November 11. Veterans Day

Today is Veterans Day in the United States.

Today is Remembrance Day in Canada, and similar holidays in many other countries.

Today is also Polish Independence Day, commemorating the restoration of Polish independence on this day in 1918.

Today is also the Memorial of St. Martin of Tours, 316-397, the Patron Saint of Horsemen.

St. Martin, it should be noted, had been a Roman officer, albeit a reluctant one, who took up that position due to the insistence of his family.  He's famously depicted on horseback, giving his cloak to a naked figure he encountered en route.  He left the Roman military to become a priest, and ultimately became a Bishop.

St. Martin's feast day used to be celebrated in Poland in a manner which included baking horseshoe cookies "for his horse".  The recipe:

INGREDIENTS

1 cup butter or margarine

1/2 cup confectioners' (powdered) sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 cups sifted all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup quick-cooking rolled oats, uncooked

Makes three dozen cookies.

Cream butter or margarine; add sugar gradually while continuing to cream; beat until fluffy. Stir in vanilla, flour, and salt. Blend in rolled oats. Roll out about 1/4 inch thick on lightly floured board. Cut in strips 6 inches long and 1/2 inch wide. On ungreased cookie sheets shape strips to resemble horseshoes. Bake at 325° for 20 to 15 minutes or until lightly browned.

1620 Pilgrims execute the Mayflower Compact, one of the founding charters of American democracy.

The original document has not survived, but several early copies have.  There are slight differences in spelling and punctuation, but basically the text reads as follows:

In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord King James, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, defender of the Faith, etc.

Having undertaken, for the Glory of God, and advancements of the Christian faith and honor of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the Northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents, solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God, and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic; for our better ordering, and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony; unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.

In witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names at Cape Cod the 11th of November, in the year of the reign of our Sovereign Lord King James, of England, France, and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth, 1620.[

1817  Francisco Xavier Mina and 25 compatriots executed at Fort San Gregorio for insurrection.

1864  The Lincoln Mining District, the first mining district near South Pass, organized. Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1865  The U.S. Army renamed Fort Connor to Fort Reno in honor of Major General Jesse L. Reno.

1886  George W. Baxter assumes the office of Territorial Governor.  He resigned on December 20 of the same year.  Given his very brief stint as Territorial Governor, questions would have to be raised as to whether or not he wanted the job, or simply agreed to take it at the request of President Cleveland, who was then in office and who had removed F. E. Warren.

On the same day, Francis E. Warren stepped down as Territorial Governor at the request of President Cleveland.   Questions regarding dealings with a Cheyenne Wyoming businessman caused his resignation, but his reputation would prove intact, and he would resume the position in 1889, and keep it until 1890 when became Wyoming's first elected State Governor.  He went on to become a US Senator from November 1890 until 1893, and then again until his death on November 24, 1929.  He was John J. Pershing's father in law.

1890  The Wyoming Supreme Court meets for the first time.

1918  On this day, Ninety years ago, World War One ended.  The Armistice became effective at 11:00.  Since hostilities had commenced in 1914, 9,000,000 soldiers had died in action, 21,000,000 had been wounded, and many additional soldiers civilians had died due to the direct and indirect consequences of the war, not the least of which was the unleashing of the Spanish Flu in military camp conditions, which would claim more lives than combat had.  The German, Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires had been destroyed with no real ability for a successful popular democratic ideal to take root in those nations, which fell into turmoil.  Communism and similar movements, previously occupying the fringe of the Socialist left, filled in the vacuum resulting in violent revolution in various localities including Russia and Germany, achieving power in Russia and failing to do so in Germany, which was none the less left in turmoil.  New nations, such as Poland, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia were born, or resumed their positions on the map after having not had them for centuries.  The German Imperial Army, refusing to go down with the Kaiser, had effectively arranged for his surrender of power and fully assumed the status of a power unto itself, with grave consequences for the future.  Japan, ascendant since the late 19th Century, had seized territory in the East as an Allied power.  Ireland had gone into revolution over the issue of conscription, and the UK was left with a guerrilla war in Ireland.  The Ottoman Empire had collapsed and Turkey was born, with the war against Turkey still going on.  The former Ottoman possession in the Middle East were now European territories.  The United States, which had sat on the fence of world power status for decades, briefly assumed that role, and then retreated from it. The Dominions of Canada and Australia had entered the war as confirmed dominions and left it much more independent nations.  In spite of the inconclusive results, to some extent, and the views later  held in later eras, the war was regarded as worthwhile and a victory in the English speaking world at this time.

In Wyoming, World War One had caused a very significant economic boom which very much predated the US entry into the war.  Starting in 1914, British Remount agents scoured the United States for suitable military horses, purchasing thousands, and causing a horse boom in Wyoming which lasted throughout the war, as the US later began to do the same.  Cattle prices also rose as the demand for meat rose due to the war.  Homesteading received its last great boom, which would peak in 1919, the last year that the American farmer achieved economic parity with the urban middle class.

Oil exploration massively accelerated during the wear, causing towns like Casper to boom, and which resulted in Casper's first "sky scraper", the Oil Exchange Building, now the Consolidated Royalty Building.  

The boom would not last, and an economic recession began to set in during 1919.  This is further examined in our companion site, Lex Anteinternet.

The day became a holiday in many countries following World War One, and is recalled today under a variety of names.  It is a Federal holiday in the Unites States, being known as Veterans' Day, having come to honor American veterans of all wars.

Some poetry from the last war to inspire a fair amount of important poetry, but which speaks to all wars.

In Memoriam

by Ewart Alan Mackintosh (who himself was killed in action).

(Private D Sutherland killed in action in the German trenches, 16 May 1916, and the others who died.)

So you were David's father,

And he was your only son,

And the new-cut peats are rotting

And the work is left undone,

Because of an old man weeping,

Just an old man in pain,

For David, his son David,

That will not come again.

Oh, the letters he wrote you,

And I can see them still,

Not a word of the fighting,

But just the sheep on the hill

And how you should get the crops in

Ere the year get stormier,

And the Bosches have got his body,

And I was his officer.

You were only David's father,

But I had fifty sons

When we went up in the evening

Under the arch of the guns,

And we came back at twilight -

O God! I heard them call

To me for help and pity

That could not help at all.

Oh, never will I forget you,

My men that trusted me,

More my sons than your fathers',

For they could only see

The little helpless babies

And the young men in their pride.

They could not see you dying,

And hold you while you died.

Happy and young and gallant,

They saw their first-born go,

But not the strong limbs broken

And the beautiful men brought low,

The piteous writhing bodies,

They screamed 'Don't leave me, sir',

For they were only your fathers

But I was your officer.

And my favorite, In Flanders Fields, by Canadian John McCrae, who died of the Influenza Epidemic during the war, while serving in France.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

World War One Ends. November 11, 1918, 1100 (0400 MST).

"To Our Hero's".  Cemetery Wall in Paris, France.  France's contribution to the Allied victory in World War One surpasses that of any other Allied nation. . .something you'd sometimes not realize if you only read the English language accounts of the war.  MKTH photograph.

On this date in 1918, the Great War came to an end.*

Usually such posts are highly retrospective, and I suppose this one will be to a degree, but not in the "oh what a terrible waste" fashion that so many of them are.  The "Oh, What A Lovely War" view of the war popularized by the posthumous post World War Two publication of Siegfried Sassoon's poetry is largely baloney.**  In reality, the view taken earlier, that Germany was a horrible world menace on the European stage ruled by its military and a few autocrats who cared little about the rivers of blood they were spilling in order to impose Germany's imperial will on Europe is much closer to reality.

Indeed, its telling that in order to being the peace about, it had to occur in the context of a German revolution.  That revolution threatened for a time to make former Imperial Germany into a communist Soviet state, and put the new provisional government in the position of having to put down a left wing revolution.  That alignment, and the unrepentant view of Germany's hard right and its military would guaranty a second war, not the supposedly "harsh" terms of the Versailles Treaty.  A hard won victory, therefore, would not bring lasting peace, but that too really isn't for the reasons so often cited.

Indeed, had the provisions of the Versailles Treaty been more strictly enforced, World War Two would not have come about.  And had the conditions of the treaty been arrived upon more quickly, when Germans had no choice but to admit that they'd been fully defeated on the battlefield and the revolution only saved Germany from the Allies entering German soil in action, as they did in 1945, the excuse that the treaty became would not have occurred.  And the treaty did become a German excuse, and the "stabbed in the back" myth would arise, but more than anything it was the smashing of the Old Order that brought about the second war.

But was the collapse of the imperial order in nations that had not moved sufficiently towards democratic rule as populations moved from rural peasantry towards industrial laborers that really created the mess that would result in World War Two.

Almost every European nation had faced this in some fashion, but some had handled it much better.  Nations like Germany, Austro Hungaria, and Russia, however, had not.  Indeed, they'd not only failed to accommodate the new world of a more educated working class, but in Germany's case they'd actually arrived upon an autocratic imperial state late.  Nations like France and Germany, in contrast, had moved more and more towards real democratic rule much earlier, and therefore the forces that would gather in the vacuum of the demise of the Old Order would not impact them in the same degree, or indeed in the democratic UK, at all.

In nations like Germany, Russia and (for WWI Allied) Japan, however, the demise of the Old Order would create a vacuum that would be filled by a vicious extreme forces, communistic or fascistic in nature, that opposed democratic rule and glorified martial violence.  In some places those forces would oppose any hint at restoring the Old Order, as in Russia, in others they'd co-opt elements of it, as in Italy.  In all such places, the result was to bring about disaster in every form.

When that war came, much of what the world had become acclimated to in the First World War would play out in horrific fashion.  And much of that can be blamed on Germany, which had often acted just as barbarously in the Great War as they were to act in World War Two.

Germany had in large measure brought that defeat in the Great War upon itself.  While people like to look back for some reason and imagine the Germany military of World War One and World War Two as hyper competent, quite the opposite was often true.  While the Spring 1918 offensive was absolutely brilliant, Germany's dithering with the collapse of Russia guaranteed that a million men it desperately need on the Western Front would not be available.  If Germany was stabbed in the back, it's own autocratic class and military leadership did the stabbing, as Germany set about advancing in a country it had already defeated and had helped push into civil war.  It acted as if it had won the war, when in fact it had not.

Officers of the newly crated Third Army which was formed in France too late to see combat, but which would go on to occupation duty in Germany.

Of course the arms of the Western Allies cannot be ignored in that role. The ability of the British to rebound in the face of the 1918 offensive was magnificent, even if the common British view that they seemingly won the war on their own is exaggerated.  The long suffering French deserve huge credit for the defense of their own country and carrying the war through to the end, which included the contribution of Marshall Foch whose coordinating the efforts of the Allies was a monumentally difficult task.

Drafted inductees into the U.S. Army, Los Angeles California, November 11, 1918. The U.S. continued to draft right up until the end of the war.  I don't know what happened to men brought in this late.

And the US deserves much more credit than it is typically given by non American historians even if its military leadership deserves much more criticism than American ones will give it.  The surprising ability of the U.S. to create a 4,000,000 man Army in just over a year's time, and to deploy 2,000,000 of them to France (and Italy) was a stunning achievement.  The individual fighting qualities of the American soldier were also hugely impressive, although much of that was due to the soldier being very green and, frankly, poorly lead.

Paris crowd, November 11, 1918.

The U.S. Army, in fact, was committed to action in a manner that was to prove wasteful of lives as the American leadership persisted in the belief that there were no lessons to be learned from the Allies.  The American effort was only able to get away with this as the Army was thrown into action at a time when massive force was likely to prevail against the Germans, even if it proved to be hugely costly.  Indeed, real questions should be raised as to why the American leadership continued to persist in this fashion when even the very early efforts demonstrated how bloody such actions would be, even if the American willingness to endure the bloodshed, much like the Union's willingness to endure it in the latter half of the Civil War, guaranteed that an Allied victory would occur.***

American Red Cross works gathering in London for a parade, November 11, 1918, in honor of the war's end.

And it did so bring it about, even if it did not do so single-handedly.  That sacrifice should not be forgotten.

_________________________________________________________________________________

*Before anyone points it out, yes I know that a state of war continued on until the execution of the Versailles Treaty, or even later if you consider that the US had to declare the war to be over unilaterally after the U.S. refused to enter into the treaty.  Indeed, I've already been "corrected" on that once.

Well, whatever, but the war ended on this day. Germany wasn't going back to fighting under any circumstances, and couldn't, after entering into the Armistice on this day.

**The morose British war poet view of the war is largely a post World War Two view of it that reflects more than anything the state of the British mind following World War Two, which left Britain with an empire that it obviously was going to leave and with an utterly wrecked economy.

***The U.S. Navy, on the other hand, was really effectively commanded in the Great War and contributed enormously to a reduction of the effectiveness of German submarines.  It's role, however, is largely forgotten.

Postscript

This day is also marked as Polish independence day, although it would be just as easy to pick a date several weeks earlier and indeed would perhaps be more accurate as various Polish political bodies had declared independence from Russia and Germany by this time.

There are several sad deaths often noted about the day.  Augustin Trebuchon was the last French soldier to die in the war.  He was 40 years old and had joined the French Army in August, 1914.  A shepherd by trade, he'd fought the entire war.  He had occupied the role of messenger throughout the war and knew that an agreement had been signed even when his unit went into action that morning, committed to an attack even with the knowledge that peace was likely to be soon agreed upon.  That battle went on until 6:00 p.m., a good seven hours after the armistice had been signed, when the unit received word that the fighting had ended.  French officials originally recorded his death as November 10, as they were embarrassed to admit that they had been fighting when peace was imminent.

George Lawrence Price was the last Canadian soldier killed.  The 25 year old private originally from Nova Scotia was killed in a small unit action by a German sniper when they were reconnoitering some Belgian houses and discovered German machinegunners.  He'd come into the Canadian army as a conscript the prior year, having been conscripted from his then home in Saskatchewan.

Private George Edwin Ellison was the last British soldier killed.  The British cavalryman, age 40, had served for a time as a per war soldier and had been recalled into his old unit, the 5th Royal Irish Lancers, in 1914.

Charles I, the Austro Hungarian Emperor, announced he would give up the Austrian crown.  He would do the same in regards to Hungary two days later.  He never actually abdicated in hopes he'd be recalled.  He wasn't.

Counter campaigns against Dutch socialist occured in the Hague.

British, Canadian and American troops, numbering about 600, engaged with a Red Army force of 2,500 at Tulgas, where the Armistice had no effect.  About 1/2 the force were Americans.  The combined unit had been attacked but after two days launched an Assault, 20th Maine at Gettysburg style, and drove the much larger Red unit back.  Red Army casualties nearly exceeded the number of men total in the Allied force.

1919  Armistice Day, 1919.

Today was the first Armistice Day, now converted into Veteran's Day, in U.S. history.  It came, of course, one year after the Armistice that had brought about an end to the fighting on the Western front in November, 1918.

Plans had been made in advance to celebrate the day, which of course was celebrated around the country.

In Central Wyoming the day's events were muted by the arrival of snow.

Which makes the day in 2019 a nice bookend.  Snow again.

In Washington, the Prince of Wales was visiting and marked the day, which was likewise being celebrated in English speaking countries around the world.

1921 Warren G. Harding dedicated the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery.

On this day in 1921 the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was dedicated in Arlington National Cemetery.  I noted that on our companion blog, Today In Wyoming's History, quite some time ago, but the photo below, of Chief Plenty Coups, whom I discussed on November 8, is a new addition here.

Also noting the tragedy of the Great War, today was the first day in which the Royal British Legion sold poppies in remembrance of the war.  This tradition still goes on in the United Kingdom and also in Canada.  When I was a kid, it occurred here in the form of artificial "bloody poppies" that were sold by one of the two veterans organizations, although I forget which one  I dimly recall it was the VFW, but I could be in error.

Harding gave a speech, as noted, at the event, which was transmitted nationwide by telephone wires by AT&T.

A photographer played with black and while film to capture this image at 10:30 that evening.

The war with Germany officially ended on this day, not coincidentally, as the US and Weimar Germany officially recognized the peace.   Germany also was reaching out to the Soviet Union with the formation of Deruluft, a joint German Russian airline.  It operated until 1937.

The New York Bible Society presented a bible to the conference meeting in Washington on arms limitation.

1924  George Carr Frison, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Wyoming born in Worland Wyoming.

1926  Plans for U.S. Highway 30, replacing the Lincoln Highway but generally along the same route, finalized.

1930  Clarence Don Clark, Wyoming's U.S. Congressman from 1890 to 1893, and US Senator from Wyoming from 1895 to 1917, died. 

 

1940  Willys introduces their variant of the Jeep for the Army's competition for a light 4x4 vehicle.  The very unstable dangerous little 4x4 car would enter into civilian production post war as the CJ2, the first really light commercially offered 4x4 truck (and a highly dangerous one).  4x4s would feature prominently in a revolution in accessibility to the Wyoming back-country post World War Two.

 

1958 M38A1, the military version of the same Jeep that was known as the CJ5.

1940  Here's an unusual item, although not a Wyoming one, that shows us, in part, how much things have changed even in regards to weather reports. We're so used to relatively accurate ones now, we don't recall the days when the weather was often a real surprise.  We should note that this winter event did stretch out across the plains to Wyoming, even though it didn't have the devastating impact here that it did in Iowa.

Iowa's 1940 Armistice Day blizzard.

 

1942 Congress lowered the age of conscription to 18 and raised the upper limit to age 37.

1943  The Commander of the Prisoner of War Camp in Douglas announced that 1,000 Italians held at the camp would be helping with the fall harvest. Given the timing of the announcement, it would have to be presumed that the harvest was well underway at the time.  As Douglas itself is not in a farming belt, it would be interesting to know where the POWs actually went, and how they were housed.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

Thursday, November 11, 1943. Armistace Day.

It was Armistice Day for 1943.

Japanese American Girl Scouts walking in front of barracks and carrying American flags while incarcerated at Heart Mountain concentration camp, Wyoming, 11/11/43.

1950  A DC-3 belonging to a religious missionary organization hit Mount Moran in dense cloud cover, killing all 21 people on board.  The impact was nearly direct, and nothing from the plane could be recovered, including the bodies of the victims, all of whom remain on Mount Moran.

1954  November 11 designated as Veterans Day to honor veterans of all U.S. wars.  This was due in part to the efforts of Alvin J. King of Emporia Kansas.

November 10

1833  Thomas Moonlight was born in Forfarshire, Scotland. He was appointed Territorial Governor of Wyoming in1886.

1835  Delegates gathered at San Felipe de Austin in Texas agreed to establish a provisional government for the region.

1882  Frank Aloysius Barrett was born in Omaha Nebraska.  He served in the Balloon Corps in World War One, and then moved to Lusk Wyoming in 1919.. He was a U.S. Representative, a U .S. Senator and the 21st Governor of Wyoming.

His son, James E. Barrett, was a senior judge of the United States Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals Circuit and former judge of the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review in Washington, D.C. who died on November 7, 2011.

1888  A pipeline for the conveyance of oil from Casper to Omaha Nebraska was proposed.

1907  Fire destroyed the area north of Big Horn Avenue in Worland.

1916   The Casper Weekly Tribune for November 10, 1916: Fine Wilson Sweep
 

1918  Countdown on the Great War, November 10, 1918: A Socialist Provisional Government forms in Germany, the Naval War continues on, and Mildred Harris weds.

American engineers constructing a bridge in a ruined French city.  November 10, 1918.

1.  The HMS Ascot, a minesweeper, was sunk by the UB-67 with the loss of 51 hands.  The HMT Renarro, a British Navy trawler hit a mine and sank as did the Italian 36PN torpedo boat.

2.  Romania, which earlier surrendered to Germany, came back into the war in order to retake territory it had lost in the peace to Bulgaria. Allied forces entered Svishtov and Nikopol in Bulgaria.

3.  The Council of the People's Deputies becomes the provisional government of Germany with the aim of negotiating a peace with the Allies.  It's membership is completely comprised of members of the Social Democratic Party and the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany, making it a highly left wing ruling body, which came about when the SDP, which had evolved into a much less radical party in recent years, co-opted some revolutionary councils the day prior after it found it could not stop them from pushing forward.  The inclusion of the USDP was a distasteful necessity at first, even though the SDP did not see eye to eye on most things.

This essentially meant that to a degree the aims of the German revolutionaries had been partially recognized and in fact a government partially installed by them was in power, although one that had, due to the SDP, much less radical aims than the USDP.  The government would sweep away Germany's tiered franchise and introduce many liberal reforms before yielding to the Reichstag in 1919, by which time the USDP had pulled out of the government and the SDP was ruling alone.   The SDP under Friedrich Ebert, it's leader, would find itself thereafter increasingly aligned with Germany's conservative elements and it even would rely upon the Freikorps to take on left wing revolutionaries during the German civil war.

4.  With the war winding down, even celebrity news, albeit local celebrity news, started to reappear on the front page of the papers.

The Cheyenne girl was Mildred Harris.  As we've reported on her before:

Mildred Harris.  Her entry in Today In  Wyoming's History:  

1901  Mildred Harris, movie actress, born in Cheyenne.  She was a significant actress in the silent film era, having gone from being a child actor to a major adult actress, but had difficulty making the transition to talking pictures.

Harris is also evidence that, in spite of my notation of changes in moral standards elsewhere, the lives of movie stars has often been as torrid as they are presently.  Harris married Charlie Chaplin in 1918, at which time she was 17 years old and the couple thought, incorrectly, that  she was pregnant.  She did later give birth during their brief marriage to a boy who was severely disabled, and who died only three days after being born.  The marriage was not a happy one.  They divorced after two years of marriage, and she would marry twice more and was married to former professional football player William P. Fleckenstein at the time of her death, a union that had lasted ten years.  Ironically, she appeared in three films in 1920, the year of her divorce, as Mildred Harris Chaplin, the only films in which she was billed under that name. While an actress probably mostly known to silent film buffs today, she lived in some ways a life that touched upon many remembered personalities of the era, and which was also somewhat stereotypically Hollywood.  She introduced Edward to Wallis Simpson.

She died in 1944 at age 42 of pneumonia following surgery.  She has a star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame.  A significant number of her 134 films are lost or destroyed due to film deterioration.  Her appearances in the last eight years of her life were minor, and unaccredited, showing the decline of her star power in the talking era.

Stories like hers, however, demonstrate that the often held concept of great isolation of Wyomingites was never true.  Harris was one of at least three actors and actresses who were born in Wyoming and who had roles in the early silent screen era.  Of those, she was arguably the most famous having risen to the height of being a major actress by age 16.

1943  An explosion at the Sinclair Refinery in Sinclair insured five.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1945  Heart Mountain interment center closed.

1969  Judge Ewing T. Kerr heard testimony in the action brought in support of the Black 14.  The Court took the matter under advisement.

1978  Mormon Pioneer National Historic Trail was established.

1997  The Wyoming Air National Guard commenced operations in Operation Tempest Rapid No. 1, a firefighting mission to Indonesia.  Flying until December 5, the unit would fly 250 missions in the U.S. Air Force's first overseas firefighting mission.

November 9

1849  William "Red" Angus born in Zanesville Ohio.  Angus would be employed as a teamster, drover and bar owner before ending up the Sheriff of Johnson County in 1888.  He was Sheriff during the Johnson County War.  He lost the election in 1893 and later went on to be the Johnson County Treasurer.  He died in 1920 and is buried in Buffalo.

1856  Warming weather allowed the Martin Handcart Company to resume traveling on the Oregon Trail.

1867  John Hardy and John Shaughnessy fought a prize fight in Cheyenne

1883  The Wyoming Stock Growers Association met in Cheyenne to discuss problems with branding iron usage and roundup irregularities.  The meeting would result in a black list of disapproved brands and operators.

1894  Ft. McKinney  abandoned by the Army.

1902  Two women Justices of the Peace were elected in Laramie County.

1910  The Union Pacific rolling mills in Laramie were destroyed by a fire that was started by a passing train.

1916   The Wyoming Tribune for November 9, 1916: Hughes leading.
 

Cheyenne Leader for November 9, 1916: Wilson leads
 

1918  Countdown on the Great War, November 9, 1918: The End of the German Empire.

1.  Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany abdicates as Emperor of Germany and King of Prussia, facing the reality of the revolution in Germany.  The abdication is announced by Chancellor Maximilian of Baden who resigns later that day in favor of Social Democrat Freidrich Ebert.  Germany is then declared a republic.  This made the impending end of the war inevitable and obvious to all.

The Casper Daily Tribune was not subtle in its views on the Kaiser.

The German empire, which came into being in 1870, with the King of Prussia perpetually as its Emperor, was at an end.  Monarchy in Germany, which saw many royal titles lessor than Emperor including various kings, was also at an end.  Wilhelm went into exile in the Netherlands where he would live to see the beginning of World War Two, passing away in June 1941.

The Casper Daily Press was more subdued in its reporting and correctly noted that things weren't over yet.  It was incorrect in the establishment of a German regency. . . and in the spelling of cavalry.  It noted, however, the ongoing disaster of the Spanish Flu, which the other Casper paper managed to miss.

In a lot of ways, he was the worst possible German monarch for his times, taking his imperial role seriously even until his death, and remaining a German chauvinist in spite of the disaster that he had lead his nation into.  Ironically, his parents had very much sympathized with republican ideals and likely would have moved the country in that direction if they'd been allowed to. Wilhelm, however, idolized imperial military ideals since his childhood.

This Cheyenne paper correctly predicted the probable remaining length of the war.

His resignation paved the way to an end of the war in very short order, but it also permanently tainted the new Socialist German republic with the legacy of defeat and would help doom the democratic order in Germany.

The Laramie Boomerang was most subdued of all, but had the interesting headline of about the war solving the "social problem", demonstrating how war changes everything.  Also, a tragic community loss due to the war was reported.

Also complicit in the end of Imperial Germany, in all sorts of ways, was its Army.  And directly implicit in the final act of the German Empire was the Army's abandonment of the monarchy, something it would forget in short order as it began to reconstruct a false narrative of the war's end.

2.  The battleship HMS Britannia was sunk by the German submarine UB-50 with the loss of 50 hands.

The HMS Britannia sinking.

3.  The American Navy's cargo ship the USS Saetia was sunk by a mine laid by the U-117.

USS Saetia.

4.  Pieter Jelles Troelstra declared that a socialist revolution was possible in Denmark, leading to the arming of Dutch police officers.

5.  The Mexican government issues orders to discharge soldiers younger than 18 years of age.

1919  November 9, 1919. Edgar S. Paxson died.

On this date in 1919, Edgar S. Paxson, Montana based Western painter, died at age 67.

Paxson was born and grew up in New York, but moved to Montana shortly after marrying.  He remained in Montana the rest of his life and worked as a self taught painter, painting Western themes.  He's best remembered today for his spectacular Custer's Last Stand which is held by the Buffalo Bill Museum in Cody, Wyoming.

Paxson volunteered to serve with the Montana National Guard during the Spanish American War. His son Harry had also volunteered to serve.  Paxson was 47 years old at the time.  He jointed as a private but left as a lieutenant, serving in the Philippines.  His wartime service likely shortened his life as he contracted malaria while serving.  It was while convalescing in Butte that he started work on Custer's Last Stand.  During this period of time he designed the triumphal arch that Butte built for its returning veterans of the war.  It was not until this period that Paxson was able to work full time as an artist.

While he is best remembered for Custer's Last Stand, which took a long time to create, he also created a substantial body of work on the Corps of Discovery.  His wife outlived him by twenty years, although Harry, whom he served within the Philippines, did not, having died in a mine electrocution accident some time prior.  He left three other adult children at the time of his death.

While in his 60s at the time, he'd attempted to join the Army again, unsuccessfully, during World War One.

He's less well known today than his contemporaries Russell and Remington, and indeed that was also true during his lifetime.  But he was a major Western artists of his day, and a friend to fellow Montana artist, Charles Russell.

1926  Queen Marie of Romania visited Casper.

The Queen's trip was part of her trip to Canada and the United States of that year.  The trip was very wide ranging and covered a huge number of stops.  The stop in Casper was specifically made in order that she might see the facilities belonging to Standard Oil.  Standard Oil was a major economic player in Romania, where the refineries at Polesti existed, and where the company had significant oil production.  This was later to figure significantly in World War Two.

Perhaps emblematic of royalty of the period, which was rapidly becoming an anachronism, the queen was not Romanian by birth. Her father was one of the sons of Queen Victoria and her mother a Russian princess.  In truth, royalty of this period was nearly stateless in origin.  As was also somewhat typical of this period, she worked hard to make a Romanian presentation and dressed in a stylized Romanian fashion.

She would have been queen of England had her mother approved of the English royal family, which she did not, as the Prince of Wales, who would be come King George V of England proposed marriage to her, in spite of her being his first cousin.  The fathers of the prospective union approved, but the mothers did not.  She instead married Prince Ferdinand of Romania, whom ultimately she came to dislike.  Showing, perhaps, the much smaller extent of media attention to such matters at the time, it's believed that she actually gave birth to a child in 1897 due to an affair, in addition to the six other children she bore in the royal household.  That child disappeared soon after birth, and the pregnancy itself was basically kept secret.  The whereabouts of that infant member of the Romanian royal family are unknown, and the child may have been stillborn.   The paternity of three of the other six children of the royal household is disputed.  Her husband, the King, would die the year after this 1926 visit and she would die in 1938, when Romania was still a kingdom.  The monarchy fell early in World War Two to a fascistic dictatorship.

1927  Walter Urbigkit born in Burris Wyoming.  Urbigkit grew up in a sheep ranching family but entered the pracrtice of law in 1951, becoming a member of the legislature, and then a somewhat controversial Justice of the Wyoming Supreme Court.  He was not retained by the voters in the 1993.  He died on October 31, 2011, in Cheyenne Wyoming, where he was practicing law after leaving the Wyoming Supreme Court.

1978  Grumman American N28406 crashes at 43 59N 109 29W

2016   The 2016 Election
 

I didn't see that coming. . . like all of the rest of the pundits.

It's been a wild election year.

Yesterday, Donald Trump won the Presidency.  I frankly thought that impossible.

As I noted here yesterday, I figured that the coronation of Hillary Clinton meant that her enthronement as President would merely need to be ratified yesterday.  I was sure off the mark, and badly so.

So was about 100% of the national press, Id' note ,which was discussing the inevitable Clinton victor as late ago as early last night.  What happened?

Well, a massive working class revolt against both parties happened.  After well over a decade of being lied to, they poked both parties in the eye. 

When this became inevitable or even probable is hard to say, but the Democrats deserve a lot of the blame or credit, depending upon your view, for trying to coronate a 1970s throwback that was widely despised.  Frankly, had Bernie Sanders been nominated by the Democrats he'd likely be yesterday's victor. But rather than do that, they went solidly with a candidate that nobody loved and who was consumed her entire life with politics.  Most people aren't consumed with politics and are disgusted with it right now. So the disgust flowed over onto her.

And on to the entire system, quite frankly.

 Bea Arthur in an advertisement for Maud.  Arthur played the brash, loud, pants suit wearing feminist in two 1970s era television series.  For those who recalled it, Clinton tended to come across rather unfortunately as a character from Maud or at least from the era. Younger women never warmed up to her at all, and indeed people who weren't voting by the 1970s were left fairly cold.

Additionally, the late Democratic administration and things associated with it combined with things that have been brewing for a long time overwhelmed both parties.  It turns out that you cannot take in 1,000,000 immigrants a year and tell rust belt voters that they just need to adjust to the new economy, you can't tolerate shipping endless employers overseas and tell those voters that new better jobs will come, you can't tell people who can tell what gender they are actually in that people can determine their "own gender identify", and you can't threaten to reverse course on firearms possession when people have pretty much determined how they feel about that.

The voters who revolted are, no doubt, going to be accused of being racist.  But to desire the America they grew up in, which was more Christian, more employed, and more rural, doesn't make them that way.  The Democrats have been offering them Greenwich Village, the Republicans the Houston suburbs.  It turns out they like the old Port Arthur, Kansas City or Lincoln Nebraska better, and want to go back. That's not irrational.

 

Port Arthur Texas.  I listed to people discuss the upcoming election two weeks ago at the Port Arthur Starbucks and thought they'd really be surprised when Clinton was elected. Turns out, they were much more on the mark than I was.  And it turns out that people in Port Arthur like Port Arthur the way it was twenty or thirty years ago, and they don't like a lot of big, hip trendy urban areas that they're supposed to.

Will Trump be able to do that?

Well, any way you look at it, it's going to be an interesting four years.

Locally, 818 Natrona County voters went for write in candidates, myself included, for President and Vice President.  That has to be a record.

Locally, Liz Cheney, Dick Cheney's barely repatriated Virginia daughter beat out Greene and has probably taken Wyoming's House seat in Congress for life, or at least until she wedges that into something else, which she almost certainly will.  The seat is the gift of two other candidates who were really from Wyoming and who destroyed each other, but who jointly took more votes in the primary than she did.  Hopefully she'll grow into her position and learn the lesson that the Democratic and Republican establishments did not on the national stage, that people love their local lives more than they do the big issues of any kind.

More locally, Gerald Gay went down in defeat, a victim of statements he could not explain about women.  Dan Neal, whose campaign literature arrived in my mailbox every day for awhile, lost to Republican Jerry Obermuller.  In some ways, I think Neal may have been a victim of his supporters as his own mailings concentrated on public lands while his recent backers mailings urged support of him because of his support of abortion, homosexual rights and "reproductive health", which probably served to turn votes away from him. Being hugged enthusiastically by somebody who people doubt doesn't engender their support of you but Neal probably couldn't, maybe, have told them to shut up and go away, he was doing fine on his own.  Maybe he didn't know that.  Chuck Gray, young radio mouthpiece of the far libertarian right did get in.  Todd Murphy, whose facebook ravings brought attention to him in the press, did survive the sort of attention that Gay did not and ended up on the city council, to my enormous surprise.

The county commission was less surprising, with incumbents generally doing well.  A stable race, it seems.