This Day in Military History (MacArthur Named UN Commander in Korea)

July 8, 1950— Having claimed that he knew “the Asiatic mind,” and acclaimed as the architect of Allied victory in the Pacific only five years before, Gen. Douglas MacArthur was named commander of the UN troops desperately trying to repel Communist forces from taking control of the entire Korean peninsula.

At the time, the appointment seemed logical, even inevitable, considering the general’s decades of experience, bravery, intellect, and a strategic skill manifested during WWII with an “island-hopping” campaign that minimized loss of life.

But, within a year, MacArthur’s overweening ego and hubris would imperil US troops, threaten a wider conflict, and precipitate a historic showdown concerning civilian authority over American armed forces with President Harry Truman.

Some signs, even within the first two weeks after Communist forces invaded South Korea, were already ominous for MacArthur’s leadership. Aides were initially reluctant to break the news of the attack to their boss, and even after learning of it, for the first 24 hours he downplayed its severity.

If he could get the 1st Cavalry Division into action, he told GOP foreign-policy maven (and future Secretary of State) John Foster Dulles, “Why, heavens, you’d see these fellows scuttle up to the Manchurian border so quick, you would see no more of them,” according to Bruce Cumings’ The Korean War: A History.

When he was prevailed upon at last to depart from Tokyo (where he was serving as Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers in Japan) for the first of a series of one-day flyovers over Korea, he veered sharply towards alarm, telling Truman that South Korean forces were in no position to repel the invaders without American support.

One military observer—like MacArthur, often mentioned as a Presidential candidate—Dwight Eisenhower, was skeptical but not surprised that his fellow WWII hero was not at the top of his game. Privately, he wondered if MacArthur, now 70, might be too old for command.

Eisenhower, who had noted acidly that he had “studied theatrics” under MacArthur as his aide in the Philippines in the 1930s, would have had the personal knowledge and credibility to gain immediate public approval for a decision to relieve his old boss of command. But MacArthur’s superior at the moment was Truman, who lacked the stature of the commander of US forces in Europe in the last war.

Two and a half months after his appointment, MacArthur pulled off the kind of unexpected, daring move for which he had become known by ordering an amphibious assault on Inchon, the port city of Seoul that, because of its tides and lack of beaches, was deemed by MacArthur’s subordinate Gen. Edward Almond, “the worst possible place” for such an operation.

Inchon achieved the surprise MacArthur desired, and he predicted to Truman that US troops would be home for Christmas. But instead of stopping at the 38^th Parallel, the point at which America’s allies had agreed would restore the division between North and South Korea at the start of the conflict, the commander “went ahead to the Yalu frontier and set up an enormous disaster, which clouded his reputation,” according to historian David Fromkin.

“There’s a spot where the mountains go down on a north-south basis,” Fromkin explained to C-Span’s Brian Lamb in a September 1995 interview on “Booknotes,” “and if you’re a commander going there, you don’t want to get in that position because you have to split your troops. But he [MacArthur] did and he shouldn’t have; he went all the way up to the Chinese border, although there were signs that if he did so, they’d come in against us with their limitless manpower.”

The counterattack by the Chinese forces reversed all the gains by the US at Inchon. Communist momentum was only blunted when Matthew Ridgway took over command of the US Eighth Army in Korea and re-energized the demoralized troops.

By now, MacArthur was not only violating Truman’s directive to clear any statements with the White House first, but alarming the Joint Chiefs of Staff and allies with his urging that China lay down its arms or face “a decision by the United Nations to depart from its tolerant efforts to contain the war…[that] would doom Red China to the risk of imminent military collapse.”

He provided GOP leaders eager to score points against Truman over the military stalemate with a soundbite for taking the war to China: “There is no substitute for victory.”

Truman’s decision to relieve MacArthur of command led to a firestorm of controversy back home, but it was necessary to preserve the constitutional structure of ultimate Presidential authority over the military.

Just as important, by scotching the general’s proposal to drop up to 50 nuclear bombs at air bases, depots, and supply lines to create a radioactive barrier and halt Chinese and North Korean advances, Truman prevented the direct intervention of the Soviet Union in the conflict—and the possibility of World War III.

Quote of the Day (John O'Hara, With Some Early July Social History)

“They dodged being in love at first, and because they always had been friends, his seeing her increasingly more frequently did not become perceptible until he asked her to go with him to the July 3 Assembly [a large society gathering held twice a year in Gibbsville, PA on New Year's Eve and July 3^rd]. You asked a girl at least a month in advance for the Assemblies, and you asked the girl you liked best. It was the only one he ever freely had asked her to; she knew his mother told him to ask her to the very first one. The Assembly was not just another dance, and in the time between her accepting and the night of the dance they both were conscious of it. A girl gave preference in dates to the man who was asking her to the Assembly.” —American novelist and short-story writer John O'Hara (1905-1970), Appointment in Samarra (1934)

When John O’Hara first wrote about the custom of “Assembly” in the early 1930s, it was contemporary. When he titled the first collection of his extraordinary short stories in the 1960s using the word, however, fewer readers would have recognized the reference. That number has surely dwindled in the sixty-plus years since.

In the foreword to his 1960 trio of novellas, Sermons and Soda-Water, O’Hara explained what he felt increasingly compelled to do, particularly for younger readers not familiar with the original context of the times:

“I have lived with as well as in the Twentieth Century from its earliest days. The United States in this Century is what I know, and it is my business to write about it to the best of my ability, with the sometimes special knowledge I have. The Twenties, the Thirties, and the Forties are already history, but I cannot be content to leave their story in the hands of the historians and the editors of picture books. I want to record the way people talked and thought and felt, and do it with complete honesty and variety.”

You can read O’Hara for his extraordinary facility with dialogue, as well as for the insights into characters that he wants you to infer from below the surface of the story.

But, especially in his later work—and even glancingly, here, in Appointment in Samarra—you come away with a better understanding of a particular time and region (what he called his “Pennsylvania Protectorate” of the anthracite coal area in which he grew up).

It is, as he hoped, something you’re unlikely to learn from “historians and the editors of picture books”—or, I might add, other writers of fiction. 

(For a further consideration of why, "Among American novelists, O'Hara remains our best, begrudging social historian," I urge you to read Charles F. McElwee III's fine 2014 essay on the Website of the John O'Hara Society.)

Quote of the Day (Evelyn Waugh, With a British Definition of ‘News’)

“News is what a chap who doesn't care much about anything wants to read. And it's only news until he's read it. After that it's dead.” —English novelist Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966), Scoop (1938)

Well, I guess in the United States, the closest equivalent is any media outlet owned by the Murdoch family.

This Day in Revolutionary War History (Moderates, Radicals Unite to Present Case for Fighting)

July 6, 1775—Nearly one year before the Second Continental Congress issued the Declaration of Independence, it took the first step at airing the grievances of the 13 colonies over British depredations.

Two delegates who locked horns in the debate leading to independence, Thomas Jefferson and John Dickinson, took turns in creating Declaration of the Causes and Necessity for Taking Up Arms, which sought to assure the public—and, in far-off Great Britain, King George III—that their problems were not with the monarch but with his ministers imposing coercive measures on the colonies.

Years later, John Adams recalled that during the American Revolution, one-third of the colonists supported the cause, one-third were opposed, and one-third were neutral. If anything, non-supporters of independence were still in the ascendant one year earlier, but events were assuming a momentum that many feared could not be controlled.

This latter group is not as celebrated as the radicals, who won the vote for independence in the Second Continental Congress and, in the end, the war itself. They come off especially badly in the musical 1776.

But the moderates’ stance was not without merit, and they marshaled compelling arguments for the colonists’ rights before the Declaration of Independence and contributed to the republic afterward.

The most prominent moderate delegates from two large middle colonies, including New York’s John Jay, who became the first Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court; Pennsylvania’s James Wilson, among the keenest legal minds of the revolutionary and Federalist periods; and Robert Morris, a wealthy Philadelphia merchant who earned the nickname “Financier of the Revolution” through his crucial infusion of money when the Continental Army was at its most desperate.

But the leader of the group in the debates already convulsing the Second Continental Congress was Dickinson, a wealthy lawyer who, by refusing to sign the Declaration of Independence—even though he promptly joined the Continental Army as a private—immediately forfeited much of the credit he deserved for mobilizing American opinion against British policies in his pamphlet Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania (1768).

In devastating critiques of the Stamp and Townshend Acts, Dickinson crafted one of the first known strategies for nonviolent protest in American history, preferring to call on economic pressure and appeals to the Mother Country’s longstanding care of its faraway offspring (“where is maternal affection”?: he wondered) to bring Britain’s ministers around.

Unlike fellow Pennsylvania delegate Joseph Galloway, who wanted the colonists to be brought more tightly under the British umbrella, Dickinson preferred that the colonists be allowed to administer something more akin to home rule.

Yet his reluctance to accept the inevitability of independence might have resulted from internal divisions within his own extended clan. His in-laws included not just independence firebrands but also loyalists and others whose allegiance could be swayed to and fro—an example in microcosm of the split that Adams saw in the nation at large.

On a committee that the Continental Congress designated to respond to Britain, Dickinson found himself working with a Virginia delegate less inclined to speak up but every bit his equal as a penman: Thomas Jefferson, whose Summary View of the Rights of British America attracted wide notice within his colony and among the other politicians gathered that year in Philadelphia.

The case that the panel would present had assumed greater importance with the outbreak of hostilities at the Battles of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill. Dickinson read the first draft by Jefferson—and blanched over its fierce statements.

Jefferson read Dickinson’s revisions, nodded—and mostly accepted only his minor suggestions.

Dickinson reviewed Jefferson’s “fair copy,” made a few other suggestions—and, after some more changes, Congress had in its hands a document that slammed the “Legislature of Great-Britain” for being “stimulated by an inordinate Passion for a Power.” (To track the intense revision process behind Declaration of the Causes and Necessity for Taking Up Arms, see this "Editorial Note" on the "Founders Online" Website.)

At the same time, it pledged to readers that, while committed to defending their lands and freedoms, “we mean not to dissolve that Union which has so long and so happily subsisted between us, and which we sincerely wish to see restored.”

What a difference a year would make. King George III’s high-handed refusal even to consider the “Olive Branch Petition” adopted that same weekend in Philadelphia undermined the warnings of Dickinson, its primary proponent, that the colonies were incurring enormous risks by fighting Britain without a powerful ally or an effective central government.

In the end, the defiance of the Continental Congress brought on the violence and the assault on privilege that concerned Dickinson. But the cause won out and even a conservative reformer like Dickinson accommodated the new order by serving in the governments of Pennsylvania and Delaware. At his death in 1808, Jefferson hailed his onetime "moderate" opponent in the Continental Congress:

"Among the first advocates for the rights of his country when assailed by Great Britain, he continued to the last the orthodox advocate of the true principles of our new government, and his name will be consecrated in history as one of the great worthies of the revolution.”

Spiritual Quote of the Day (William James, on Religion and Errors of Fact)

“It does not follow, because our ancestors made so many errors of fact and mixed them with their religion, that we should therefore leave off being religious at all. By being religious we establish ourselves in possession of ultimate reality at the only points at which reality is given us to guard. Our responsible concern is with our private destiny, after all.” — American philosopher and psychologist William James (1842-1910), The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (1902)

Quote of the Day (Sinclair Lewis, on an Evangelist’s Planned Jersey Shore Project)

“The pier was an immense structure, built of cheap knotty pine, painted a hectic red with gold stripes. It was pleasant, however, on hot evenings. Round it ran a promenade out over the water, where once lovers had strolled between acts of the opera, and giving on the promenade were many barnlike doors.

[Evangelist Sister] “Sharon [Falconer] christened it ‘The Waters of Jordan Tabernacle,’ added more and redder paint, more golden gold, and erected an enormous revolving cross, lighted at night with yellow and ruby electric bulbs….

“All of Clontar, with its mile of comfortable summer villas and gingerbread hotels, was excited over the tabernacle, and the Chamber of Commerce had announced, ‘We commend to the whole Jersey coast this high-class spiritual feature, the latest addition to the manifold attractions and points of interest at the snappiest of all summer colonies.’

“A choir of two hundred had been coaxed in, and some of them had been persuaded to buy their own robes and mortar boards.

“Near the sand dune against which Sharon and Elmer [Gantry] lolled was the tabernacle, over which the electric cross turned solemnly, throwing its glare now on the rushing surf, now across the bleak sand.

"‘And it's mine!’ Sharon trembled. ‘I've made it! Four thousand seats, and I guess it's the only Christian tabernacle built out over the water!’”—Pulitzer and Nobel Literature prize-winning American novelist Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951), Elmer Gantry (1927)

I came across this quote after watching on TCM, decades after the first time I saw it, the 1960 film adaptation of Elmer Gantry. (In the attached image, that’s Burt Lancaster as the titular preacher and Jean Simmons as Sharon Falconer.)

In the movie, the grand evangelical center that Sharon envisions is built (and then destroyed in a fire) in the fictional Midwestern city of Zenith. I was all the more surprised, then, to discover that Sinclair Lewis set Sharon’s project in a seaside community in New Jersey. I wondered, given that the novelist conducted extensive interviews and research while writing his fiction, if he had a particular Jersey Shore town in mind.

For help, I turned to Dr. Sally E. Parry, Professor Emerita in the Department of English at Illinois State University and Executive Director of the Sinclair Lewis Society. She wrote back that though the novelist did most of his research in the Midwest as he visited churches (especially in Missouri), he did not, to the best of her knowledge, model the tabernacle on a particular place.

Sharon Falconer, she continued, is strongly based on Aimee Semple McPherson, whose ministry was primarily centered in California.  “The novel was also inspired to a certain extent by Harold Frederic’s The Damnation of Theron Ware (1896), which Lewis admired (Carol Kennicott discusses it in Main Street). Theron Ware is a Methodist preacher who is awakened to a variety of religious beliefs, including some by Sister Soulsby.”

Dr. Parry confirmed one possibility I raised: that Lewis might have learned about some Jersey Shore spots while working as a janitor for six months at Helicon Hall, the novelist Upton Sinclair’s 1906 utopian experiment in Englewood, NJ.

Now that I think of it, locating Sharon’s tabernacle by the shore might have appealed to the novelist in a couple of other ways: it would have testified to the growing national ambitions of her ministry, and this geographic location would have been even more resonant for a structure named after “the Waters of Jordan.”

Whatever the case may be, this novel, like so much of the writer’s other work at the height of his influence on American culture in the 1920s, continues to reverberate a century later.

In the late 1980s, in an appearance at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey, Tom Wolfe highlighted the conclusion of this stinging satire, where Gantry notices “a new singer, a girl with charming ankles and lively eyes, with whom he would certainly have to become well acquainted.” Lewis had certainly anticipated the sensational sex scandals that had recently engulfed televangelists Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart, he observed.

The death this past week of the latter reminded me that Swaggart was involved in another scandal three years after the one that led to his defrocking by the Assemblies of God. 

Unfortunately, the immense moral and political sway wielded by today’s mega-church leaders has led them to ignore the lessons of history offered by the Bakker and Swaggart cases, with Robert Morris and Mike Bickle among the recent high-profile preachers who have strayed from the straight and narrow path through sexual misconduct.

I can’t imagine that Sharon Falconer’s “Waters of Jordan” could cleanse the enormous sins they have committed.

This Day in Baseball History (Yankees’ Pennock Outduels A’s Grove Over 15 Innings)

July 4, 1925—The 50,000 fans who took advantage of the Independence Day holiday to throng Yankee Stadium thought they were watching an extra-innings pitchers’ duel between the Bronx Bombers and the Philadelphia Athletics. But actually, they were present at the creation of two mini-dynasties whose rivalry would play out over the next half-dozen years, with the two competing to dominate the American League.

When it was over two hours and 50 minutes later, the A’s highly touted, 25-year-old rookie, Robert "Lefty" Grove, lost on a sacrifice fly in the 15^th inning by the New York Yankees’ catcher Steve O'Neill, while 31-year-old veteran Herb Pennock (pictured) used guile to survive and come away with the 1-0 win in the first game of a double-header.

(If you want to know: the second game that day was shorter and less eventful: a 2-hour, 8-5 loss for the Yankees.)

Fans have witnessed some remarkable Independence Days at Yankee Stadium over the years—notably Dave Righetti’s 1983 no-hitter against the Boston Red Sox and a dying Lou Gehrig’s “Luckiest Man on the Face of the Earth” in what was, in effect, the first Old Times Game. But two Hall of Fame pitchers matching zeroes had to be extra special.

I have no idea of the full extent of what Grove and Pennock endured that afternoon because I can find no record for the temperature and pitch counts then. Even so, the two lefthanders had to surmount considerable frustration, knowing that their offenses could give them no breathing room.

True to form, the cool, unflappable Pennock pitched to contact and painted the corners, finishing the day with five strikeouts, four hits and, equally important, no walks. Grove notched 10 strikeouts—every one of them a necessity to get out of jams, as he yielded five walks and 14 hits.

Powerhouses that had formerly won World Series, both the Yankees and the A’s were being retooled by their front-office executives, Ed Barrow with New York and Connie Mack (who doubled as manager) for Philadelphia.

The Yankees, having won three straight pennants from 1921 through 1923 and a World Series in the latter year, fell to second place in the American League in 1924. In the first half of 1925, they had to deal with two months without Babe Ruth, with a medical ailment dubbed the "Bellyache Heard Around the World." After sitting on the bench for two years, the promising Lou Gehrig did not replace Wally Pipp at first base until June 1. 

The team that became immortalized as “Murderers’ Row” was making do, as much as they could, with pitchers that Barrow had acquired since coming over from the Red Sox, such as Pennock, George Pipgras, and “Sad Sam” Jones.

The A’s had gone through a fallow period after their 1910-14 pennants, but Mack was now assembling a talented young squad that included future Hall of Famers Al Simmons, Mickey Cochrane, and Jimmie Foxx. 

But, as I wrote in this post from 2011, the most ferociously competitive of this bunch was Lefty Grove—so volatile that, after (another) hard-luck 1-0 loss that deprived him of a chance for a 17^th-consecutive victory, he wrecked the A’s stall lockers, not to mention his uniform.

Neither the A’s (88-64-1, good for second place in the AL) nor the Yankees (69-85, seventh place) gave their fans much to cheer about in 1925. But they would return to form the following year, with the Yankees winning three straight pennants and two World Series from 1926 through 1928 and the A’s doing likewise from 1929 through 1931. Both teams have fair claims for being considered among the greatest of all time.