Comments about technological history, system fractures, and human resilience from James R. Chiles, the author of Inviting Disaster: Lessons from the Edge of Technology (HarperBusiness 2001; paperback 2002) and The God Machine: From Boomerangs to Black Hawks, the Story of the Helicopter (Random House, 2007, paperback 2008)

Saturday, December 23, 2017

Tales of the Chopper: Mind that tail rotor

Feature writing on technology has taken me to a lot of strange places. One was riding aboard a Hughes 500 with a very skilled crew, working alongside a live high-voltage power line in Pennsylvania. Here's my article:

https://www.airspacemag.com/flight-today/high-tension-1946706/

Here's what these jobs look like:


It was soon clear why this job was so demanding for the pilot. It wasn't just that the helo had to hover a few feet from the line, or that the altitude was so low that an engine failure would have certainly ended in a crash. That's because a safe engine-off auto-rotation is impossible in such a situation. 

The biggest risk was the fact that the tail rotor was on the same side of the ship as the power line. A pilot error that brought the tail rotor against the cable would destroy the rotor instantly, putting the ship into a spin followed by a crash.

I spent quite a bit of time on the humble tail rotor's history and purpose in my helicopter book, The God Machine, because the tail rotor may seem like some kind of appendage rather than a crucial, delicate component. It's essential to the most common type of helicopter, the single-main-rotor design, because it counters the powerful torque from the main rotor.

A reminder of how this noisy little device needs a high level of respect comes in a new report from Canada's Transportation Safety Board. The most likely reason that a helicopter carrying a powerline-maintenance crew for Hydro One crashed in Ontario this month, killing all four aboard, was because an unsecured tool bag came loose from the work platform and rammed the tail rotor:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/tsb-update-dec-21-fatal-helicopter-crash-1.4460319

Here's a side-by-side from the TSB, tool bag on the left and tail-rotor blade on the right:


So, helo passengers, pay attention to that safety briefing! Even lightweight objects can tangle and destroy a tail rotor, like a jacket flying out a side door. 

Heavy haulers at the Amtrak derailment site

Thinking about the Amtrak derailment at DuPont, Washington, last week. The latest information suggests the engineer took the train into a very tight curve at much too high a speed. When he did operate the emergency brakes, (allegedly) it was far too late. 



https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/amtrak-train-s-crew-noted-high-speed-just-crash-ntsb-n832156

In the first days, before NTSB's initial reports were available, news outlets looking for an angle described the extreme challenge of moving the locomotive that had bulldozed its way onto the interstate, because it was so heavy.

Actually, not that heavy, at 135 tons. The capabilities of derailment contractors, specialized riggers, and heavy haulers are, in a word, awesome. It's just that we don't often see such equipment in the news feeds. In this post I wrote about strand jacks:

http://disaster-wise.blogspot.com/2013/04/strand-jacks-pulling-for-you_24.html

In this post, about how re-railing crews work:

http://disaster-wise.blogspot.com/2010/09/from-derail-to-re-rail.html

A few years ago I asked an engineer at Hulcher, a company specializing in re-railing, the most challenging problem his crews faced: he described a jumble of derailed locomotives at the bottom of a steep valley, where a tall railroad bridge offered the only access. That setting is difficult because wrecking cranes, which have the horsepower to pull about anything, can't spread their stabilizers. 

Here's the website of Oxbo Mega Transport, the Oregon company that hauled the engine from the interstate:

http://www.oxboinc.com/

A good local article about the difficulties of a rapid, specialized move:

https://www.thechronicleonline.com/news_paid/columbia-county-company-vital-to-amtrak-crash-cleanup/article_17725cf2-e779-11e7-b4ce-eb20c51ca6bc.html

Here's the rig. Oxbo started with a short but massive trailer used for hauling transformers up to 300 tons in weight, then lengthened and lowered it to allow the load under bridges:



Here's the rig rounding a curve - slowly!



So the job at DuPont was challenging, but no means the biggest for Oxbo. Here's one of the company's bigger jobs - note the many axles in use:



Here's the best image I could find showing the two hydraulic cranes used for the lift.



While this picture doesn't show clearly what the Liebherr in the foreground is picking up, note the stacked counterweights - indicating it's rigged for a long-reach lift, or a heavy load.

A more typical loco-lift involves sideboom tractors working together, like this:



Thinking about the initial puzzlement and pessimism in early reports - "How could anybody clear such a mess in a few days?" - it's not surprising. We live in a consumer-oriented time, with a tight focus on affordable, high-performance gadgets that are car-size or smaller. Spending for passenger rail quality, such as Positive Train Control, is just not entertaining enough. 

Meanwhile, the unseen hardware necessary to drive our consumocracy - transport, factories, generators, and mineral recovery - is getting bigger and greatly more complex. So it's not surprising that general-interest reporters are years behind in estimating the capabilities of heavy industry. 

Monday, July 17, 2017

Voter turnout: Boosting participation the American way

Problem: American voter turnout is abysmal, trailing most Western democracies. (Photo: Nick Cote for NYT).



And it's worse in off-year elections. So ... How about a competition between states in two categories, measured by success in voter turnout in the 2018 off-year federal election?

Such a contest taps into one of many neglected lessons from the mobilization to win World War 2: Namely, the record-breaking achievement of building and launching a Liberty ship in less than five days, due in part to Henry Kaiser's use of athletic-style competitions between shipyards.



Categories: One would be the highest turnout of eligible adults. The other category would be states showing the best improvement compared to the most recent off-year election, 2014 in this case.

Prizes: All states that signed up to compete would, at the outset, agree to support the two winners in pushing for them to be “first primary state” and “first caucus state” in an upcoming presidential election. If primary planning is already too far along to dislodge Iowa and New Hampshire in 2020, the two winners would wait until the 2024 election cycle.

Which of the two winners is promoted for the first primary, and which the first caucus? Perhaps a coin toss between the two winners would decide that. In any case they're certain to have a battle on their hands with Iowa and New Hampshire.

Who'd enter? States (and perhaps US territories!) that'd like a chance to receive -- just once -- the special attention that goes to “first primary” and “first caucus” states.

Let me know what you think!

Sunday, April 2, 2017

Crisis on the K13: World's first technical-innovation rescue (1917)

For a recent speaking engagement, wanting to feature a high-performance team in action, I devoted the second half of my talk to the emergency aboard the British steam-powered submarine K13. This year is the hundredth anniversary.

Here's a PDF of that section of my PowerPoint

Quick thinking, persistence, and mechanical innovation spanning less than 48 hours saved a majority of the crew from the sunken craft, which had quickly filled with smoke from electrical fires and then was slowly filling with seawater from leaks through bulkheads. Here's a drawing from a survivor, showing the huge sub's position after sinking:


As far as I know, the rescue in the Gareloch was the first "Apollo-13-style" effort in history, seeing mechanical innovation under great time pressure. Some noteworthy rescues preceded this event (from train wrecks, mine collapses, and building fires), but didn't feature the on-the-spot techno-creativity demonstrated here. 

Friday, March 31, 2017

I-85 Collapse and the Pipe Question: Using Google's Street View

In addition to the helpful locational data from Wiki, Google's street view might shed some light on early reports that "PVC pipe" caught fire under I-85 in Atlanta. While the images I located are no more recent than 2016, if the same material was stored there yesterday, it looks more like reels of HDPE utility pipe, perhaps for gas line replacement. 

Here's the side view, at this location and under the I-85 bridge, from Google's map app, dated 2016:


Here's the section that collapsed, from Fox 40:


Here's a closer snip of the Fox 40 aerial. In the center of the image is what looks a lot like a hose reel:


Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Tension on the North Korean Border: August 1976

Adding a bit to the discussions about North Korea. You may have seen a recent long-form piece in the Atlantic about the the DPRK's checkered past, “A History of North Korean Misadventures”:

The piece is worth reading, but I was surprised that in the article's list of news-making provocations, there was no mention of the 1976 “tree-trimming” incident in the Joint Security Area that separates North and South. It's worth mentioning because it was one of the very few times, perhaps the only time since the Korean War, when the US called the DPRK's bluff. We didn't shoot back, but we were locked and loaded to do so. 

Following is my description of what happened, excerpted from my “Go to DEFCON 3” article. I interviewed Army and USAF vets who were part of the face-off. The men I talked to said the American bombers that took flight were not carrying bombs, but I got the distinct impression that the next wave off the ground would have done so if North Korea had opposed our countermove that day.  

=======

Defense Conditions, or DEFCONs, can be focused more narrowly than the more famous, and rare, “Worldwide, no exceptions” scope. The Joint Chiefs and White House can order DEFCON changes that are specific to one arm of the military or to a geographic command during a crisis.

A vivid example of the latter occurred in August 1976, when U.S. Forces–Korea bumped up to DEFCON 3 at the direction of the Ford White House. The preparations pulled in an armada of B-52s from Guam, fighter-bombers from the USS Midway carrier group, F-111Fs from Idaho, and F-4 Phantoms from as far away as Florida. Events moved very quickly, and received little press attention outside Korea.

The 1976 DEFCON hike that centered on the Korean DMZ was different not just because of its geographic focus, but also because it had a specific military action in mind. According to Air Force historian Jerome Martin, the 1976 Korean crisis “was an interesting event in which the DEFCON change did the two things that are normally expected: It improved the readiness of the forces that might be employed, and provided a strong signal of U.S. concern and potential intent to act militarily.”

The visible effects of shifting from DEFCON 4 to 3 included increased SR-71 reconnaissance flights and hundreds of trucks moving artillery and ammunition to fortified bunkers near the DMZ. Nike-Hercules missile bases there shifted from air defense to ground targeting: Their job would be to destroy North Korean radar sites.

The most dramatic moments of the event were crammed into less than 72 hours. The crisis started late in the morning of August 18 (Korea time) and was mostly resolved by 8 a.m. on August 21. It ranks as one of the fastest developing, most obscure DEFCON alerts ever authorized by the National Command Authority.

The cause of the crisis was a tree. It stood in the Joint Security Area, a roughly circular patch of buildings, roads, and observation posts near Panmunjom that was patrolled by the North Korean People’s Army and United Nations Command. The UN Command was staffed by elite troops from the South Korean and U.S. armies, selected for size, toughness, and discipline. Each side kept hundreds of heavily armed troops in barracks a short distance away to respond to firefights, but in the JSA itself, UN and North Korean troops were banned from carrying weapons more powerful than sidearms.

Geographically, the JSA was a small but important part of the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea; it was the location of the Bridge of No Return, where prisoners were exchanged. Also crowded into the river valley were buildings for meetings and a set of observation posts for each side to watch the other. While the JSA was supposed to be a peaceful, neutral zone for resolving disagreements, harassment attacks on isolated troops were on the rise—sometimes brutal enough to send men to the hospital—so in mid-August, officers in the UN Command decided that because a large poplar tree blocked a view between guard posts in the JSA, it needed a trim.

Following notifications to the North Koreans, on the morning of August 18, a work team of Americans and South Koreans arrived at the tree and prepared to begin work. Minutes later, dozens of North Koreans arrived to confront the team. Then, on command from a sergeant, they attacked with axes. The fight was over in minutes; although no shots were fired, two American officers lay dead.



The UN Command evacuated the casualties; the question was how to respond. It was the latest in a long line of outrages: The North Koreans had shot down a U.S. intelligence-gathering airplane (1969), captured the USS Pueblo from international waters (1968) and held the crew hostage, and tried to assassinate South Korean President Park Chung-hee (also 1968).

In command of U.S. Forces–Korea was General Richard Stilwell, who notified Washington of the attack. Intense discussions opened between Stilwell’s headquarters, the Kissinger-led crisis team called the Washington Special Actions Group, and President Park. Nobody knew the North Korean motive for the violence, but agreed that orders must have come from the supreme commander, Kim Il-Sung. North Korea was already sending out communiques blaming the Americans for the melee, but the propaganda was being disputed by American photographs that documented the entire fight.

Whatever the enemy reasoning, South Korea and U.S. leaders wanted to push back quickly. The North had taken no hostages during the attack, so the United States had more freedom of action than it had during the Pueblo crisis. The planning moved in a matter of hours rather than days. Air-attack advocates suggested that the United States blow up the tree, perhaps with a precision-guided bomb called the GBU-15 (a new weapon, not officially in use), which could convert the tree into toothpicks while other U.S. airplanes attacked targets inside North Korea. This group figured that a second try at trimming the tree would send men into a deathtrap, where zeroed-in North Korean artillery and machine guns would kill them all in seconds. Deputy Secretary of Defense William Clements was one of these who feared a trap. Some pressed for naval action to sink North Korean ships, or flatten harbor facilities.

The ground approach, pressed by Stilwell and his staff, reasoned that the tree stood as a symbol of the North’s intransigence, and had to be taken out by infantry action as a sign of resolve. An early-morning action backed by air support would, Stilwell believed, finish the job before the North Koreans could act.

President Park suggested to Stilwell that the North Koreans be given plenty of notice before a second tree-trimming squad went in. Then, when the North Korean troops stormed into the JSA to attack a second time, they would be met by 50 “expert Tae-Kwan-Do artists” from the nation’s special forces, who would deliver a “sound thrashing” to the enemy. Once captured on film like a Hong Kong action movie, Park felt, the slugfest would put an end to more such outrages.

Washington endorsed the Stilwell plan: With minimal notice to the North, lightly armed troops would enter the JSA at the soonest opportunity and begin sawing branches off the tree. This would serve the “You can’t scare us” goal, but not if the men were wiped out in a North Korean counterattack first. Therefore, just south of the demilitarized zone, a surplus of airborne troops, artillery, missile batteries, and airpower (attack and troop helicopters, F-111F bombers, F-4s and F-5s, and A-6s from the Midway) would be standing by. Careful timing was critical: At exactly the same time the North Koreans learned of the tree job, their radar should be reporting waves of American warplanes. In case opposition on the ground would block the tree-trimming crew, F-4Es flown all the way from Eglin Air Force Base in Florida to Osan Air Base, Korea, would be available to drop GBU-15s.

Air Force Captain David Ladurini of the 4485th Test Squadron saw how urgent these preparations were. When he arrived in New Orleans during a vacation with his parents, shortly after the attack, a hotel clerk greeted him: “Ladurini party? The FBI and your squadron commander are looking for you.” The FBI drove him to the airport so he could catch the next flight back to Florida. Having arrived at Eglin, Ladurini told the officer who met him that he needed to go get his gear. No need, said the officer: They had already broken into his house, so he was all packed. Next stop: Korea. Hustled onto a C-141 transport, Ladurini arrived at Osan early the next morning.

By August 20, the mood among the UNC troops and the 2nd Infantry Division was an ugly mix of fear, fury, and impatience. Having been given the warning order about action the following morning, they trained through the night. Wayne Johnson was the driver for an infantry captain, and while taking shelter from a rainstorm, had the chance to listen to a briefing that night. According to Johnson, an officer asked what would happen to the infantry company A-2-9 if the North Koreans started firing at them. The briefer took his chalk and marked a big X through the unit’s name.

Infantryman Mike Bilbo was among the UN Command troops who manned the JSA, and who would help protect the tree-trimmers from attack. If shooting began, the troops in the vicinity of the tree would be killed in short order, probably shredded by proximity-fused artillery set to explode a few dozen feet above the ground. Preparations were under way to the south, placing demolition charges that could destroy North Korean armor and block roads.

Johnson recalls that a thick layer of fog blocked his view of the sky, and shortly before the jumping-off hour he felt “bummed out” because he wouldn’t get to see the sunrise on his last day.

According to Glenn Burchard, a radar navigator in a B-52D, those in the first wave had only a half-day of preparation at Andersen Air Force Base. But they managed to send up at least a dozen bombers in support of Operation Paul Bunyan, leaving behind only those aircraft that were under repair or standing strategic alert under SAC’s routine nuclear war plan. After six or seven hours of flight, Burchard’s airplane reached South Korea, then angled north. “We flew straight north as far as we could go, and still be able to turn around before crossing the border,” he says. On the final leg his bomber flew barely 500 feet above the ground, a tactic that crews were familiar with, since it was how such airplanes would have tried to penetrate Soviet defenses when fighting a nuclear war. But notwithstanding rumors that passed among the troops below, the B-52Ds arriving from Andersen carried no bombs, conventional or otherwise. Burchard says this made sense because the purpose was to make a point to the North Koreans: massive firepower was available, and it would have taken extra hours to bomb up the airplanes.

In the end, Operation Paul Bunyan—conceived in a day and hastily executed in two days, the brainchild of officers in Korea but supported by leaders in Washington—met all expectations.

Dozens of deuce-and-a-half trucks rushed men of Task Force Vierra into the zone. Guards leapt from the trucks holding ax handles and formed a cordon around the engineers as they hacked with chain saws at the poplar tree; alongside the Americans were 50 of the Korean black belts, eager for some action. (According to the recollections, guards had more weapons available than sidearms and sticks: Although automatic weapons were banned in the JSA, the beds of trucks held plenty of M-16s and spare magazines, all tucked discreetly under sandbags.) In a few minutes, the tree was reduced to a stump. Troops hustled into the trucks, without any shots having been fired, or anyone injured.

David Ladurini would have been weapons system operator on the F-4E that was armed and scheduled to join the fray, but given the peaceful outcome, his airplane stayed on strip alert at Osan. Whether the early morning start caught the Koreans off guard, or the heavy air escort cowed them into submission, the North Koreans stood by as the limbs fell. One leader even offered a near apology later.

One of those happy people on the tree-trimming job was Mike Bilbo. Reflecting back, Bilbo says the “Mad Dog” Platoon he served with “may have brought some of it on ourselves”—by baiting the North Korean guards and sometimes beating them up—“but that was the nature of the place.”

The same could be said of the entire cold war: Risks were taken and brinks were edged, all in the cause of keeping the peace.

Friday, March 3, 2017

Sully, the Movie, and the National Transportation Safety Board

The National Transportation Safety Board is never far from the news, given its broad jurisdiction over moving-vehicle mishaps in the civilian sector. Here's a link to its update on the uncontained engine failure at O'Hare last October, an event of some concern given the rarity (no docket is posted yet):
     http://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/pr20161104.aspx
    
The Board's methods (complete with fictional figures) were portrayed in the movie Sully as a witch hunt attempting to find fault on the flight deck.
     http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/sully/

But anyone familiar with NTSB procedures know that Captain Chesley Sullenberger wasn't being set up. Yes, the real Board did dig deeply into whether he could have flown the airplane back to the airport. It wasn't to look for someone to blame, but for lessons to share. 

Here's the report:
https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/AAR1003.pdf

Here's the accident docket: 
https://dms.ntsb.gov/pubdms/search/hitlist.cfm?docketID=47230&CFID=987854&CFTOKEN=e8b7e6c256e87759-DE4994D4-C8A5-68E4-33C3DB0504090812

Here's a sample document from the docket, concerning the quick reference handbook that's referenced in the movie: 
https://dms.ntsb.gov/public/47000-47499/47230/419009.pdf

During the fifteen months between the ditching and the final report, simulator trials showed it would have been barely possible to get back to the airport, but only if the crew had executed the return without any pause to sort out what had happened. (Illustration from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549)

As the Board freely acknowledged, the return-to-airport scenario would have required perfect and instantaneous knowledge. In real emergencies, a crew must take time to stabilize the system, figure out what's happened, look at their options, reach a decision, communicate, assign duties, and execute. Short-cutting any of these steps is a fast way to disaster. 

And as the crew knew, attempting a return to the originating airport after engine failure during early climbout is, in most cases, a bad idea. It's why pilots call it the Impossible Maneuver. Flight 1549's crew made the right choice, but the Board wanted to look at all the angles, and in particular whether training and manuals were of any help. 

Anybody who's familiar with transports, as the Board is, would know what splendid airmanship the crew performed that day. For one thing, even a slight bank at the time of ditching would have sent the Airbus into a cartwheeling crash, because the big turbofans act like brakes when hitting the water.

The Board's interviews can be tough and pointed in some cases, but that's what fact-finding is like - sorry! 

For a real grilling, go in front of a murder board. That's a group of experts who do everything they can to find gaps in a plan such as a special-operations mission.

I was at the Board's offices in Washington last year and had a chance to see a bit of the process of mustering a go-team process. I had finished up a talk to the Board members and staff on what I call the Narcissistic Risk-Taking Leader, and was talking with Chairman Christopher Hart by his assistant's desk. 

At that point one of the staff came in to report a Greyhound bus had crashed in San Jose, with fatalities. They checked the schedule for which member was on call, and a go-team was assembled. Chairman Hart did take the time to walk me out of the complex, which isn't easy to get around. 





Wednesday, January 11, 2017

Life in the Early Congress, Part Two: "The most contemptible and degraded of beings"

In honor of the new political season, I'm reprinting an article I wrote for Smithsonian in 1995:
    http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/congress-couldnt-have-been-this-bad-or-could-it-1-36911219/

The first part is here:
     http://disaster-wise.blogspot.com/2017/01/life-in-early-congress-part-one-every.html


The camaraderie of boardinghouse life mattered enormously, because for decades there were few respectable things to do in Washington at night. Social life picked up over the years--and so did the social reputation of politicians, particularly members of the House, who were initially snubbed as yokels by such few Washington hostesses as there were. (Senators, always more staid than Congressmen, got a bit more respect.) But for years, by far the biggest nighttime diversion was cards--whist, faro and brag--played at those boardinghouses whose rules permitted it. One unhappy Congressman reported losing $3,500--more than a year's salary circa 1856--in a single evening.

Whenever they really got fed up, Congressmen agitated to move the nation's capital (it had been moved twice already), claiming that anywhere would be better than Washington in summer. During an early debate on the question of moving the capital, when citizens opposing the move turned up in the gallery, Senator James Jackson of Georgia threatened to call in the military and have them all shot. Threats of violence, however, were usually directed at other Congressmen. The House, particularly, was rough and raucous. The chamber's high, elliptical ceiling echoed and amplified every stray sound, from mild chatter and rustling newspapers to shouts. With all the noise, it was said at the time, no more than one-third of the members had any idea what was going on. With little chance, compared with today, of being instantly heard, either by colleagues or constituents, some members saw no need to curb their language. According to Augustus Foster, aide to England's minister to the United States, to "judge from their Congress, one should suppose the nation to be the most blackguard society that was ever brought together."

Whether they acted well or badly, Congressmen didn't expect to stay around very long. There were no term limits, but voters, then as now, were a fickle lot. More important, before the great increase in federal power that set in after FDR and World War II, much of the political action was back in the state capitals. During the first four decades of Congress' existence, 41 percent of the House, on average, dropped out every two years.

Even so, both houses had their share of memorable and often contentious characters, some short-run, many very long-run indeed. A relative short-runner was Davy Crockett, "fresh from the backwoods, half-horse, half-alligator," who served as Representative from Tennessee for three terms. This portrait by John Gadsby Chapman: 



Starting in 1827, Crockett made quite an impression, but he never managed to pass the bill he cared about, opening government land in Tennessee to poor settlers. After losing his seat in 1835 Crockett told voters they could all go to hell. For his part, he was going to Texas (where he died--at the Alamo--within a year).

South Carolina's John C. Calhoun had been in the House for five years when, in 1816, Congress voted to give itself a substantial pay increase. The public was outraged, so the next year the measure was reversed. Calhoun, who predicted that men of high caliber would no longer seek Congressional office if salaries were not raised to equal or exceed those of Presidential appointees, resigned --to take on the higher-paying job of Secretary of War. Eventually, though, he returned to Congress, becoming one of those men who spent entire careers--or significant chunks of them--on Capitol Hill. After serving as Vice President from 1825 to 1832 under both John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, Calhoun went to the Senate, and remained there, minus one year as Secretary of State to President John Tyler, until his death in 1850.

Daniel Webster, the renowned legal orator who could outwit the Devil himself, chose not to run in 1816. Seven years later, he was reelected to the House, went on to a seat in the Senate, where--despite being famously eloquent on the subjects of the sacredness of the Union and the need for abolition--he remained, off and on (mostly on), until 1850.

Calhoun's and Webster's careers resemble those of today's Congressional stars--rising from the House to the Senate or positions in the Cabinet--but their careers were unusual for their time. Today, most Senators voted out of office would sooner retire from politics than run for a seat in the lower house. But back then, the House of Representatives was where the real political power in Washington lay, and there were no high-paying lobbying firms, consulting groups or think tanks to absorb out-of-work politicians.


A spectacular example was John Quincy Adams, who got himself elected to the House after leaving the Presidency in 1829. Adams, a great public servant and defender of the citizen's right of petition, was appalled when, in 1836, Congress imposed a ban on the reading of abolitionist petitions--or any petition regarding slavery--in session. In protest, for nine years running, Adams opened each new session by reading aloud petitions he had received on the issue. "Nothing daunts him," said an observer at the time; "the House may ring with the cries of 'Order, order!'--unmoved, contemptuous, he stands amid the tempest, and, like an oak that knows his gnarled and knotted strength, stretches his arms forth, and defies the blast." Adams' dramatic brand of civil disobedience led to the repeal of the gag rule in 1844.

John Randolph of Virginia, another career Congressman, also took full advantage of his freedom of speech. Tall and pale, with black hair, Randolph dressed in buckskin riding clothes, carried a riding crop and often strode into the House with one or two hunting dogs at heel. But what truly distinguished him was his savage wit. He had a habit of pointing an index finger like grim Death while hurling remarks at adversaries. He once described a colleague as "the most contemptible and degraded of beings, whom no man ought to touch, unless with a pair of tongs."

First elected to Congress in 1799, Randolph was a brilliant orator, a strong defender of states' rights and a political maverick, holding seats in the House or Senate for most of the years until his death in 1833. Eventually, his language grew so sarcastic and abusive that many Senators simply left the chamber when he was speaking.

The one man in Congress who could control Randolph, it was believed, was Henry Clay of Kentucky, the "Western Star," who was elected Speaker by his colleagues on his very first day in the House in 1811. He served in that office for six terms--the longest tenure as Speaker of the House in the 19th century--his popularity due in part to his ability to squelch Randolph. 

The Clay-Randolph feud began in 1812, when Clay refused to entertain Randolph's resolution against the declaration of war. In 1820, after the House approved the Missouri Compromise--which temporarily helped maintain a balance between slave and free states--Clay again thwarted Randolph, this time refusing his motion to reconsider the bill. Not that Clay thought the action would change the vote--he simply didn't want to give Randolph the satisfaction of seeming to control the business of the House. At every turn, the two men butted heads. In 1826, they finally faced off in a duel.

Randolph--who despised Clay, but also secretly admired him--accepted Clay's challenge, declaring that he preferred "to be killed by Clay to any other death." But after two volleys, with the only injury a hole drilled through Randolph's flowing white coat, the two shook hands. ("You owe me a coat, Mr. Clay," Randolph said, to which Clay--then the Secretary of State--replied, "I am glad the debt is no greater.") It was, according to Senator Thomas Hart Benton (who had taken part in a few duels himself), "about the last high-toned duel that I have witnessed."

    http://blogs.weta.org/boundarystones/2013/09/04/guys-trying-get-themselves-killed-john-randolph-and-henry-clay

We think of duels as being fought with pistols or swords, but at least one Congressional duel was fought with rifles at a distance of 100 yards. After this particularly tragic encounter, dueling was outlawed in the capital. In 1838 Jonathan Cilley, a freshman Democratic Representative from Maine, made some comments in session that offended another first-termer, Whig William Graves of Kentucky. As was the custom, Graves challenged Cilley to a duel. The whole matter might have ended with everyone's honor and health intact, had it not been for a Tyler Democrat named Henry A. Wise, who represented the state of Virginia.

A fiery defender of slavery, Wise--who later, as governor of Virginia, would have John Brown hanged--was, by all accounts, an angry, abrasive fellow. According to Benjamin Brown French, the Clerk of the House, Wise had "shot his former friend, Coke, through the arm, in a duel. His wife and brother have died, his house has been burned, he has been either a principal, or second, in three duels, in each of which blood has been shed."

Wise was even more riled up by Cilley's comments than was Representative Graves, and offered to serve as second to Graves, encouraging him to "kill that damned Yankee." On February 24, 1838, the two contestants met on the old dueling grounds in nearby Bladensburg, Maryland. Each took two shots at a distance of 100 yards. Both missed. That would have satisfied honor had not Wise insisted the duel continue. On the next round, Graves killed Cilley.

Congress, and the public, were shocked. The newspapers made much of Wise's murderous role. The next year, Congress passed a law banning the giving, delivering or accepting of a challenge to a duel in the District of Columbia.

Over the next ten years, Congress continued to lose its insularity. In 1848 a telegraphic network called the Associated Press began flashing accounts to newspapers all over the Eastern Seaboard. A few years later, the new Pitman system of speed stenography allowed Capitol Hill reporters to capture every word of Congressional debate. Transport and accommodations improved. Wives and families came to Washington, and a whole new, somewhat more decorous, social life expanded. The boardinghouse life was fading. By 1850, less than half of the Senators still lodged in the old communal fashion.

Despite all the altercations, the early Congresses managed to cover a considerable amount of legislative ground, ranging from what paintings should hang in the Rotunda to a tariff on imported pasta to the construction of a national road (from Maryland to Illinois) to the settlement of international boundary disputes with Spain and Britain. Congress also brought increasing order to its dealings in the form of a growing body of precedents, committees and subcommittees--during a period when the country, and its Congress, more than doubled in size and complexity.

Yet the ire of the men Dickens called "desperate adventurers" did not fade, especially as the struggle over the ratio of new slave states to free states began to burn hotter still. During debates on the Compromise of 1850--through which Congress hoped to avoid civil war--Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, who favored compromise, advanced in a rage on Senator Henry S. Foote of Mississippi. Foote pulled out a big pistol. Benton, safely restrained by his colleagues, shouted, "Let him fire!. . . I have no pistol! I disdain to carry arms! Stand out of the way, and let the assassin fire!" One Senator said that during the stressful 1850s the only members not carrying a knife and a revolver were those carrying two revolvers.

The Compromise--an attempt to resolve disputes over slavery in the Western territories lately gained in the Mexican War--allowed Congress to avoid the issue for several years, but in the end, it did not work. Six years after its passage, Representative Brooks brutally beat abolitionist Senator Sumner. It took three and a half years for Sumner to recover fully, and by then, the country was on the brink of civil war.

Monday, January 2, 2017

Life in the Early Congress, Part One: "Every Bad Inclination"

In honor of the new political season, I'm reprinting an article I wrote for Smithsonian in 1995:
    http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/congress-couldnt-have-been-this-bad-or-could-it-1-36911219/

When Charles Dickens visited the U.S. Congress in 1842, he found "some men of high character and great abilities." But many, the noted English novelist reported, practiced "despicable trickery at elections; underhanded tamperings with public officers; cowardly attacks upon opponents," not to mention "aidings and abettings of every bad inclination in the popular mind."

During his visit, Dickens heard one Congressman threaten to cut another's throat, and was surprised that the House did nothing to discipline the scoundrel. "There he sat among them," the stunned novelist wrote, "not crushed by the general feeling of the assembly--but as good a man as any."

Members of the House, Dickens also noted, sat at their desks with their feet propped up, lavishly spitting tobacco juice. "Both houses are handsomely carpeted; but the state to which these carpets are reduced by the universal disregard of the spittoon . . . do not admit of being described." Strangers, he continued, should be wary of picking up any article from the floor "with an ungloved hand."

Anyone inclined to dismiss Dickens as a snobbish and sarcastic Briton with heightened powers of description need only consult other local sources. In 1837, according to a contemporary newspaper reporter, you could easily slip on the "disgusting compound of tobacco juice, wafers and sand" that coated the floor of the House of Representatives. Young messengers often slid down the aisles on the loose papers that accumulated there. "Not all the soap and scrubbing-brushes in Christendom," the reporter' wrote of the chamber, "would make it fit for a peasant's hut."

It was at about this time, too, that the House found itself reduced to fining members who missed roll call. To avoid the $2 fine, some Honorable Members were not above scooting in through open windows or sliding down columns from the gallery.

Indeed, voters who share the current dissatisfaction with the goings-on of the people's representatives on Capitol Hill, or deplore the current levels of partisanship in American politics, should take a measure of comfort from a look at how things used to be in the good old days.

In the first half of the 19th century, members of Congress, untroubled by the relentless gaze of C-SPAN, were not under the direct scrutiny of the public eye. Like many Americans in a rough-and-tumble new nation, they indulged in bad manners, unruly behavior and sometimes outright violence. Long before Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina beat Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts into unconsciousness in a celebrated 1856 dispute over slavery, Congressmen regularly attacked one another--with words and, on occasion, weapons.

There was much to get violent about. Every time a new territory clamored for statehood, it threatened the balance of Congressional power between the various rival regions (East versus West, North versus South) and eventually between slave states and free states. Congressmen battled tooth and nail over tariffs--the federal government's main source of income--which helped the commercial Northeast at the expense of the agricultural South, and gave more power to the federal government than the states' rights followers of Thomas Jefferson thought tolerable.

Long before the Civil War, South Carolina talked hotly of nullifying the Constitution on this issue, even of outright secession from the Union. The question of whether or not to have a national bank sundered state from state and brother from brother at a time when many Americans still thought lending money at interest was not only unchristian but akin to theft. And farmers (circa 1830, about 70 percent of the population) just knew that people who didn't plant and harvest--that is, urban stock-jobbers and Northern money men--were not to be trusted.

A good deal of Congressional exacerbation had to do with conditions in the nation's new capital, a muggy, barren spot regarded for years as a provincial and unhealthy outpost by the diplomatic corps of European nations. For decades the capital city seemed raw and only half-built, with weed-choked bare lots and streets of yellow clay. To keep carriages from thundering in heavy rains, logs had to be thrown into the deepest mud holes of Washington's unpaved roads. One Representative who ventured out at night for a social visit in 1818 complained that he slipped into gutters, fell over dirt piles and tripped over bricks and barrels--because the District of Columbia, then as now, fiscally feckless, hadn't supplied the streetlamps with fuel. Hogs got to be such a nuisance that in 1828 the police issued a stern warning: any porker found running loose in the streets would be arrested--and promptly sold.

Like their modern-day counterparts, early Congressmen had to wrangle together and somehow pass the expanding nation's laws. But their lifestyles, like those of most Americans, were totally different from today's. Forget about weekend jaunts home to campaign or see friends. Until the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825 and the arrival of rail connections in the mid-1830s, members rarely got home at all during the session,which began in December and lasted from four to six months. The journey from Washington to Boston took 11 days by coach in 1807, and sometimes coaches could not get through at all. Until the early 1850s, most of the members did not bring their wives and families to Washington.

Today, staff for 535 Senators and Representatives runs to about 18,000 people, with an annual payroll of more than $1 billion. But for the first century of Congress, our public servants had little or no personal staff to help draft legislation or answer letters. And they did receive letters; in those days citizens took their right of petition seriously. During a two-year term starting in 1817, Delegate .John Scott from the Territory of Missouri received more than 1,000 petitions on subjects ranging from widows' woes to patent applications to damage claims for property destroyed during Indian raids. At the time, the entire population of Missouri was something like 65,000.

Without staff, Congressmen had no need for the suites of offices their successors have today. In fact, most had no offices at all. They spent their days at assigned desks in the House or Senate chamber. At night, there was still no privacy from politically hostile colleagues. Until the mid-1840s, most Congressmen lived together in boardinghouses and were sometimes obliged to bunk two to a room.

Finding a boardinghouse was a Congressman's first job on arriving in Washington. Dozens of these establishments were advertised in city papers like the National Intelligencer. ("Mrs. Cottringer, in Ninth street a few doors South of E street," read an 1831 notice, "can accommodate a Mess of Members of Congress, or other strangers visiting the City.")

Congressional boardinghouses clustered in three places around town. Some of the oldest were in Georgetown, a long, bumpy carriage ride from the Capitol, but already well established by 1800, the year when the capital was moved from Philadelphia to the raw, new city of Washington. Another clutch of House and Senate hostelries sat back on Capitol Hill, where today's Supreme Court and Library of Congress now stand. A third group ranged itself along the base of the Hill, facing what are now the Mall and the Washington Monument.

In 1835, $8 -- a full day's pay for House members -- bought Representative John Fairfield of Maine a room and his meals for a week, fuel for his fireplace and two spermaceti candles to read by. Meals were substantial: Fairfield commonly sat down to a breakfast of coffee, beefsteak, mutton, sausage, hominy and buckwheat cakes, corncakes or biscuits. At meals, Congressmen sat like schoolboys at assigned places, with the proprietor at the head of the table.

Boarders slept and lived upstairs but often gathered, as at an English inn, in first-floor common rooms. Such gatherings were not always congenial. "At Capt. Coyle's . . . there are 16 of us," Senator William Plumer of New Hampshire complained to his diary in 1806. "This is too many--We have too much noise. . . . In each chamber there are two lodgers--This is very inconvenient. 'Tis difficult to obtain an hour's quiet. . . . your papers are too much exposed or you must constantly be on your guard. I believe I have kept mine secret."

Here's an illustration of Rep. Abraham Lincoln at his boardinghouse in Washington, from The Boy's Life of Lincoln (1905): 

With President Jefferson (who had lived in a boardinghouse himself when he was Washington's Vice President), poor Plumer found himself outnumbered by Federalist housemates who opposed Jefferson's attempts to limit federal power: hence his care in guarding his papers. "I dare not invite a gentleman to call upon me whose politics are different," he wrote, "lest these violent inmates should treat him with rudeness & insult." Plumer once asked his Federalist housemates to notify him before they invited a certain Federalist to dinner, because, he said, he couldn't stand to eat with the gentleman.

A few years earlier, at a dinner in Miss Shields' boardinghouse, Representative John Randolph of Virginia, another Jeffersonian, and Representative Willis Alston, a Federalist from North Carolina, ended an evening of verbal insult by throwing glassware at each other. They managed not to interact for the next six years--until Alston insulted Randolph one day on their way out of session. Randolph whacked Alston on the head with his riding crop, drawing blood, and paid a fine of $20 for the privilege.

If tempers did not noticeably improve, eventually the supply of Congressional boardinghouses did, enough so that single bedrooms became the norm. Congressmen also got better at sorting themselves out into more or less congenial groups. Over the years, predominantly Republican or Federalist houses evolved, as well as houses that catered to highly partisan political tastes. Quite early, there was a "War Hawks" boardinghouse (for supporters of the War of 1812) and, starting in the 1830S, a hostelry known as "Abolition House" for those opposing slavery (who, for years, tended to be dismissed as crackpots and political madmen).

Of course, parties and political allegiances evolved over time. A Representative who started out in 1800 as a Federalist conceivably might have joined Madison and Jefferson's new "Republican" Party (which later became the Democratic Party) after the Federalist Party petered out in 1814, supported Andrew Jackson as a Democrat in the late 1820s, and finally bolted to the Whigs after Jackson destroyed the Bank of the United States by removing federal funds from it in 1833. But whatever his political views, he could still find a "mess" of boarders somewhere who agreed with him.

Thus organized, the boardinghouses became the political "war rooms" of the day. Following a plan hatched in the boardinghouse known as the "war mess," a number of War Hawks burst into the House one night in June 1812. A group of Federalists had held the floor nonstop for three days, trying to fend off a vote on the declaration of war against Britain. The intruders grabbed brass spittoons from the floor, banging on the metal and flinging them around the room. The Federalist speaker, startled, abruptly shut up and sat down. A War Hawk instantly moved to cut off debate, and the fateful measure shot through the House like the proverbial hot knife through butter.

When the declaration came up for a vote in the Senate on June 18, the War Hawks apparently rounded up a drunken member, usually absent from important sessions, to help carry the vote. The nation was at war. When the news reached the war mess on New Jersey Avenue, 30-year-old Representative John C. Calhoun of South Carolina-often described as somber and humorless--reportedly threw his arms around the neck of Speaker of the House Henry Clay and joined his comrades in a Shawnee war dance around the boardinghouse table. ("I don't like Henry Clay," Calhoun once said. "He is a bad man, an impostor, a creator of wicked schemes. I wouldn't speak to him, but, by God, I love him.")

To be continued!