Congratulations, Missouri!

Recently, Missouri was often in the news, but for embarrassing reasons for us Missourians: Missouri, especially the southwest part of the state, was a hotspot for new covid-19 cases. But today (8/10) is a celebratory day for all Missourians; it is the state’s bicentennial. 

Missouri History

The name Missouri came from the Native Americans, and it is usually pronounced mĭ-zo͝or′ē, although in the west/northwest part of the state, mĭ-zo͝or′ə is more common.

The land that became the state of Missouri was part of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and was called Louisiana Territory until 1812 when Louisiana became a state. From then until 1821, most of that area was called Missouri Territory.

Then on August 10, 1821, Missouri became the 24^th state of the United States. That was following and in accordance with the Missouri Compromise of March 1820.

That Compromise was federal legislation that stopped northern attempts to forever prohibit slavery’s expansion by admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state in exchange for legislation that prohibited slavery in the remaining Louisiana Purchase lands except for Missouri.

Missouri Fame

Missouri was the first state completely west of the Mississippi River to be admitted to the Union, and long ago St. Louis was dubbed “Gateway to the West.” In 1965, construction of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis was completed, and it is the world’s tallest arch.

Missouri was the birthplace of many who became nationally, and internationally, famous. Foremost of those is Harry S. Truman, who always had a home in Missouri. Earlier this year, historians again ranked Truman the sixth best President in U.S. history.

Other famous Missourians include (in alphabetical order), the painter Thomas Hart Benton, author Dale Carnegie, George Washington Carver, theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, and Mark Twain. Also, author Laura Ingalls Wilder lived in Missouri for over 60 years before her death in 1957.

The geographical center of the contiguous United States is actually in Kansas, about 250 miles west of the Missouri-Kansas border. But because of its diversity, Missouri seems more like the center of the nation.

Missouri is not East or West, North or South, but right in the middle, adjacent to all four geographical areas of the 48 states, so I have sometimes claimed that it is the most typical part of the U.S.

Missouri Roots

Even though my pride in Missouri has waned some in recent years, mainly because of the state’s political position, my Missouri roots run deep, and most of my life I have been justly proud of my home state.

My Grandpa George’s grandfather, Franklin Wadsworth Seat, was born in Cooper County in 1818, three years before Missouri became a state.

Not long before Franklin’s birth, his parents, Littleton and Elizabeth, migrated with two of Littleton’s brothers from Tennessee to Cooper Co.—and then in 1844 moved to what is now Worth County.

The area that became Worth Co. in 1861 was the very northwest corner of the state—and of the United States—when Missouri was admitted to the Union and remained so until the Platte Purchase was added in 1837.

I regret that the Seat family in Tennessee, and previously in Virginia, “owned” enslaved people, but as far as I have been able to ascertain, the Seats in Missouri never had “slaves” and a couple of Littleton’s nephews in Cooper Co. were Union soldiers in the Civil War.

Today, I am happy to join with fellow Missourians all over the state in celebration of Missouri’s bicentennial—and to take pride in the fact that some of my branch of the Seat family have lived in the state for all of these 200 years, and even longer.

After my death, some of my ashes will be buried not far from the grave of Franklin Seat, who, as mentioned, was born in Missouri before it became a state and who was buried in Worth County’s New Hope Cemetery in 1905.

So, as a deeply rooted Missourian, I join the chorus of those who, today and this month, exclaim, Congratulations, Missouri! 

_____ 

** For those who would like to learn more, here is the link to the Missouri Statehood Day website, which has a schedule of activities, some of which will be live-streamed.

** Many Missouri communities will be having ice cream socials today, including here in Liberty. There will be free ice cream on the square between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. (More information here.)

Once Again: Were the A-Bombs Necessary?

Largely because of the response received to my May article about Harry Truman (see here), I decided to consider once again the question repeatedly raised since the first atomic bombs were dropped: were they necessary for ending the war with Japan?

The Majority Opinion

Undoubtedly, most USAmericans since the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and August 9, 1945, have firmly believed that they were justified.

Moreover, most people in the U.S. seem to think that the bombs were not only necessary but that they also were “good” because of the lives saved.

Thinking Friend Tom Lamkin in North Carolina wrote: “A member of one of my churches had a father on the troop ships on the way to Japan for the invasion when the bombs were dropped. They were called back when news came Japan had surrendered. That was one family glad to see the bombs fall.”

Similarly, local Thinking Friend Joe Barbour said, “I dislike war but we live in a world where anything goes it seems. So as I think of the loss of life that those bombings of the Japanese at home experienced, they saved far more lives than were lost. It had to be a hard decision but [Truman] made it and ended a terrible war.”

These views are in agreement with what ethicist Joseph Fletcher propounds in his book Situation Ethics (1966). He writes about the “agapeic calculus,” which seeks “the greatest amount of neighbor welfare for the largest number of neighbors possible.” (p. 95).
While it is only a “test case” with no solution explicitly given, Fletcher ends his book with a brief summary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—with the suggestion, I think, that the agapeic calculus means that the dropping of the atomic bombs should be considered right or “good.”

While making no reference to Fletcher, historian Michael Bess agrees with what I call the majority opinion. Chapter Ten in Bess’s excellent book Choices Under Fire: Moral Dimensions of World War II (2006) is “The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb.”

Bess asserts that “it is a fair conclusion that the bomb’s use probably saved an enormous number of lives—far more Japanese than Allied” (pp. 230-1). 

An Opposing View

One of many places where an opposing view can be found is in the television mini-series “The Untold History of the United States” (2012) and the accompanying book by that title written by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick.

The fourth chapter of Stone & Kuznick’s book is titled “The Bomb: The Tragedy of a Small Man.” They are probably much too critical of Truman, but they may be right in their clear implication that the bombs were most likely not necessary—especially if better decisions had been made earlier.

For example, in all probability the bombs would not have been necessary if Truman had taken Herbert Hoover’s advice. In Chapter 76 of Freedom Betrayed, the 2011 book that contains Hoover’s writings about WWII and afterward, Hoover tells how in May 1945 he advised Truman to drop the demand for unconditional surrender and to assure Japan that the Emperor could remain as the spiritual head of the nation.

If Truman had taken Hoover’s suggestion soon thereafter, Japan would most likely have surrendered much before August 6, 1945.

What about Now?

The historical events of 1945 cannot be changed, of course. But we humans should be able to learn from history.

One essential thing that we need to learn the most is that there is always a better alternative than war—and certainly there is always a better alternative than using nuclear weapons.

A Night at the Elms

The Elms Hotel and Spa in Excelsior Springs, Missouri, is about sixteen miles from where June and I live. Many times we have driven by the Elms but have never stayed there. That will soon change: we are about to spend a night at the Elms as so many others have over the past 130 years.

TRUMAN AT THE ELMS

The presidential election of 1948 was long ago, but it is still one that is widely known. Upon Franklin D. Roosevelt’s death in April 1945, Vice President Harry Truman suddenly became the 33^rd POTUS. He was relatively unknown when elected as V.P. and was quite unpopular during his first term.

Even though the incumbent, he was the definite underdog in 1948. It widely thought he would lose that election to Thomas Dewey, the flashy New York Governor.

According to David McCullough in his massive book Truman (1992), on the evening of the 1948 election, Truman and two of his aides “drove to Excelsior Springs, the little resort town across the Missouri [River] in Clay County, and checked into the Elms Hotel.”

This was “the same place Truman had escaped to sixteen years earlier, crushed by disappointment the night he learned he was not to be Tom Pendergast’s choice for governor.”

McCullough goes on to say,

The sprawling three-story stone-and-timber hotel was the latest of several that had occupied the site since mineral springs were discovered there in the 1880s. Its chief attractions were seclusion, peace, and quiet. Franklin Roosevelt, John D. Rockefeller, and Al Capone were all known to have escaped from public view at the Elms (p. 705).

It was while at the Elms that Truman learned he had won the election. The next day he posed for the iconic picture of him smiling broadly while holding the Chicago Tribune paper boldly declaring “Dewey Defeats Truman.”

THE WATERS AT THE ELMS

In the 1870s and 1880s there was a boom of resorts built to make it possible for people to “take the waters,” drinking and bathing in mineral water that supposedly had healing powers. Such resorts were built all over Missouri as well as in many other states.

Loring Bullard’s book Healing Waters: Missouri’s Historic Mineral Springs and Spas was published in 2004. “By all standards,” Bullard writes, “Excelsior Springs must be considered the state’s premier mineral water resort.” He goes on to say that “it is the only mineral water site still operating as a resort” (p. 133). And that is because of the Elms Hotel and Spa.

Excelsior Springs, now a town of some 11,500 people, has long billed itself as “American’s Haven of Health.” It became a town in 1881, a year following the discovery of natural spring water that was thought to have healing qualities.

The first Elms Hotel opened for business in 1888. After being destroyed by fire five years later, the second Elms Hotel was opened in 1909—only to be destroyed by fire the very next year. The current Elms hotel was built of native stone and opened in 1912—and has undergone many renovations since then.   

THE SEATS AT THE ELMS

For June and me, tomorrow (May 26) is our 60^th sixtieth wedding anniversary. We are going to have a bigger celebration with our children and grandchildren in July. Just the two of us, though, are going to celebrate the actual date by spending a night at the Elms.

I don’t know how much we will “take the waters” at the Elms, but perhaps we will be able to reap some benefit there as we shoot for our 75^th anniversary. (Is that too much for us to hope for, an anniversary celebration in 2032?)

Honoring Harry

The Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum in Independence, Missouri, is a major tourist attraction in the Kansas City metropolitan area. This article was spawned partly because of June’s and my visit there on Monday, May 8.

REMEMBERING HARRY

Harry S. Truman was born on May 8 (in 1884), and that date is now celebrated as Truman Day, a state holiday. On Monday morning that special Missouri holiday was celebrated with ceremonies in the courtyard of the Truman Library where both Harry and his wife Bess are buried.

Truman Library Institute photo taken on 5/8/17 (June and I are next to the last people on the right.)

Harry was born in Lamar, Mo., and although he lived there for less than a year, the house in which he was born is still maintained as the Harry S Truman Birthplace State Historic Site. It is a modest house, indicative of the middle-class roots of the man who became the 33^rd POTUS.

The small town of Lamar is a little over 100 miles due south of Grandview (on the south side of Kansas City), the town nearest to where the Truman family moved in 1887 and where Harry lived from 1906 to 1917.

Harry was baptized in the Little Blue River in Kansas City in 1902 and in 1916 he joined the Grandview Baptist Church (as it was known then) and remained a member there the rest of his life—although for most of his life he attended very infrequently.

Truman helped finance a new building for the Grandview church, and he spoke at its dedication service in 1950. One Sunday morning many years ago, coincidentally on Pearl Harbor Day, I had the privilege of preaching in that church. Truman’s Bible, which he regularly read in the Oval Office, was on display in the foyer.

MIXED FEELINGS ABOUT HARRY

While I can understand the pressure Truman felt to use the atomic bombs he first learned about only after he became President in April 1945, and while I realize it is much easier to second-guess hard decisions in retrospect than to make those decisions looking forward, still I have serious doubts about the morality of his authorizing the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan. The bombing of Nagasaki only three days after Hiroshima was bombed on August 6 is especially problematic.

Still, Truman is to be commended for firing General MacArthur and for refusing to escalate the Korean conflict even to the use of atomic weapons there. Truman did threaten to use atomic bombs in Korea, but he didn’t use them as MacArthur possibly would have.

Of many other things that might be said about Truman’s presidency, two are worthy of special note.

In November 1945, Truman proposed a national health insurance plan. Although it was never enacted, it did lead to Medicare. When President Johnson signed the Medicare bill into law at the Truman Library in July 1965, he said that it “all started really with the man from Independence.”

Truman also significantly furthered greater racial equality in the U.S. by issuing an executive order in July 1948 that desegregated the armed forces.

APPRECIATING HARRY

There is an enormous difference between Harry Truman and the current POTUS. While the latter campaigned as a populist candidate, it was Truman who was truly a “man of the people,” to use the title of the lengthy 1995 tome on Truman by Alonzo L. Hamby.

And after watching the HBO movie “Truman” (1995) on Sunday evening, I was also struck by the marked contrast between the honesty and integrity of the man from Missouri compared to the current POTUS.

It was an honor to be among the people who gathered on Monday to honor Harry on Truman Day.