Philadelphia Skating Club performing a rescue as others skate happily on the Schuylkill in Fairmount Park in the late 19th century; image courtesy Library Company of Philadelphia

This has been a winter to empower the global warming naysayers--with a few snowstorms and freezing temperatures, it's hard to believe that the plant is getting warmer, on average. But a look back in time shows that we've just gotten wimpy.

This past weekend's bitter cold doesn't approach the cold of winters past in Philadelphia. A low in the teens, like we had this weekend, is abnormally cold these days. But most of the record lows for the city are much, much colder--with many below zero. Imagine being in Philly on February 9th, 1934: it was -11 degrees Fahrenheit.

Images even show that people could ice skate on the Schuylkill River in the late nineteenth century, and one image from the winter of 1856 shows skaters on the Delaware. Overall, as this graph shows, the past 20 years have been trending warmer. That historical perspective isn't making me feel any warmer, though!

Liveblogging the State of the Union

Some blogs had "liveblogging" updates during the State of the Union. I find these speeches painfully boring, in part because they are constantly broken up by partisan applause. So I wondered what unique take I could offer on the SOTU...and what else besides tracking the (often cheesy) history references. So, here goes.

9:05: PBS Commentator Mark Shields suggests that having the new governor of Virginia give the response to the SOTU from the VA State House is like a "State of the Confederacy." Jim Lehrer is not sure how to handle this.
9:11: Obama opens with history of SOTU; "it's tempting to look back on these moments and assume our progress was inevitable." I am very disappointed to hear that America's greatness was not preordained.
9:12: references Bull Run, Civil Rights Marches, the landing at Normandy
9:13: "we must answer history's call" (Somehow it seems like nobody can agree how to pick up the phone to answer that call).
9:18: has a president ever laughed during the SOTU?
9:21: wow another joke? this may be historic.
9:27: "From the first railroads, to the interstate highway system, our nation has always been built to compete." The Smithsonian has that story covered.
9:34: "We made the largest research investment in history." John Quincy Adams would be proud; people thought he was nuts when he proposed that the govt support research in the 1820s.
9:49: points out that in 2000, we had a massive budget surplus. That does seem like ancient history.
9:51: announces no new spending for the next 3 years. Oh well, so much for Keynesian economics or learning from the Depression.
9:58: "the Supreme Court reversed a century of law" with the campaign finance decision. The camera pans to the justices and they stare foreword blankly.
10:00: the debates between parties are 200 years old and are "the essence of our democracy." Hoftstadter would love that.
10:03: "through-out our history, no issue has united our country so much as national security." Hmm, not sure about that. See Alien and Sedition Act backlash and then almost every national security move since.
10:09: on nuclear power--"I've embraced the strategy of John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan." I'm confused. I think he just wanted to make sure to get their names in somewhere.
10:14: "It's our ideals, our values, that built America, values that allowed us to forge a nation made up of immigrants from every quarter of the globe. Values that drive us still." These values: the American dream of immigrants...and the nativism of Americans.
10:18: "The only reason we are here is that generations of Americans were unafraid to do what was hard."
10:20: "The spirit that has sustained this nation for 200 years lives on in you." Nice line.
10:28: Mark Shields says Obama was Reaganesque; "He invoked the country's past to give a sense of confidence about where we are now. And nobody did that better than Ronald Reagan."

Image: George Washington's State of the Union address--the first ever--on January 21, 1790

Saint Domingue's Legacy

Many historians had Haiti--or, as it was called in the colonial period, Saint Domingue--on their minds long before the massive earthquake there this past Tuesday. It has become the accepted wisdom in the field that the Haitian Revolution in the late 1790s was one of the most important events in the history of the Atlantic World. There's been a lot of research recently about slavery and rebellion in Saint Domingue (including by some of my friends), but historians rarely refer to that island nation as "Haiti." It's as if there's a total disconnect between the heroic, revolutionary Saint Domingue and present-day Haiti.

This week, an unlikely source brought past together with present. Televangelist Pat Robertson made the link rather grotesquely in his much-criticized remark on Wednesday:

"Something happened a long time ago in Haiti and people might not want to talk about. They were under the heel of the French, you know Napoleon the third and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said 'We will serve you if you will get us free from the prince.' True story. And so the devil said, 'Ok it's a deal.' And they kicked the French out. The Haitians revolted and got something themselves free. But ever since they have been cursed by one thing after another."

Well, maybe not such a true story. I'd defy him to find that conversation in the archives. Oh, and he's got the wrong Napoleon.

Haiti's ambassador to America, Raymond Joseph had the perfect response:

"The independence of Haiti...[enabled] the US to gain the Louisiana Territory...that's 13 states west of the Mississippi that the Haitian slaves' revolt...provided America....So, [the] pact the Haitians made with the devil has helped the United States become what it is."

Ambassador Joseph is right--the loss of French money and lives during the Haitian Revolution compelled Napoleon to give up his presence in the New World and sell the Louisiana Territory to the US at an outrageously low price. But I don't think this is a fight about the past.

Robertson is using history to make claims of religious and racial superiority at the most tasteless time possible. What troubles me is that those who actually do know about Haiti's past seem to have so little interest in its present. Let's hope this catastrophe changes that.

image: Toussaint L'Ouverture receiving a Proclamation. (1821), NYPL Digital Gallery.