Vertical Pulse

America: The Last Best Hope

I recently read America: The Last Best Hope by William J. Bennett. I found this book to be extremely thorough, informative and interesting. It provided a fascinating review of American history. Among the points of interest in the book are:

• In the first conflicts with the Indian tribes, the English held three distinct advantages. They were politically unified, they had greater numbers, and they were experienced in the use of firearms. These advantages would prevail over the Indians' greater familiarity  with the forests and rivers, their warrior culture, and their typically surprise tactic of strike and disappear.
• Half of the pilgrims that made the maiden voyage on the Mayflower would die in the next year of starvation and disease. However, in the following spring, the Mayflower prepared to return to England, and not a single Pilgrim would return with her. This is evidence of the determination of the pilgrims to cling to freedom in the new world.
• The royal French government was unwilling to send political or religious dissidents, or even criminals, to populate New France (Canada). Thus, French colonization never achieved the impact that massive English emigration did in the Atlantic colonies.
• One of the reasons that the reaction to the Stamp Act by the colonists was so hostile was that those accused of violating the Act would not be tried in their communities by juries of their peers, but taken to far-off Halifax, Nova Scotia, and tried before special Admiralty courts.
• The so-called Boston Massacre was an inflammatory misnomer. In March of 1770, a mob began to taunt British soldiers and pelted them with trash, oyster shells and snowballs. With their backs to the royal Customs House, and feeling hemmed in, the frightened soldiers opened fire on the mob. In all, five colonists were killed in what instantly became known as "the Boston Massacre." John Adams, the future second president of the United States, represented the British soldiers. Adams demonstrated that most of the soldiers fired in self-defense, that no order to fire on the crowd had ever been given, and that the unruly colonials had provoked the soldiers. The jury found all but two of the accused not guilty and convicted those two of lesser charges.

$24 for Manhattan Was a Fair Deal

In 1626, Dutchman Peter Minuit purchased Manhattan from a group of local Indians for 60 guiders worth of goods, or what has widely been reported as equal to $24. In The Island at the Center of the World, Russell Shorto explained why the Manhattan transaction was extremely equitable to the Indians.

1)   It is not clear by what authority the Indians claimed legal title to all of Manhattan. At the time, they were not the only ones living in Manhattan. Further, it is not clear why some proponents believe that Indians are the only peoples entitled to ownership of land through which they pass.

2)   The $24 dollar value was calculated in the 1800s, and would have certainly been worth much more in 1626.

3)   When contemplating the consideration given for other real estate during the 1600s, the Manhattan purchase seems extremely equitable. For example, in 1630, Peter Minuit, on behalf of the West India Company, bought Staten Island from the Tappans for "Duffels, Kittles, Axes, Hoes, Wampum, Drilling Awls, Jew Harps, and diverse other small wares." In 1664 three Englishmen purchased a vast tract of farmland in New Jersey from Indians for two coats, two guns, two kettles, ten bars of lead, twenty handfuls of gunpowder, four hundred fathoms of wampum and twenty fathoms of cloth. In 1638, Andries Hudde sold Gerrit Wolphertsen one hundred acres on Long Island for fifty-two guilders.

4)   The Indians who "sold" Manhattan fully intended to continue to use the land, and they did. Indians expected, and were, to be hosted by the Dutch living in Manhattan for years. They stayed in Dutch homes and were fed by the Dutch as part of this arrangement. This arrangement could have lasted as long as 35 to 40 years.

5)   Most importantly, the Indians viewed land sales as part of alliances with others. Indians were eager to grant access to others in return for military alliances with other peoples.

6)   At the time, there was little historical precedent for purchasing land from militarily weaker peoples. Up to the 1620s and beyond, conquest trumped currency or other consideration in the pursuit of rights to land.

Saddam's Secrets: A Book Review

I recently read Saddam's Secrets: How An Iraqi General Defied And Survived Saddam Hussein by Iraqi General Georges Sada. Saddam's Secrets is a biographical book about General Sada. Reading this biography provided a glimpse into life in Iraq under Saddam Hussein as well as a sketch of Saddam's megalomania.

Among the most interesting points in the book are:

• During Operation Desert Storm in 1991, 147 bridges were demolished by coalition bombers and missile strikes. In 2003, by contrast, not a single bridge was destroyed.
• Saddam was intent on attacking Israel with chemical weapons in 1991. However, such plans were not carried out because it became apparent that Israel possessed such sophisticated technology that such an attack would have been futile. For instance, Israeli aircraft had very advanced radar with the capability to see more than 125 miles in any direction whereas the Iraqi planes could only see for about 15 miles. Also, Israeli laser-guided missiles could lock on Iraqi fighters while they were still 65 miles away and fire at them at a range of at least fifty miles.
• Of the 606 Kuwaitis captured by Iraq during the Gulf War, 605 were killed by Saddam.
• Saddam placed military bunkers under civilian shelters so as to preempt any attacks on military command and control centers.
• During the five months preceding the commencement of hostilities in the Gulf War, the United Nations Security Council put forth 12 separate resolutions condemning Saddam's actions and calling for immediate withdrawal from Kuwait. His refusal to cooperate with those demands led to the formation of one of the most formidable coalitions in military history, representing 31 nations from five continents. Ten of these nations had predominantly Arab or Muslim populations.
• Of the approximately 360,000 Iraqi soldiers on the battlefield during the Gulf War, 28% of them (nearly 100,000) were killed in action, and as many as 200,000 sustained serious injuries. In addition, coalition forces captured 60,000 prisoners, and by some estimates there may have been as many as 150,000 deserters. As for casualties on the other side, 390 American soldiers, sailors, and airmen died in combat, while 458 were wounded in action. Among coalition forces, there was a total of 510 casualties.
• Saddam was making a fortune by evading oil sanctions. (According to a report of the Independent Inquiry Committee of the United Nations, headed by Paul Volker, more than 2,200 companies participating in the UN's Oil-for-Food program paid at least $1.8 billion in kickbacks to Saddam.) One method was by swapping oil with Iran. Thus, when inspectors checked the properties of oil being shipped in the Gulf, they would determine that the oil came from Iran. Iran was able to ship out Iraqi oil with ease because no one checked their oil shipments since they were not subject to sanctions.
• In 2003, when the terrorists came and bombed 18 churches in Iraq, many Assyrians left the country. Within three months, between 35,000 and 50,000 Christians left Iraq.
• Saddam had Chinese technicians working on nuclear bombs in China on behalf of Iraq. Saddam took advantage of an irrigation dam collapse in Syria in June 2002 to spirit WMD out of Iraq. There were 56 sorties of commercial airliners that whisked away WMD to Syria under the guise of humanitarian relief.
• A law in Iraq stipulated that at least one close relative must remain in Iraq when another relative was traveling or living outside of Iraq.
• There was a law in Iraq that held that everyone must watch Saddam's speeches on television. Some Iraqis were murdered by Saddam simply for turning off the television when he was making a speech.
• Before the coalition invasion in 2003, Saddam distributed more than eight million AK-47s to the popular army, and another four million were stolen from the military arsenals. Saddam released 150,000 criminals from Iraqi jails in 2003 to destabilize Iraq.
• In addition to the killing of many Iranians during the Iran-Iraq War and many Kuwaitis during the Kuwaiti Invasion, Saddam killed more Baath Party members than any other person. Saddam killed more officers of the Iraqi Army than any other person or nation. Saddam killed more Tikritis than any other man. Saddam killed more clerics of all the major Muslim denominations and tribes than any other man.

Two other books about Saddam Hussein that I found very informative are: a) I Was Saddam's Son by Latif Yahia and Karl Wendl which discusses Saddam and Uday Hussein's sadistic behavior; and b) Saddam: King of Terror by Con Coughlin which discusses Saddam's rise to power.

American Soldier - A Book Review

I recently read American Soldier by Tommy Franks, Commander-in-Chief of the United States Central Command. This book provided fascinating insight into one of the greatest military minds of our time. I found it thoroughly enjoyable reading about all of the strategy and creative thinking that went into the preparation of the wars that we recently fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. Among the most interesting points in the book were the following:

• A smart officer works hard to develop good soldiers, in part, by taking a personal interest in them. If a sergeant is indifferent to the needs of his soldiers, their performance will suffer. A successful officer must listen more than he talks. He must take the blame while giving credit to others.
• During Desert Storm, Iraq had more weapons and soldiers deployed than the Coalition. The Iraqis outgunned Coalition forces by three to one while Iraq had 2 million soldiers compared with the Coalition forces’ roughly 500,000 forces in the region.
• The victory of Desert Storm proved that speed has a mass all its own.
• Between 1990 and 1995, the Army would conduct forty-seven major operational deployments – a 50% increase over the Cold War years.
• On December 16, 1998, President Bill Clinton authorized Secretary of Defense Cohen to attack the Iraqi regime. As result, U.S.and British warplanes pounded suspected Iraqi WMD sites and intelligence facilities for days during Operation Desert Fox.
• Before the recent war with Iraq begun, General Franks had to be very careful to secure Iraq’s oil fields. General Franks knew that Saddam Hussein would not destroy the oil fields any sooner than necessary, because his government was earning about $50 million a day from those wells through the U.N.’s oil-for-food program. However, General Franks was certain that Saddam would order the sabotage of the oil fields when air operations against the regime’s leadership targets made it obvious that war had begun. In fact, it was eventually Polish Coalition forces that were largely responsible for securing Iraq’s oil fields.
• Deception was a very important part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The Coalition led the Iraqi’s to believe that the Turkish government would allow the deployment of forces on their soil immediately before the conflict began. Thus, the Iraqi’s believed that the attack would come from the North which caused them to position their forces at a great distance – and strategic disadvantage - from the invading Coalition forces.
• Media reports coming out of Iraq were much more positive when the media were embedded with the troops. During this time, reporters witnessed the planning of actions and events unfold directly. Also, reporters did not have to get leads from disgruntled soldiers who were more willing to speak with the press and less likely to provide them with balance and unbiased commentary.
• Most of the terrorism and violence that is occurring in Iraq today is carried out by the criminals that Saddam Hussein released from his jails in his last days of power as well as terrorists from around the world. Of course, unemployed Baathists and former soldiers are sources of terrorism and violence as well.
• Thanks to coalition efforts more than 50 million people in Afghanistan and Iraq are free. Further, terrorists no longer plot strikes against America from havens in these countries.
• Saddam Hussein’s Iraq categorically DID have weapons of mass destruction. He used them on his own people in Halabja and against the Iranians during the Iran-Iraq War. Sixteen U.N. mandates required Hussein to prove that he eliminated all WMDs. Which he absolutely did not do. On the contrary, he ejected WMD weapons inspectors. Numerous “dual-use” industrial facilities that had been specially prepared to resume the production of chemical weapons were discovered. Indeed, Coalition military forces searching potential WMD sites found tons of precursor chemicals stored separately from commercial stocks, as if being held in readiness for rapid production. Further, there is a great deal of evidence – for instance, in the form of satellite imagery – that Iraq’s WMDs were transferred to Syria. What is incontrovertible is that a 155 MM artillery projectile filled with four liters of Sarin nerve gas was found in Baghdad in May 2004. The liberal media reported on the finding of this Sarin but still has not had the decency to admit that WMDs were in existence in Iraq.

The American Revolution

I recently reviewed a very informative DVD on the American Revolution that was produced by PBS. Among the interesting points about the American Revolution discussed in the DVD were:

• Leading American revolutionaries were wealthy which was unprecedented in the history of revolutions as the wealthy are usually adverse to change. Most colonists did not want a revolution as they felt deeply attached to England. There was a heavy influence of British books and newspapers and the wealthy often sent their children to be educated in England. Most colonists wanted to remain British.
• When the British government imposed the Stamp Tax on the American colonists, the colonists were outraged. (The British thought that it was only reasonable that the Americans pay for more of their own defense. The average British taxpayer was paying 26 shillings, while the average Massachusetts colonist was paying 1 shilling per year. The British thought the Americans were ungrateful for the British clearing the French out of North America.) The Stamp Tax levied taxes on many items including all legal documents (wills and contracts) which enraged lawyers (those capable of launching the most articulate tirades against the tax) and on dice and cards (which enraged those most likely to cause a stir). The colonists were furious that the Stamp Tax was to be merely imposed without the colonists having been consulted on it. The colonists were afraid that the Stamp Tax would set a bad precedent and were very concerned that there was no limit on how high the tax could rise and that there were no checks on the tax. Also, wealthy colonists were upset about being placed in the category of those being taxed without giving consent: In Britain only the poor, women and children were taxed without their consent.
• Following, the Stamp Act, the British government passed the Declaratory Act which declared that Britain had complete control to set law in the American colonies.
• Following the Declaratory Act, colonists organized boycotts of British goods. The fact that the participation of the common people was necessary for these boycotts to be effective was a positive development for democratization in America. Even before the United States came into being, there was a great deal of democracy in America: Town meetings, which were governed by popular vote, were common and some courts were run by committees.
• Some Boston colonists dumped tea in Boston Harbor after the British imposed the Tea Tax (which was only 3 cents per pound of very inexpensive tea). As a result of such gesture politics, British ships encircled Boston Harbor and placed Massachusetts under military rule. The port of Boston was also closed.
• Interestingly, during this time, Harvard students were ranked by their family status, not by their grades.
• George Washington was an amazing man. He took control of American forces when he was one of America's wealthiest men and at the advanced age of 43. He fought bravely to the end without even visiting Mount Vernon once for at least six years. For example, when American forces escaped Brooklyn Heights in the middle of the night to make their way to Manhattan, George Washington was the last man on the last boat to evacuate. At the conclusion of the war, George Washington could have been King but he renounce such power.
• Battles at Trenton and Princeton (NJ) were major turning points for the Americans during the Revolutionary War. American enlistment was about to expire and Washington came very close to becoming a General without an army. Before this happened, Washington led attacks on the British whose success began to turn the tide of the American war effort.
• Despite a very long war (about 7 years), George Washington only fought nine battles and won just three battles in the Revolutionary War.
• At the end of the Revolutionary War, the states were not united. The French were ready to send 13 ambassadors to the 13 colonies. Each state printed its own currency - some were English pounds and some were Spanish pesos. Some states even had border disputes.
• The Revolutionary War eliminated servitude by 1800 which was very common during the 1700s. One-half of the population of Philadelphia - at one time in their lives - were indentured servants.

An Empire of Wealth

I recently read An Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power by John Steele Gordon. This book provided an excellent understanding of how America’s history, legal system, financial systems and spirit of enterprise have enabled the US to foster the most vibrant economy over hundreds of years.

The following were among some of the interesting points:

1. An accountant was appointed by Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain to sail with Christopher Columbus on his first voyage to ensure that they got their full share of the hoped-for profits.
2. During colonial times, under the system of indenture, blacks and whites were required to work off their indentures and then were set free. Some blacks became large landowners and even had slaves of their own.
3. While iron is one of the most abundant elements on earth, copper is much easier to work with. Iron is never found in a pure state, is chemically highly reactive (which is why it rusts), and has an extremely high melting point. On the other hand, copper has a melting point, which is easily achieved in an ordinary fire.
4. Charcoal is wood heated in the absence of air until it is reduced to pure carbon.
5. King Charles granted William Penn nearly 30 million acres of land in what is now Pennsylvania, making William Penn the largest private landowner in history.
6. While Canada is rich in land, it had a very short growing season, limiting the number of crops that could be grown.
7. President Jefferson’s Embargo Act forbade American ships from dealing in foreign commerce, and the American navy was deployed to enforce it. In effect, the United Stateswent to war with itself and blockaded its own shipping.
8. Whaling was an important industry in the 1800s. Besides the meat, the blubber produced an oil that was an excellent fuel for lamps as well as a lubricant for machinery. Whalebone was indispensable for corsets and buggy whips.
9. Gold is extremely heavy: A cubic foot of granite weighs about 170 pounds and gold weighs more than 1,200 pounds per cubic foot. Gold is also inert which means that it does not combine with other elements.
10. So many men were attracted to the California gold rush that when California became a state, less than three years after the gold strike, its population was 92% male.
11. Wall Street stock traders employed agents with both the Confederate and Unionarmies during the Civil War to keep them abreast of battles. Wall Street learned the outcome of the Battle of Gettysburg before President Lincoln did.
12. In 1868, the New York State Legislature actually passed a law the effect of which was to legalize bribery.
13. One of the reasons that New York became a commercially successful city is that regular ship departures (to London and Europe) were initially established there. Before the advent of regularly scheduled departures, ships gave estimates of the departure. The ship captains first filled the ships with cargo and then began allowing passengers on board. Typically, passengers had to wait a week until they were allowed on board.
14. The railroads effectively established standardized time zones. Before this occurred the setting of time was determined by local noon, which at the latitude of New Yorkis about one minute later for each 11 miles one travels westward. Thus, when it was noon in New York, it was 11:55 AM in Philadelphia, 11:47 in Washington and 11:35 in Pittsburgh. The state of Illinoisused 27 different time zones and Wisconsin 38.
15. When the first railroad traveled at the then unheard of rate of 16 miles per hour, passengers wrote sentences down to prove that the human mind was capable of thinking when traveling at such rapid speeds.
16. Industrialist Henry Clay Frick was once attacked in his office by an assassin. Despite two bullet wounds to the neck and three stab wounds, Frick fought back ferociously and managed to subdue his attacker with the help of his office assistant. He then refused anesthetic as the doctor probed for the bullets and insisted on finishing his day’s work.
17. In order to tap into the industrial strength of America during World War I, the German government tried to gain control of Bethlehem Steel by offering Charles Schwab, president and principal shareholder, twice the market value of his stock for control of the company.
18. During World War I, the British government made J.P. Morgan its American purchasing agent, which gave the bank enormous influence with many American companies. Its first deal was for $12 million worth of horses. This buying of horses caused the price to rise for horses which was a prime reason that tractors so quickly replaced them on American farms at that time.
19. Corporate logos became important when automobiles began traveling past road signs at 30-40 miles per hour. 
20. Henry Ford was adamant about squeezing costs out of the production of his cars. That is the reason that his Model T’s were only painted black: Black dried faster than other colors and thus contributed to lower production costs.
21. Before the Great Market Crash of 1929, many corporations were involved in lending money to investors trading on margin. Bethlehem Steel had $150 million in the call money market and Chrysler had $60 by the end of the summer of 1929.
22. On inauguration day in 1933, the economy was in such a miserable state that The New York Stock Exchange announced that it would not open that morning and did not state when it would reopen again.
23. One mitigating factor of the Great Depression was that children stayed in school longer. The number of people receiving high school diplomas almost doubled in the 1930s, while those receiving college degrees increased by 50%.
24. During World War II, The Ford Motor Company alone produced more war material than the entire Italian economy. The entire U.S.economy shifted to war production. Between 1943 and 1945, the American automobile industry produced exactly 37 automobiles.

Big Cotton

I just finished reading Big Cotton by Stephen Yafa. Big Cotton provides a thorough account of the importance of cotton throughout history. The book explains cotton's role in slavery in the U.S., the UK, and South America; on industrialization in England and in the northeast, later followed by industrialization in the South; and, cotton's role in the Civil War. The book concluded by providing an analysis of how protectionist measures impact American growers as well as growers in developing countries.

Among the revelations in Big Cotton are:

1)   Cotton is truly ubiquitous. Cotton and its byproducts are found in dynamite, book bindings, fingernail polish, hot dogs, paint, X-ray film while cottonseed meal feeds livestock and dairy cattle. Recycled remnants from blue-jean factories make up 75% of the content of United States paper currency.

2)   Cotton became popular hundreds of years ago because it is easy to clean, soft against the skin, and the dyes used in cotton did not lose their color as it was common for other materials to lose their color when washed. 

3)   While the working conditions in cotton mills in cities such as Manchester and Lowell, Massachusetts were deplorable by today's standards, the conditions were actually initially quite agreeable to the workers and their families. a) The concept of regular income and the guarantee of regular meals was an alien concept to cottage-industry families. b) Parents of mill girls thought that 14-hours of strenuous work was good for their daughters in that it would exhaust the young women's libidinous drives. c) Workers often lived in boardinghouses which resembled seminary dormitories; were chaperoned by older housemothers; and the church was a welcome presence from loom to room.   

4)   The British believed that their cotton mill technology was so valuable, and they were so fearful of its misappropriation, that they refused to let anyone who worked in a cotton mill leave the country.

5)   By 1850 more millionaires per capita lived in Natchez, Mississippi--a large cotton growing region--than anywhere else on earth.

6)   The Civil War triggered a dramatic reduction in cotton production in the South. In 1861 cotton production was 4.5 million bales and plummeted to only 300,000 by 1864 as the Union blockade on Southern shipping thwarted large transports.

7)   After the Civil War ended, sharecropping--whereby former slaves and indigent whites leased land on which to grow crops--became common. Growers were perpetually indebted to the merchants that financed their efforts and who maintained liens on their crops.

8)   Levi Strauss was approached by a tailor who was inundated with orders for pants made from the cloth that Strauss was selling. The tailor could not afford the $68 necessary to file for a patent. Strauss saw a great opportunity and received 50% of the ensuing partnership for his financing of the patent. Later, Levi Strauss benefited from being close to Hollywood, where many actors wore its jeans on the silver screen. Levi Strauss also benefited from World War II since American soldiers took their jeans all over the world.

9)   During the 1960s, polyester took significant market share from denim. For instance, between 1960 and 1971 cotton's share of the American apparel market slipped from 66% to 34%. This decline in denim sales was reversed when Ben Braddock (played by Dustin Hoffman) in The Graduate was told that the future was in plastics. The hippie generation thumbed its nose at authority (polyester) and returned to blue jeans.

10)   The boll weevil wrecked $22 billion in crop damage and decimated millions of acres of farmland. Some counties' cotton production plunged 98% due to the boll weevil.

11)  Many chemicals are used in cotton-based fabrics. One-third of a pound of chemicals is used to produce the cotton in every tee-shirt. Three-quarters of a pound of chemicals goes into every pair of jeans, and about one and a quarter pound into every set of queen-sized sheets. However, just about all of these chemicals are leached out by the time these products reach the retailers. As Patagonia's director of environmental analysis said, "As long as you don't stuff your shirt in your mouth, you won't have a problem."

12)   Cotton is currently grown on about 90 million acres in seventy countries, or 3% of the earth's arable land.

13)   Organic cotton accounts for less than one-third of one percent of worldwide production - most of it originating in Turkey, Peru, and Uganda. Only one-tenth of one percent of domestic cotton is grown organically. The Japanese account for about 90% of the organic cotton market.

14)   The British seized control of India largely to gain control of its cotton. One of Muhatma Gandhi's most effective forms of passive resistance was to burn his western clothing and to spin his own cotton kadhis and to encourage his followers to do likewise.

15)   The wealthiest American cotton farmers benefit disproportionately from subsidies. America's 25,000 cotton farmers have an average net worth of $800,000 per household and reap in $3.2 billion in subsidies, about five times as much as grain farmers. However, many of the 22,000 or so farmers who receive only 25% of all federal subsidies do not even own their own acreage.

Big Cotton is definitely worth reading for its enjoyable prose and rich history lessons.

Civil War

I just finished reading April 1865 by Jay Winik. This was an extremely well-researched and well-reasoned book that illuminated America at its most vulnerable point.

Jay Winik made the following points to illustrate how close America was to unraveling during the pivotal month of April 1865:

1) Throughout American history up until post-Civil War reconciliation there was little loyalty to the United States as a whole. The sentiment was that the individual states belonged to a loose confederation of states. Winik writes, "the Western frontiersmen threatened secession in the Whiskey Rebellion; New England openly cavorted with the enemy during the War of 1812. New York City repeatedly threatened to secede. So did New Jersey. So did Oregon and California. The Mormons of Utah wanted to stay independent. The Cherokees tried to establish an independent republic in Georgia. For nine years Texas was an independent republic. " Rhode Island seceded from Massachusetts. West Virginia split from Virginia and North and South Carolina went their separate ways.

2) As the Civil War was coming to a close in April 1865, there was a real chance of (a continuation) of guerilla warfare. Kansas and Missouri were two states that had already experienced particularly venomous guerilla warfare. Several southern generals such as Joe Johnston and Confederate President Jefferson David vowed to take to the hills and fight a guerilla insurgency for many years.

In fact, when Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox, he only surrendered part of the Confederate forces. Other southern generals commanded Confederate armies and continued to fight. After Robert E. Lee surrendered, two state capitals - Austin, Texas and Tallahassee, Florida - were still in Confederate hands.

3) President Lincoln was assassinated just a few days after General Lee surrendered at Appomattox. The same fateful evening Secretary of State William Seward was stabbed to death and Vice President Andrew Johnson was targeted for assassination. While the federal government was nearly decapitated in one evening, succession for the presidency was a debated topic. It was unclear who was to take the reins of power.

I highly recommend reading April 1865.