Slavery, The Civil War, and Facts

October, 2025

Washington — What with the controversy over portraying the history of slavery and the Civil War correctly in our museums, parks, history texts, and scholarly literature, I offer two revisions myself.  They are linked to confusion over Frederick Law Olmsted's reports of his travels through the slave states in the early 1850s.  

The University of North Carolina, in its work by DocSouth of UNC Libraries, states as fact that Richard Strother Taylor — son of President Zachary Taylor, Louisiana slaveowner, and Confederate army general — studied and traveled in Scotland and France in the early 1840s.  No primary source has ever surfaced to verify this.  UNC appears to rely through secondary sources on Walter Fleming's 1909 biographical sketch of Taylor in which there are no citations.  Taylor never mentions it in his own writings.*  

More likely, Taylor has been conflated with his cousin David Hunter Strother, the popular Harper's writer, illustrator, and later Union army general, whose presence in Britain and France from 1840-43 is well-documented.  When Olmsted visited and described Taylor's sugar plantation in Louisiana in 1853, he disguised its owner and location (as he did for all his slave state research, for security reasons) by referring to Taylor as "Strather," a variation on his middle name. The later confusion over the two cousins is understandable given the similarity of their names and at least one instance of obfuscation of who Taylor actually was. 

Unrelated to this confusion, David Hunter Strother — known to Harper's readers under the pen name Porte Crayon — is nevertheless geographically associated with his cousin Taylor's plantation, named Fashion.  West Virginia University's Strother Collection holds an illustration from 1857 of slave housing that, although otherwise unidentified, uncannily matches Olmsted's written description.  Strother was on assignment from Harper's in 1857 and writes from the New Orleans area where Fashion was actually located, despite Olmsted's Red River area disguise.  Unfortunately, WVU dates the illustration from 1839, despite "1857" being written on the illustration itself, by Strother.  See below.

UNC and WVU should take action to correct their records, or at least signal readers that the information they present is in doubt.  

Why is this important?  Olmsted, Taylor, and Strother are three of the most consequential witnesses and writers of the era.  What they wrote before, during, and after the war, and how they influenced each other, shaped public opinion immensely.  It's important that we understand who they were, why they thought as they did, and why they wrote critically and candidly, even of their own efforts.  

Take Taylor, for example, whom Lost Cause advocates have attempted to portray as the same kind of slaveowner and Confederate general as some of his peers.  It is a bad fit, trying as they do to link statesmanship with secession in a roadside marker at the site of the old Fashion plantation, in Hahnville, Louisiana, erected in 1961.  See below. 

Taylor's operation of the plantation was in many ways a rebuke to other planters, which is one reason for Olmsted's disguises.  Taylor provided health care and housing, did not use the lash, and at war's end, when his family was destitute, was offered financial assistance from his former slaves.  Moreover, he had fought hard against secession before succumbing to it, as he explained in his bitter memoir, in which he ridiculed the idea that the South could have won the war.**  None of that is on the marker, unfortunately and misleadingly. 

And consider Strother, the Southern aristocrat who, after three years in abolitionist-leaning Britain and France, fought for the Union when war broke out.  Had that been Taylor rather than Strother, there might not have been Taylor's rescue of Stonewall Jackson's Valley Campaign, or his victory over Banks late in the war, or perhaps even a war at all.  That's total speculation, but no less than the fiction spun by the Lost Cause.  We all need to get back to the facts, throughout the country.

 

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* In Destruction and Reconstruction, published in 1879, Taylor mentions the skies and temperatures of Sicily and the heather of Scotland, as if he'd been to both places. He likely had been, but in his travels to Europe in the 1870s, not the 1840s when he was still in his mid-teens. 

** "At the time and since, I marveled at the joyous and careless temper in which men, much my superiors in sagacity and experience, consummated these acts [of secession].... As soon as the Convention adjourned, finding myself out of harmony with prevailing opinion,..I retired to my estate determined to accept such responsibility only as came to me unsought." — RST

Why is a Federal District Court not Enforcing the Rule of Law?

September, 2025

Washington — Federal district judge Ana C. Reyes has issued her decision in the Inspectors General case that is not only eyebrow-raising but bodes ill for the country well beyond determining the fate of the IGs.

Here are her own words, followed by my reactions:  

On January 24, 2025, four days into his second term, President Trump fired many IGs.  He did not first notify Congress and he did not provide any rationale, much less a substantive one containing detailed and case-specific reasons for the firing.  Plaintiffs, eight of the fired IGs, sued Defendants, their respective agency heads and the President, alleging that President Trump violated the IGA by failing to provide the required notice and rationale.  They seek, along with back pay and benefits, to be reinstated pending the President’s compliance with the IGA. 

So far, so good.  But then she continues:

But under well-established case law that this Court is bound to follow, Plaintiffs must show irreparable harm.  And they cannot.  Even assuming that the IGA comports with Article II, Plaintiffs’ inability to perform their duties for 30 days is not irreparable harm.  Moreover, if the IGs were reinstated, the President could lawfully remove them after 30 days by providing the required notice and rationale to Congress.   Unable to reinstate Plaintiffs to their positions, the Court DENIES Plaintiffs’ Motion for a Permanent Injunction.    

In other words, Judge Reyes sees no irreparable harm in this and, because she thinks the president "could" fire them again — this time as Congress prescribed — she declines to make the president actually follow the law.  However, what makes the judge think the president would comply with congressional requirements, when he has already said Article II allows him to do what he pleases, and he is not about to make concessions to Congress that would invalidate his view?  He can simply continue to lock out the IGs illegally.  She is giving him the court's blessing to do so.   

This is not just a slippery-slope, it is a free-fall undermining of the checks and balances of both the legislative and judicial branches.  And since when do judges make such important decisions based on mere speculation of what could happen, but most likely wouldn't? 

On irreparable harm, which Judge Reyes cannot find:

The question here is whether the President’s failure to provide the required 30-day notice and rationale to Congress constitutes irreparable harm to Plaintiffs.... [E]ven if Plaintiffs’ absence compromised the OIGs, any resulting harm would affect the institution.  And it is unclear how such an institutional harm could justify an individual statutory right to reinstatement.

In her view, there is no institutional harm involved, because:

No such institutional collapse is imminent here, as each of the OIGs “continues to operate” with leaders “functioning as acting” IGs. ... In other words... the OIGs will not “shutter[ ]” if the Court denies Plaintiffs’ requested reinstatement.  

As to it being "unclear" about how institutional harm, if there was any, could justify individual IG reinstatement, the four-factor test Judge Reyes herself cites as case law precedent to determine irreparable harm specifically includes a "public interest" component.  Unfortunately, she downplays and dismisses it.  Incredibly — at least to me — she does not think requiring the president to follow the law is of sufficient public interest to warrant reinstatement of the IGs, as if the big issue here is whether the IGs have another recourse to claiming back pay.  

If the public interest is not sufficiently obvious with regard to making the president follow the rule of law, it should be with regard to the statutory purpose of the IGs, which is to root out waste, fraud and abuse.  Let me offer an actual example of which I am aware.  It has come to the attention of experienced and credible experts in their field that a government program is being illegally exploited. Many of its participants, as well as federal taxpayers, are victims.  The situation, involving alarming sums, calls for reporting the fraud and abuse to the agency's duly appointed and confirmed IG.  It will not be reported to functionaries whose loyalty to the president is paramount.  

This is clearly irreparable, ongoing harm to the public interest.  Even if the agency IG is reinstated for only 30 days, the fraud will be reported.  This should be a factor in any appeal of Judge Reyes's decision. 

Finally, there is the matter of this curious sentence in the decision:  "Plaintiffs’ inability to perform their duties for 30 days is not irreparable harm."  This statement appears to be a misunderstanding of what is going on. The IGs have been illegally sidelined for months.  

Or the district court is acting like a TV network, a college, or a law firm that does not want a confrontation with the president, and by trivializing the issues, is ducking a showdown over the rule of law. 

May the decision be appealed, and quickly.  

The Dictator Premium

August, 2025

Washington — Prices for goods and services in the United States are unnecessarily high because we are now required to pay a "Dictator Premium."

It is made up of these components, which should not be confused with other causes:

1. New tariffs imposed by the Treasury Department

2. Labor shortage effects created by the Department of Homeland Security

3. Inflationary effects of adding five trillion dollars to the national debt through the One Big Beautiful Bill

4. Federal extortion and tribute payments passed on to consumers

5. Destruction of independent regulatory and consumer protection agencies 

6. Market distortions through new "corporate socialism" requirements

These are all attributable to President Trump's assertion that he is the president and he can do whatever he wants.  They are all new since inauguration day in January, 2025, and decidedly not fiscally conservative. They make up the "dictator premium" costs we are all paying. 

 

Sea Power to End Russian Aggression

August, 2025

Washington — Talks to end Russia's war against Ukraine are predictably going nowhere.  Land giveaways will neither be acceptable to Ukraine nor will they end Russian aggression.  

What will stop Russia are counterstrikes: whenever Russia commits a war crime against a civilian target, Ukraine's coalition of the willing strikes back hard at Russia's infrastructure from the international waters of the Black Sea.  

This is the "Article 5-like" security agreement Ukraine needs.  The crimes against humanity must stop.  Russia will stop them when they prove counterproductive.

Moves to make this happen are overdue* but more feasible as other options are discarded.

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* "To help protect US interests, US allies and partners need to project naval power across the Black Sea, and the United States can help them accelerate bringing the capabilities to do so to bear."

  

Urgent Need for State Prosecution of Extortion

August, 2025

Washington — Resistance to what many institutions (universities, law firms, media organizations) consider Trump administration extortion has been centered around checks and balances associated with the Constitution's separation of powers;  that is, the checks and balances of the legislative and judicial branches against the executive branch. 

Unfortunately, much less attention has been given to the Constitution's division of powers;  that is, the sovereignty of the states within a system of dual sovereignty established by the Constitution and affirmed by the Tenth Amendment.  

Extortion is the province of state law and can be adjudicated in state courts.  One reason less attention has been given division of powers' checks on Trump administration extortion is the assumption that such litigation would not survive opposition based on other constitutional provisions centered around what is called supremacy clause immunity.  If a federal question is involved, the litigation becomes the province of, and can be removed to, the federal courts, where the issue returns to separation of powers considerations. 

However, there are limits to supremacy clause immunity and those limits need to be tested in litigation to determine if the Constitutional system of dual sovereignty has remaining supporters.  Surely the Federalist Society would have to weigh in on the subject that is the foundation of its very existence.  There is reason to doubt that the current Supreme Court would abandon dual sovereignty to side with the Trump administration's more egregious extortion practices. 

State court litigation could proceed quickly and likely find its way to the increasingly well-worn path to the Supreme Court's emergency docket. 

Some potential litigants will have to rise above their own long-held prejudices against thinking that anything to do with states' rights is somehow distasteful and that society's progress relies on an ever-more powerful federal government.  If there was ever a time to repent of such notions, it is now.     

Why should universities follow the above advice?  Because their lawsuits so far, based on administrative law, institutional autonomy, free speech, academic freedom, and due process have vanishing prospects for success.  And why follow advice from me?  Because I have a track record in these matters, having succeeded in litigation that (according to AI) has had significant impacts on two major constitutional issues under the First Amendment and the Eleventh Amendment.  Readers can look it up.  

Institutions need urgently to pursue their cases in state courts to take advantage of both legal and political strategies offered by the checks and balances of dual sovereignty.  I predict victory*, but even a defeat would offer drawing a line on currently bottomless extortion.  

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*There is abundant evidence that antisemitism is pretextual, which will negate supremacy clause immunity.       

The Strother Cousins

July, 2025

Washington — Looking again through the family tree to see who may be perching nearby, I've discovered two remarkable cousins of ours in my father's Strother branch.  Both were generals in the Civil War: one Confederate, Richard Strother Taylor; and one Union, Joseph Pannell Taylor.

This is not entirely a surprise, given earlier discoveries.  David Hunter Strother, already known to us as an important figure in the Civil War, is a second cousin, now four generations removed.  He was widely known as a writer and illustrator for Harper's magazine under his pen name, "Porte Crayon," before accepting brevet general rank for the Union.   I've been reading his entertaining books and Civil War diaries for several years.  And President Zachary Taylor, another Strother, is our first cousin, seven times removed.  Jefferson Davis's first wife was a Strother.  So we've known about this family line for some time.   

Newly discovered second cousin Richard Strother Taylor, overlooked in the tree until now, was the son of Zachary Taylor.  He was a prominent Confederate general who, after the war, wrote critically of both the South's efforts and the Reconstruction program imposed by the North.  His uncle, the president's brother Joseph Pannell Taylor, was a Union general and an advisor to President Lincoln.  An expert in logistics, he died in 1864 and is buried in Oak Hill cemetery in Washington's Georgetown neighborhood.  

All the Strothers trace back to William Strother (1630-1702), who emigrated from the Northumberland area of England to colonial Virginia and became a prominent planter.  Our own direct Strother branch goes back to Anthony Dabney Strother and his wife Frances Eastham, from the Culpeper, Virginia, area, who freed their slaves sometime after 1782 — on moral grounds according to a son — when it became legal to do so.  A century later our Strother line moved to Nebraska. 

Several cousins in the more famous Strother branch were slaveowners, including Zachary Taylor and his son.  Many early presidents and their families were slaveowners, including another Strother relative, James Madison.  Porte Crayon apparently was not a slaveowner.  

It's unclear how well contemporaries Richard Strother Taylor (1826-79), born in Kentucky, and Porte Crayon (David Hunter Strother, 1816-88), born in Virginia, knew each other. They both lived in France in 1843, according to some sources.*  Neither attended West Point.  Taylor studied at Harvard and Yale.  Porte Crayon studied art and art history with Samuel F. B. Morse in New York City.  Porte Crayon seems to have visited his cousin at Fashion Planation in Louisiana in 1857, based on his illustrations.   

The two may have faced each other on the battlefield in the Shenandoah Valley Campaign, when Richard Strother Taylor led Louisiana troops for Stonewall Jackson and Porte Crayon, as he was widely known, was staff to Union general Nathaniel P. Banks.  They shared many close associations with others, especially after the war, most notably with Ulysses S. Grant.  Taylor interceded successfully with Grant and with President Andrew Johnson to release Jefferson Davis, his brother-in-law and former Confederate president, from prison. 

Both Taylor and Porte Crayon wrote vivid and consequential books on the Civil War, as they were battlefield instigators and participants.  In his book Destruction and Reconstruction, Taylor often cannot contain his sarcasm and contempt for how the South deluded itself into thinking it could win the war, which is remarkable as Taylor himself was among the largest cotton and sugar cane planters in Mississippi and Louisiana. Taylor writes of the Confederacy (p. 256): 

We set up a monarch, too, King Cotton, and hedged him with a divinity surpassing that of earthly potentates. To doubt his royalty and power was a confession of ignorance or cowardice. This potent spirit, at the nod of our Prosperos, the cotton-planters, would arrest every loom and spindle in New England, destroy her wealth, and reduce her population to beggary. The power of Old England, the growth of eight hundred years, was to wither as the prophet's gourd unless she obeyed its behests. And a right "tricksy spirit" it proved indeed. There was a complete mental derangement on this subject. The Government undertook to own all cotton that could be exported. Four millions of bales, belonging to many thousands of individuals, could be disposed of to better advantage by the Government than by the proprietors; and this was enforced by our authorities, whose ancestors for generations had been resisting the intrusion of governments into private business. All cotton, as well as naval stores, that was in danger of falling into the enemy's possession, was, by orders based on legislative enactment, to be burned; and this policy continued to the end. It was fully believed that this destruction would appall our enemies and convince the world of our earnestness. Possibly there was a lurking idea that it was necessary to convince ourselves.

[Pg 235]

Richard Strother Taylor was also a friend of Braxton Bragg (of Fort Bragg notoriety), but does not spare him in the book.  Were he alive today, Taylor would likely not take kindly to commemorating anything Confederate, especially with Bragg's name.  When as the last Confederate general east of the Mississippi to surrender his troops at the end of the war, he asked Union general Edward Canby's army band not to play "Dixie," as Canby offered, but "Hail Columbia." He had been against secession in 1860.  How Taylor convinced himself to put his military talents to work in Confederate service is his life's great contradiction.  He died in 1879 at the home of political ally Samuel L.M. Barlow in New York City and was first interred in Marble Cemetery before being reinterred two years later at Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans, in the family crypt.  

Our own Strother line became "Strawder" (a phonetic misspelling) with my grandmother's ancestor Nathaniel (1800-78), shortly before the migration to Nebraska.  For anyone looking for verification through current family DNA matches, search Strother, Strawder, Dabney, and Eastham, to find several.  

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* According to American History Central: The Encyclopedia of American History. Taylor's years in Scotland and France are not noted, however, in Parrish's biography of him, for lack of solid documentation.

  

Cures for Democratic Disarray

July, 2025

Washington — The disarray plaguing Democrats can be overcome by uniting behind this mantra:

Ditch identitarianism;

Embrace humanitarianism;

Compete extra hard in rural areas;

Election wins will follow. 

This has been the plea of many of us for the past decade, because identity politics has been a clear loser at the ballot box.  Good causes must be supported on grounds of humanitarianism and universalism — once Democrats' strong suits — without identity group impediments.*  Moreover, it should now be clear that the divisiveness of group identity politics is counterproductive to achieving humanitarian goals, at home and abroad.  Ditch identitarianism, swiftly and decisively.**   

Rural areas are key.  Losing them in elections is not the problem; losing them so badly that the losses cannot be made up elsewhere is.  Democrats must compete in rural areas to make a respectable showing.  They must show up, listen, and have something to offer rural voters.  There has never been a better time than right now, given the torrent of anti-rural policies currently flowing from Republican office holders at every level.  

Is the Democratic National Committee paying attention?  Many of us are waiting to see.  So far, there is not a lot of evidence of it. 

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* As advanced by philosophers from Aristotle through Locke, Kant, Mill, and Adorno, among many others, as opposed to the identitarianism of philosophers like Nazi apologist Carl Schmitt. 

** Bring back the thought, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."

Beyond Single-Axis Ideological Descriptors

July, 2025

Washington — If I were a reporter, pundit, podcaster, or writer of any kind offering political analyses these days, I would be careful to limit my use of terms such as right, left, liberal, conservative, red, blue, libertarian, socialist and the like.  

Such terms suggest a single continuum of political ideology.  Unfortunately, the more the terms are deployed, the more divided the population itself becomes.  That's bad enough, but these single-axis descriptors aren't accurate for most Americans, who view themselves as ideological mixtures and are likely to vote on the basis of other factors.

Social scientists often try to deal with these oversimplifications by adding a Y axis to the existing X axis  to allow for people who may be fiscally conservative on one axis, for example, but socially liberal on another, and vice-versa.  This places people in quadrants and gets closer to reflecting their actual viewpoints.  

But within each quadrant are other variables, some of which may be nominal rather than continuous and do not lend themselves to graphing.  Consider that some people may favor a strong central government for policy implementation, others want decisions made locally, and others are pragmatic.

Is there a way to describe people in four quadrants with three options within each; that is, 4 x 3 = 12? 

One way would be to use the colors of the chromatic scale in a color wheel.  The musician Alexander Scriabin, who heard notes as colors, identified twelve such colors.  So rather than using red and blue to divide people, a twelve-color wheel would get closer to reflecting viewpoint reality.  It might show that many of us are yellow, green, or steel gray.  This would also identify more opportunities to work together because commonalities as well as differences are revealed in such a display.  Listening for Scribin's colors as notes, as he did, might reveal harmonies through which disparate people could make music together, so to speak. 

Another way to depart from the divisiveness of single-axis descriptors would be to consider political viewpoints as particles in quantum physics.  Observers can't be sure where they are, let alone whether they are particles or waves at any moment.  And they may change their behavior when an attempt is made to observe them.  Despite the uncertainties, great breakthroughs are based on those understandings alone.  

So the next time you hear terms like left and right applied (or shouted as epithets), think how Max Planck and Werner Heisenberg might consider their positioning, or how various viewpoints might sound as notes to a musician like Scriabin.  

Listen for political leaders who know how to play notes together harmoniously.  Such leaders are currently in short supply.  Their pitches are likely to be other than those on a single, overused, and divisive axis. 

 

"Ward Circle Faction"

June, 2025

Washington — When the annual Group 93 exhibition goes up at the Katzen Arts Center rotunda this August, it will note the end of one era and the beginning of another.  The show recaps the group's origins and recognizes a multitude of artists in its mix. 

Group founders Luciano Penay, Joan Birnbaum, and Myrtle Katzen have recently passed away after decades of dedication to their visions of artistic creation and interpretation.  They actively advanced a distinct approach both to creating visual art and to presenting it, joined by other artists located in the greater Washington DC area (especially former faculty and graduates of American University).  

Under the guidance of Chilean-born Professor Penay, the group met regularly for many years in rigorous, collaborative critique of new works.  Annual exhibition hangs were customarily two and three day efforts of artists to install up to two hundred works, assisted by faculty colleagues Michael Graham and Marjorie Hirano, along with Claudia Vess, Lucy Blankstein, and other Washington-area founders and regulars of the critique sessions.  

The next era continues the legacy created by the original founders.  "What is our manifesto?" Luciano Penay once asked Claudia Vess, whom he entrusted with Lucy Blankstein to select and hang group shows in recent years and going forward.  "Every work must speak for itself, and every work must be hung to bring out the best in those around it." 

The 2023 show included ekphrastic poetry that accompanied the visual works, including poems by DC based poets and poet laureates of the United States (Ted Kooser), Maryland (Grace Cavalieri) and Takoma Park (Anne Becker).  The 2024 show, "Jamming," featured QR music links paired with the art and performances by an AU music ensemble. 

The 2025 show will transition the eras under the title "Ward Circle Faction," to capture the sense of place and spirit of past critiques and exhibitions, first at the Watkins and later at the Katzen classrooms and spaces, both located off Ward Circle. The term faction distinguishes the group from other art movements that center on artist identities or temporal artistic fashions.  

Featured in the 2025 show will be works by Luciano Penay (1921-2023), Joan Birnbaum (1927-2024), and Myrtle Katzen (1927-2025) along with representative works by artists who participated through the group's thirty-five years of meetings.  They include Penay works on paper never previously exhibited, Birnbaum's ambitious Evergreen, Katzen's audacious Red Still Life, and works by Claudia Vess and Lucy Blankstein, independent curators of The Cabinet and previously of the Washington Women's Arts Center, Gallery 10, and Wonder Graphics.

Appropriately, the show will again be hung in the Katzen rotunda, in the Arts Center named for Myrtle Katzen and her husband Cy.  Myrtle Katzen began her career as an illustrator, but developed into a noteworthy artist in her own right.  Her creations rival those of more famous artists in her own private collection.  

The 2025 Group 93 show "Ward Circle Faction" will run August 20 to September 26. 

UPDATE:  The Ward Circle Faction show of 2025, curated by Claudia Vess with assistance from Lucy Blankstein and Michael Graham, will run through October 5th.  

End Two Wars with One Negotiation

June, 2025

Washington — End both the Iran-Israel and Israel-Gaza wars with one negotiation in which the Iranian clerics turn over power to a non-nuclear secular government and, in exchange, Israel halts the Gaza war and commits to new elections itself.  

Lives would be saved all around — Palestinian, Israeli, and Iranian.  Hamas, Iran's proxy, collapses. Israel gets what it wants, a non-nuclear Iran, and an off-ramp to its Gaza war.  

The Iran clerics avoid a bloody popular uprising and a likely civil war.  They are increasingly desperate for a way out, despite their bluster.     

The USA and EU have the leverage over the parties to bring such a negotiation about, along with every incentive to avoid using military force only to see it fail in the long run, a real possibility and a likely outcome.   

Update:

The above was written before the USA struck Iran militarily on 21 June.  The strike came on the day the EU (France in particular) was engaging with Iran about a diplomatic solution.  If Iran's likely counterattacks now drain American resources away from defending Ukraine, Russia will benefit. If the strike hardens Iran's resolve, at a time when the regime was about to topple, the strike could turn out to be a major strategic mistake.  

Second Update:

To no one's surprise, the USA has now advised Ukraine that more defensive missiles are needed in the Middle East, so fewer are available to help Ukraine defend against Russia's attacks. Moreover, the military strikes against Iran may not have been as effective as first claimed and the unconscionable war in Gaza goes on.  All of which means a comprehensive negotiated settlement is paramount, as outlined above.