justhistorystuff

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There’s actually some developing research on vampire belief in early (and 19th century) America, which is kinda cool. The latest known case IIRC, Mercy Brown, is the most famous, but the belief (technically nachzehrer) actually comes from German philosophy and medical/religious practice as a cure for tuberculosis (though it had nothing to do with religion in the States - that part was jettisoned in transfer).

Western Europeans wringing their hands about the immorality of cannibalism in distant cultures and then going home to eat human remains as a centuries-long commercial health fad is so darkly funny to me. Like how can you criticize funerary cannibalism rituals with the same mouth you use to eat the plundered corpses of an invaded nation.

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'I could hear a lot of words often repeated, queer words, for there were many nationalities in the crowd, so I quietly got my polyglot dictionary from my bag and looked them out. I must say they were not cheering to me, for amongst them were “Ordog”–Satan, “Pokol”–hell, “stregoica”–witch, “vrolok” and “vlkoslak”–both mean the same thing, one being Slovak and the other Servian for something that is either werewolf or vampire. (Mem., I must ask the Count about these superstitions.)'

-Bram Stoker, Dracula

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On This Day in History January 7, 1800: The 13th President of the United States Millard Fillmore (January 7, 1800 - March 8, 1874) was born in a log cabin in the the Finger Lakes country of New York near Buffalo.

Fillmore rose to the Presidency as he served as Vice President to Zachary Tayler. Taylor passed away on July 9, 1850. Upon taking office, Fillmore signed the Compromise of 1850, which was a series of five bills.

According to the article The Compromise of 1850 from ThoughtCo, here was what the five bills settled:

California was entered as a free state.

New Mexico and Utah were each allowed to use popular sovereignty to decide the issue of slavery. In other words, the people would pick whether the states would be free or slave.

The Republic of Texas gave up lands that it claimed in present day New Mexico and received $10 million to pay its debt to Mexico.

The slave trade was abolished in the District of Columbia.

The Fugitive Slave Act made any federal official who did not arrest a runaway slave liable to pay a fine. This was the most controversial part of the Compromise of 1850 and caused many abolitionists to increase their efforts against slavery.

Its believed by many that the Compromise of 1850 delayed the inevitable Civil War that would erupt between the free and slave states a decade later. 

Fillmore served as Chancellor to the University of Buffalo up to the time of his death on March 8, 1874.

 For Further Reading:

Millard Fillmore from White House.gov

Millard Fillmore from the MIller Center of the University of Virginia

Remembering the sins of Millard Fillmore by Carrole Emberton of the Washington Post dated January 5, 2018

Compromise of 1850 from the Library of Congress Primary Documents in American History website

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May 8, 1846 The Battle of Palo Alto begins the Mexican-American War.

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As I am. As I am. All or not at all.

Ulysses, James Joyce

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Proclamation of 1763

Great Britain perceived that one of the elements adding to Pontiac’s Rebellion had been the unchecked development of eager for land pilgrims into the region west of the Appalachian Mountains. England likewise understood that an arrangement was expected to build up the substantial territories won amid the war in a methodical way. Wanting to mollify the Indians while purchasing time to build up a long-run plan, King George III issued the Proclamation of l763. This regal declaration, issued on October 7, 1763, disallowed settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains. It likewise required pioneers who had moved west of the Appalachians to come back toward the eastern side of the mountains.

While the separating line set up by the declaration was never intended to be changeless, the announcement incensed the pioneers for various reasons. Pilgrims who had been compelled to escape their ranches west of the Appalachian Mountains amid the war found the declaration denied them from coming back to their previous properties. A large number of these pilgrims had battled for the British government amid the French and Indian War. They trusted the western grounds were one of the riches of war earned by their blood and felt deceived by the British government.

The Proclamation of 1763 additionally beset huge numbers of the wealthiest and most influential men in the settlements, on the grounds that a significant number of these men had put intensely in theoretical land organizations, for example, the Ohio Company (framed in 1747), the Loyal Company (shaped in 1749), and the Mississippi Company (shaped in 1763). These organizations would have liked to make cash by getting title to vast tracts of western land from the British government and exchanging the land to pilgrims as they moved over the Appalachian Mountains.

A portion of the men who put resources into these organizations was George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, and Arthur Lee of Virginia and Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania. Helpless to acquire a title for the land from the British government, the land organizations couldn’t make deals. In spite of the fact that specialists of the organizations were sent to London to contend for the benefit of the land organizations, the British government would not invert its position. While new bargains between the Indians and British specialists opened up huge tracts for advancement decently fast after the war, the land organizations did not recoup. The well off men who had put resources into these organizations endured noteworthy monetary misfortunes. These misfortunes would be recollected in the years paving the way to the American Revolution.

-Brian Carroll CWU

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Is it the road to wonderland?

-Alicante, Spain-

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Emperor Hadrian

Galleria Borghese, Rome

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Sooo … I’m not very good at this, but I built a website for someone and this is what it’s about. I think it’s pretty cool research, but if you have any tips on how to make less-terrible Wordpress sites, ye gods am I all ears. For a bunch of reasons, I’m really trying to make this not suck.

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How Tonto Became Mr. T: The A-Team and the Transformation of the Western in Post-Vietnam America, by Anna F. Peppard

Abstract: The plot of The A-Team is straightforward and repetitive: fugitives from the government for a crime they did not commit, members of a former Vietnam War special-forces unit roam America as mercenaries, using over the-top, cartoonish violence to protect small business owners from exploitation. The team’s positioning as roving gunslingers using interventionist violence to regenerate ideal communities directly references the Western. However, while the self-reflexive artificiality of the team’s violence ridicules the Western, the righteousness of the team’s perpetual success paradoxically embraces it. This paper argues that The A-Team challenges the Western only as a means to reaffirm it, negotiating post-Vietnam American society’s conflicting desires to reject and recuperate the past—in this case, the myth of “regeneration through violence” that Richard Slotkin argues underpins both the Western and America’s national identity.

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So this is pretty dope.

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Medical vampirism!

such  cool phenomenon studied by michael bell, folklorist, and brian carroll, historian. looking forward to reading more https://medicalvampirism.com/

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Between 1981 and 1985, the intentional community of Rajneeshpuram near Antelope, Oregon, hosted up to 15,000 followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, a spiritual leader from Pune, India. In this essay, Carl Abbott examines the rise and fall of Rajneeshpuram within the context of western history, which “centers on the processes of migration, settlement, displacement, and rearrangement.” Drawing parallels to earlier religious closed communities, such nineteenth century Mormon settlements, Abbott describes how Rajneeshees fit into the “overarching storylines of frontier utopias and the…narrative of settler colonialism.” Unlike Mormon communities, however, Abbott concludes that Rajneeshpuram ultimately failed because its leaders were not willing to compromise community goals when faced with larger state regulatory systems.

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Savages in the Service of Empire chronicles Gorham's Rangers' operations in the war-torn borderlands of the colonial northeast during the mid-eighteenth century and positions the unit within larger historical debates over the evolution of a uniquely American way of war during the era, characterized by guerilla warfare and extreme forms of interracial frontier violence.  The colonial officers along with the mostly Wampanoag rank and file members of the unit together fashioned a way of fighting that drew on both European and Native precedents, as well as the personal experiences of many of its members in the early whaling industry on Cape Cod, and tailored it to the exigencies of imperial frontier warfare.   In the process they helped revolutionize Euro-American tactics during the French and Indian Wars and served as the model for subsequent frontier ranger units.