free world. 

 
   Before he became the subject of this blog and known as "Chaz" (I really want that to catch on), Chester Alan Arthur was the son of an abolitionist preacher man (cue Dusty Springfield).  Born in 1829, he was homeschooled for most of his basic education before moving on to Union College in Schenectady, New York.  He went on to pass the bar exam and become part of the law firm headed by Erastus D. Culver.   It is important here to note that while practicing law, Chaz took part in a very early and notable civil rights case, that of Elizabeth Jennings Graham.  While running late for church, Ms Jennings Graham (often referred to just as Elizabeth Jennings), boarded a horse drawn streetcar in Brooklyn and took the first seat she saw that was available.  The conductor of the streetcar ordered her to leave the train as that particular streetcar service (privately owned) reserved the right to refuse service to patrons of color.  Ms Jennings Graham was subsequently forced off of the streetcar by a police officer and the conductor.  She sued the company with the help of the Culver Law Firm and Chaz himself, and actually won.  This should be shocking to modern readers-- not only was this 100 years before Rosa Parks, but it was seven years before the Civil War even began.   When the Civil War began, however, Chaz enlisted.  He would eventually rise to the rank of brigadier general, though he never saw combat. 
 
   Chaz was heavily involved in Republican politics and quickly became affiliated with the New York political machine under Republican Boss Roscoe Conkling (someone who could be a blog subject in and of himself).  In the 1850s political machines specialized in cronyism, nepotism, kick backs and corruption.  The political bosses believed that it was their right as public servants to use their positions to their financial advantage and also to elevate those that were close to them.  As such a staunch supporter, Chaz was named "Collector of the Port of New York" in 1871 by President Grant. 
 
   This brings us to another question that I had to ask myself during the research phase of this blog:  What the fuck does that even mean?
 
   Well, The Collector of the Port of New York is the person responsible for collecting tariffs and duties from ships departing from and coming into the port under his domain.  One would think that that would simply be New York City, as it was one of the busiest ports on the planet at the time.  And, subsequently, one would be wrong.  His domain actually included all of the east coast of New York, as well as parts of New Jersey and the Hudson River.  He was good at what he did, and while he was never officially named in any corruption charges, the historical record shows that he did take kick backs, which was a standard operating procedure at the time.  Rumor has it that the corruption ran even deeper than that for Chaz, but official records don't completely support this, which is not to say that it didn't happen, just that it's not supported by the historical record. 
 
   And that's really it.  That's pretty much the entire story of Chaz's pre-presidency years.  He fathered children, suffered through the loss of his wife and worked for Conkling's political machine.  He wasn't groomed for the presidency as most present day politicians are, nor was he necessarily well known to most of the nation before the Republican nominating convention in 1880.  It was at this convention that Chaz was named vice presidential running mate of James A Garfield, and the entire nation simultaneously let out a cry of "who?".  Yes, friends, Chaz was the original Sarah Palin; plucked from obscurity to serve as a balance on a ticket due to seriously complicated political reasonings and back alley agreements. 
 
   But he had a better mustache. 
 
   Garfield and Chaz won the 1880 election (I think the mustache helped) and Garfield was sworn in as president in January 1881.  Chaz became vice president and all Republican Stalwarts (a faction within the Republican party at the time) rejoiced that they were safe from corruption charges now that one of their own was in the White House.  Sort of.  Garfield himself was of a different faction, called the Half Breeds (seriously, I'm not even joking here), and this merging of Stalwart and Half Breed was shaping up to be serioulsy entertaining until July 1881 when President Garfield was shot. 
   
   Seven months into his vice presidency, a role that he never expected to have in the first place and had never prepared himself for, he suddenly found himself THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD.  Take a moment to let that sink in.  Put yourself in Chaz's shoes for a minute.  What the hell was even going through his head?  He didn't know how to govern, hell he barely knew how to collect tariffs!  To make matters worse, the assassin, Charles J Guiteau, upon shooting the president declared that he had shot Garfield in service to the Stalwart cause and to make Chaz president.  Conspiracy theories swirled that Chaz and Conkling had planned the assassination.  But those were largely put to rest, mainly because Chaz's ascent to the presidency surprised the ever living fuck out of, well, everyone. 

 
   Far from being a political machine hack, as most, including his long time mentor Roscoe Conkling, assumed he would be, Chaz grew a backbone, put on his bitchface and resolved to govern according to conscience and what he thought was best for Americans.  And here is where I found the answer to my first question-- the coolest things Chaz ever did occurred while he was in the White House. 
For someone who served just less than a single term as president, he racked up a shit-ton of awesome talking points.  We're going to focus on six, and I'll try to keep them brief.  They are:  The Utah thing, The Civil Rights Act, Civil Service Reform, The Chinese Exclusion Act, The Navy Thing and Redecorating the White House (yeah, for reals). 

   The Utah Thing.  Sigh.  Utah.  That bastion of hiking and bee hives.  The state with that famous  arch like thing in the middle of the desert.  Okay, so that's pretty much the sum of my knowledge on Utah (and I'm not positive that the arch thing is even in Utah).  In 21st century America, that's pretty much the sum of everyone's knowledge on Utah.  But in the 1880s Utah was a flashpoint and ground zero for everyone's favorite pain in the ass: Mormons. 
 
   *Disclaimer*  The following statements are my own.  They are based on the historical record, not my own personal beliefs about Mormons, Joseph Smith, Brigham Young or the angel Moroni.  However, I will say here that, my personal belief is that naming your archangel "Moron-i" doesn't lend you any credibility, I feel like someone should have taken that into account.  Also, I will use the term "Mormon" here, as opposed to the more PC term "Latter Day Saints" as, at the time (1880s) Mormon was the more accepted term*

   The United States had a long and checkered history with the followers of Joseph Smith and the angel Moroni.  They freaked people out.  They had a semi-Christian belief structure, but permanently set themselves apart by proclaiming all present day churches to be following the wrong faith.  They did this based on legendary golden tablets that their prophet, Joseph Smith, had been led to by the angel Moroni, which he had then had to translate using magic glasses.  The Mormons were persecuted first in New York, then in Illinois where Smith was subsequently shot, before moving to Utah under the leadership of Brigham Young.  Utah was a territory at this time and, as such, was subject to rule and regulation by the federal government under article four of the Constitution.  Brigham Young was having none of that shit, however.  He was named governor in 1848, and set up local courts and a territorial legislature.   Weird.  But not necessitating of widespread outcry just yet.  But give him a minute... He'll get there.....
 
   In 1851 and 1852 Brigham Young announced that no Mormon could get into heaven without accepting the doctrine of celestial (plural) marriage.  AKA: polygamy. 
 
   *Cue widespread outcry*
 
   Legislation against polygamy was nearly instant under the banner of "I can't believe we actually have to pass laws against this", all of which Brigham Young and his followers rejected, declaring the laws of god superior to those of man.  Years before Chaz took up the presidency, James Buchanan ordered federal troops to Utah to supress the Mormons and bring Utah back under the governance of the federal government.  In all actuality, however, Buchanan was not so much incensed by moral outrage at polygamy as he was trying super hard to take everyone's mind off of the issue of slavery that was threatening to explode literally any second. 
 
   After the issue of slavery did, in fact, explode, everyone pretty much left Utah alone as the Civil War raged.  Abraham Lincoln actually issued an official statement that almost literally read, "tell Brigham Young that if he leaves me alone, I'll leave him alone".  And all was pretty much quiet for awhile.  The Mormons did their plural marriage and free worship thing, and the US government did their reuniting the Union thing.  Except for that pesky issue of the Mountain Meadow Massacre in 1857, which no one was yet brought to justice for.  Basically, as this could also be a blog in and of itself, Mormons, dressed as and aided by Native Americans, killed 120 Gentiles in a wagon train on their way to California.  For years Mormons denied any involvement, but the historical record clearly shows that the main force was predominantly Mormon, an assertion that the LDS (Mormon) website acknowledges at this point (link at bottom). 
  
   For his part, Chaz passed what was arguably the most sweeping legislation at the time.  Being the son of a Christian minister, Chaz was outraged by polygamy, however, he had become a strict constitutionalist.  He passed the Edmunds Act in 1882 that not only made polygamy a felony, but also made "illegal cohabitation" a crime.  Illegal cohabitation is basically defined as the living together of a man and woman that aren't married; this is MUCH easier to enforce than a ban on polygamy.  But what was more important than this new illegal cohabitation thing, was what the act did for the structure of government in Utah.  Chaz knew that the federal goverment had every right to run a territory and any other goverment serving a territory was at the mercy of the feds.  So with the Edmunds Act, Chaz barred polygamists from office and jury duty, set up a five person federal commission to supervise voting in Utah, and called for direct federal control of the territory.  Within months all elected offices in the territory were vacated and the federal government took control.  Mormons.  Were.  Pissed. 
 
   The fight for Utah would rage on, even into the present day.  Chaz's actions are still admonished by fundamentalist sects of the religion, even as most modern mainstream Mormons/LDS members have rejected polygamy.  Utah took statehood in 1895, and has been an odd American example of theocracy within democracy ever since. 

   Which brings us to the Civil Service.  Not nearly as exciting as massacres and marriages in Utah, but seriously, super important.  When Chaz took office, appointments to positions within goverment were usually made on the basis of who was most liked by the person doing the appointing.  Recall that Chaz himself filled one of these positions at one point when he was Collector for the Port of New York, and that he had gotten his position as such due to his political loyalties.  In one of the greatest "do as I say, not as I did" moments in American history, Chaz supported and rallied for the Pendleton Civil Service Act, which passed and was signed into law in 1882.  This act was more important politically and constitutionally than it was logistically. Basically, the Pendleton Act instituted Civil Service Exams and a process by which someone had to follow to be appointed to a civil position.  Thus, this took the appointment process out of the hands of powerful political bosses (read: Conkling), and established a process based on merit, theoretically at least.  Conkling lost his shit when this passed.  This is the point at which everyone realized that Chaz was no longer a political machine puppet, but a real live boy with real, live ambitions and opinions. 

   If you weren't paying attention, I mentioned earlier that Chaz had taken part in some seriously progressive civil rights stuff during his career as a New York attorney.  During his time in the White House he stuck to his progressive roots.  To this end he relied on The Civil Rights Act of 1875 that had barred racial discrimination in public facilities......
 
   Now I know what you history nerds out there are saying:  "Whoa.  Hold up there lady!  What kind of shit are you trying to pull?!  What about Jim Crow and Brown v. The Board of Education, and the Montgomery Bus Boycotts, and Rosa Parks?!  Have you gone mad?!". 
I have not gone mad.  Well, okay, maybe a little bit, but you couldn't use this to prove it in court, because, indeed, in 1875 Congress passed a civil rights act protecting all Americans, regardless of race, from discrimination in all public areas.  It stated:       "...it is essential to just government [that] we recognize the equality of all men before the law, and hold that it is the duty of government in its dealings with the people to mete out equal and exact justice to all, of whatever nativity, race, color, or persuasion, religious or political; and it being the appropriate object of legislation to enact great fundamental principles into law:  Therefore, Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall be entitled to the full and equal and enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement; subject only to the conditions and limitations established by law, and applicable alike to citizens of every race and color, regardless of any previous condition of servitude."

   So what the hell happened between 1875 and Martin Luther King, Jr. you may now be asking yourself.  Valid.  Fucking.  Question.  My friends.  The short answer to "what the fuck happened here?" is "the Supreme Court".  The Supreme Court happened.  In a series of decisions SCOTUS shut down the act of 1875 and in the 1883 case of Harris v The United States, often referred to as "the Ku Klux Klan case" declared the act unconstitutional at its core.  Harris was a sheriff in Tennessee who took it upon himself to lynch four black men that were being held in the local jail.  Chaz was committed to protecting black Americans from violence of all forms, especially that that was race based; since the local government was not positioned to arrest its own sheriff, Chaz had the lynch mob brought up on federal charges under the 1875 act.  When the Court ruled that the federal goverment had no jurisdiction over the behavior of private citizens, Chaz was incensed.  He publically rebuked the ruling but his hands were tied, and it would be almost 100 years before another act would take the 1875 act's place-- the 1964 Civil Rights Acts signed by Lyndon Johnson. 

   Chaz wasn't just committed to the plight of black Americans, but also Native Americans and the Chinese.  He continually sought peaceful assimilation of Native Americans into mainstream society.  Regardless of your thoughts on assimilation to a dominating culture, that was at least better than the alternative at the time: killing them all until they stop attacking farms on the frontier.  As far as the Chinese are concerned, Chaz used one of six vetoes he cast through his entire presidency in response to the Chinese Exclusion Act.  This act, when it crossed Chaz's desk, would have denied citizenship to Chinese residents in the US and barred Chinese laborers from entering the country.  Chaz vetoed this stating that the twenty year ban on immigration was unreasonable and that without Chinese labor the United States would have been bereft of a large and reliable source of quality labor.  Congress responded by redrafting the bill to halt Chinese immigration for ten years.  Chaz signed it. 
Way to stand your ground, Chaz.  I must admit, this is one of the few face/palm moments I had during research.  This was stupid.  Admittedly.  But at least he kept it to a select few events of stupidity. 
 
   Speaking of stupidity, Chaz had the White House redecorated by Louis Comfort Tiffany after he determined it was too quaint for an elegant man like himself.  It cost $30,000.  Translated to 21st century dollars, that would be around $2 million.  Right.  To his credit, a lot of the issue was the twenty four wagons worth of clothes and various debris left behind by various previous presidents.  And he only refurbished it after the Army Corps of Engineers suggested it be torn down due to structural damage.  So I guess it wasn't THAT bad of a decision.  Though not nearly as funny as my favorite White House change-- when Bill Clinton's staffers removed all of the "W" keys from every keyboard in the White House when George W Bush was coming in to take over.....  They also took the door knobs.  
 
   Due to his White House renovations, Chaz was often called the "Gentleman Boss", but he had a nickname that speaks to a much more important renovation-- "Father of the Steel Navy".  Previous to Arthur, Naval ships were predominantly made out of wood or steel, each of which came with its own set of problems.  Wood was highly susceptible to rot, and steam ships couldn't really be made of wood because they would catch fire from the coal ovens used to produce the steam (duh).  Iron is heavy.  It makes ships hard to navigate and susceptible to loss due to sinking.  Arthur proposed a naval switch to steel steamers, which, oddly, only garnered moderate support.  However, he was successful in having a small handful of ships converted over to steel steamers.  Coal refueling stations were still few and far between at this point, making a total renovation a Hurculean undertaking involving vast resources and monies that weren't available at the time.  Regardless, he set the wheel in motion and is still considered a pioneer in the push to modernize the American Navy in the late 19th century, presiding over the creation of the Naval War College and the Office of Naval Intelligence. 

   For all of his work on domestic affairs, predominantly, and all that he did to bring America to the point that it is today, our second question now seems tough to answer:  why is Chaz a lost president?  Well, he only nominally tried to gain reelection.  In fact, he barely tried to gain nomination for a second term, which he lost on the fourth ballot in the 1884 nominating convention to Secretary of State James G. Blaine (good job, Republicans).  Many believe that his perceived lack of trying here is because he was very aware that he was suffering from Bright's Disease.  Bright's Disease is a kidney disease that is marked by inflammation of the parts of the kidney that produce urine.  He knew that his kidneys were failing.  Just two years after losing the nomination bid, Chaz died November 18, 1886.  But what is more important to answering our question here, is what happened on November 17, 1886.  Knowing that he was dying and that his time was near, Chaz burned all of his personal papers.  The Library of Congress has just one packet of papers, mainly letters sent to others, from Chaz's presidency.  Why?  Conspiracy theories run wild here, but the most popular, and the one that may have the most veracity, is that Chaz was born in Canada, not Vermont, when Canada was still a British colony.  Thus, Chaz was not a natural born US citizen, had this been known he would have been disqualified from the presidency. 
 
   For those to whom Chaz is not lost, he remembered as a surprisingly independent and forward thinking leader.  I find him to be progressive, ahead of his time, a sympathetic character that tried to rise above that which was perceived to hold him back to secure a place in history at least as not a bad president.  And as someone with one of the greatest mustaches American history has ever seen. 
 
   As the publisher Alexander K. McClure once noted:  “No man ever entered the Presidency so profoundly and widely distrusted, and no one ever retired . . . more generally respected.”

 

• For a general and brief overview of Chaz and his presidency, the Miller Center has some fantastic resources and can be found at:  http://millercenter.org/president/arthur, also, whitehouse.gov (don't go to whitehouse.com, it's a porn site... well... check it out if you want to I guess...), and history.com have some great general info as well. 

• Chaz's contributions to the evolution of the American Constitution are written about in great detail by former Constitutional Law professor Michael J. Gerhardt in his serioulsy awesome book The Forgotten Presidents. 

• For further reading on the Mormons and the history of Mormonism in the US there are four books that are generally accepted as "good history" on the movement.  They are:

             Under The Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer (the book that I used in some of my research)
         No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith by Fawn M. Brodie
         The Mountain Meadows Massacre by Juanita Brooks (a descendent of one of the murderers)
         Blood of the Prophets by Will Bagley
 
*None of these are without their controversy.  But, these four are those that stick closest to the historical record, regardless of the authors' respective biases.  

• For further reading into the Mormon belief system, one can read the Book of Mormon (what Joseph Smith translated from the gold tablets) for free online at https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm?lang=eng.  There's also a list to The Doctrine and Covenants there, which are the direct teachings of Smith and Brigham Young. 

• The Church of Latter Day Saints has issued formal apologies regarding the Mountain Meadows Massacre, excerpts from which can be found on their website at https://www.lds.org/topics/mountain-meadows-massacre?lang=eng

• The wording of the 1875 Civil Rights Act that I quoted above was found at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/reconstruction/activism/ps_1875.html

• For further reading on Naval history and the switch to steel I highly suggest http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/navy-hub/navy-history/steel-steam.html

• For more info on why Chaz burned his personal papers, there's some nifty blogs out there if you Google "Arthur burned his papers".  Don't Google "Chaz".  I'm the only one that calls him that.   For now.... *Cue maniacal laughter*

• For a seriously kick ass version of "Son of a Preacher Man", I suggest Katey Sagal and the Forest Ranger's version, available on iTunes. 
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• Image credit goes to wikipedia.org