Who do you believe, The Boston Globe or Wikipedia? A couple of days ago, at work, I was talking to a couple of people who have school age children and whose children are expected to research subjects and report on them. They reported (they were all mothers, as you might imagine) that their children told them that Wikipedia was not acceptable to their teachers. But, is Wikipedia all that bad. Let us compare it to The Boston Globe.
In today's edition of The Boston Globe Reporter Michael Paulson has an article on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, noting that she is a Roman Catholic. What makes that interesting is that with her on the High Court, it would be six Catholics, two Jews and one Protestant.
Richard Howe has blogged on this giving it a regional historical spin.
The article in the print edition includes a very nice chart, showing the religious affiliations of all the Justices since the beginning. The only problem is, I don't think it properly categorizes Roger B Taney. No one remembers him any more, except the parents of children in an elementary school in Maryland, named after him.♠ A one time law partner of Francis Scott Key and married to Mr Key's sister, Chief Justice Taney had been in the Maryland Assembly and Senate and was the State's Attorney General. President Jackson made him the US Attorney General. He also served as Secretary of the Treasury and then on the US Supreme Court. Born into wealth, he granted manumission to his slaves and paid a small pension to those too old to work.
Chief Justice Taney is the person who swore in President Abraham Lincoln in 1861. He was also the one who wrote the Supreme Court ruling saying that President Lincoln couldn't suspend the ancient Writ of Habeas Corpus without the OK of Congress. The President ignored that ruling. And, he wrote the Dread Scott decision.
At any rate, Wikipedia says Chief Justice Taney was a Roman Catholic. The Boston Globe never mentions his name and while in the first sentence of the article there is mention of a Catholic justice 50 years after the ratification of the constitution, none is shown on the chart and this person is given no mention in the article.
I did give Reporter Paulson a head start. I sent him an EMail on this a couple of hours ago.
Regards — Cliff
♠ They are trying to get the name changed to one less offensive to them. My personal opinion is that they should first try to get the Jefferson Davis highway in Virginia renamed. President Davis, one of our less distinguished Democratic Presidents, deserves to have his name on nothing.
2 comments:
Cliff,
I'm on duty today and just showed a few people your point at the bottom about Jeff Davis nostalgia -- you've got some supporters here.
We (and by 'we' I mean the U.S. military) fought AGAINST the CSA from 1861 to 1865 at a tremendous cost of blood and treasure to uphold things that we (and now by 'we' I mean the entire U.S.A.) hold dear.
Call me a northern elitist with no sympathy for someone else's 'culture' or 'heritage' but
I would no sooner name things after King George, Kaiser Wilhelm, Benny Mussolini, or Manuel Noriega...yadda yadda yadda, you get the idea.
That having been said, nearly every major Army base we've got is named after a Confederate General, and I'm not exactly starting a protest campaign.
For the curious, Curtis Guild (definitely NOT a major base!) was a one-term Republican Gov. of Massachusetts who served in the state's volunteer militia, attaining the rank of Brigadier General in just 8 short years (thanks, Wiki).
best,
gp
Not every based is named after a Confederate General. We still have Fortress Monroe, in Hampton, VA (well, actually maybe Pheobus), but it is going soon. Fort Bliss, El Paso, Texas, is named after a Yankee, and once upon a time there was a Fort MacArthur, named after the father and not the son. I give you Fort Polk and Fort Lee on the Confederate side. Fort Knox is named after a man from Boston. There is a Fort McClellan, in Alabama, named for a Union General. Fort Leonard Wood, in Missouri, is named after a Harvard Med School grad who started as a contract doctor, won the Medal of Honor and ended up Army Chief of Staff.
There are too many with Confederate names, but the Union holds its own.
Regards — Cliff
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