Kon Tiki Made the Epic Voyage That Proved Nothing

 

Kon Tiki under sail.  She flew the flags of not only Norway of other nations represented on the crew or which offered material support to the voyage including Peru, Italy Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Sweden.

On August 7, 1947 the sailing raft Kon Tiki crashed into a barrier reef off an uninhabited islet near Raroia Atoll in the Tuamotu Group of French Polynesia. The ship’s Norwegian crew led by explorer Thor Heyerdahl managed to drag the craft safely to the beach.  After a few days of being stranded, they were rescued by Polynesian natives from a near-by island who came to investigate the source of unusual jetsam that washed up on their shore.  It was the end of a grand adventure that Heyerdahl would chronicle in a world-wide bestselling book and in a documentary film of the voyage.  

Thor Heyerdahl, the intrepid captain.

Heyerdahl’s epic nearly 4,000-mile trip across the Pacific from Peru to Polynesia was meant to test his theory that the islands of the South Pacific could have been populated by people from the South American mainland, carried westward by the prevalent Humboldt Current. 

Heyerdahl built his raft from local materials using only technology available in the pre-Columbian era and based on observations of native crafts described by Peru’s early Spanish Conquistadores. Heyerdahl named his craft after a variation on the name of the Incan sun god, Viracocha.

The raft was built with nine light weight balsa tree trunks ranging up to 45 feet long and 2 feet in diameter, lashed together with heavy hemp ropes. Balsa cross-pieces 18 feet long and 1 foot in diameter were lashed across the logs at 3-foot intervals to. The bow was clad in hand hewn Pine boards about 1 inch thick and 2 feet wide. Similar boards were wedged between the balsa logs and used as centerboards—retractable keels.

The main mast was made of lengths of mangrove wood lashed together to form an A-frame 29 feet high. The spars were a laminate of wood and reeds. The main sail was 15 by 18 feet on a yard arm of bamboo cane lashed together with hemp. The raft also carried a small top sail and a mizzen-sail mounted at the stern. With a partial deck of split bamboo, a cabin of plaited bamboo 14 feet long and 8 feet wide and nearly 5 feet high was built and roofed with banana leaf thatch. At the stern was a 19 feet long steering oar of mangrove wood, with a blade of fir. No metal was used in the construction.  

                        Heyerdahl at the steering oar.

Local provisions and storage techniques were used, although U.S. Army donated some canned rations for emergencies.  The Kon-Tiki carried 250 liters of water in bamboo tubes, 200 coconuts, sweet potatoes, bottle gourds, and other assorted fruit and roots.  For protein the crew relied on—and was successful in obtaining—abundant fish caught along the way including flying fish, dolphin (the fish, not the mammal), yellow fin, bonita, and shark. 

The ship also carried radios, watches, metal knives, and a sextant which Heyerdahl said did not compromise the integrity of the experiment since they did not affect the sailing ability of the ship or the sustainability of the crew. 

On April 28 Heyerdahl and his crew of 5 were towed aboard the Kon Tiki by a Peruvian Navy tug from the harbor at Callao to a point about 50 miles offshore.  This was to prevent tidal forces from bashing the raft back against the shore.  Heyerdahl maintained that a similar raft could have been towed beyond the danger by teams of canoes.  

            The voyage of Kon Tiki.

Once set adrift, the raft caught the Humboldt and was on its way.  On July 30 the crew spotted their first land, the atoll of Puka-Puka, and on August 4 they met inhabitants of Angatau Island in their canoes but could not land safely there.  Three days later they struck the reef that ended the voyage after 3,770 nautical miles in 101 days, at an average speed of 1.5 knots. 

The raft was salvaged and eventually brought to Oslo where it is the centerpiece of the Kon-Tiki Museum, one of Norway’s leading tourist attractions.  Heyerdahl, who died in 2002, is still celebrated as one of the nation’s great heroes.  

Kon Tiki on display in Oslo in her own museum.

Ironically, although the voyage proved that the journey was possible, ethnologists have long since discounted Heyerdahl’s theory of a South American origin for the Polynesian people.  Their origins are still wrapped in some mystery but the prevailing thought, based on DNA evidence and linguistics is that they originated on Taiwan and spread more or less slowly, depending of which conflicting theories are applied, through Micronesia, the Malay Peninsula, and the islands of Austronesia (including most of modern Indonesia and the Philippines) while mixing with even more ancient local populations in the area.   

Polynesians heading east and south explored and settled islands across vast stretches of the Pacific ocean using double hull sailing canoes like this.  Their navigation system including probable astronomical observation and knowledge of currents is still a mystery.

Scientists are still puzzled by how the Polynesians navigated regularly across wide expanses of ocean in canoes—not rafts—with no known navigational aids.

Two Fulcrum Anniversaries —The Bomb and a Boon

 

The mushroom cloud over Hiroshima August 6, 1945.

Two incredibly significant anniversaries are being observed today.  They couldn’t be more different, but each event shaped and changed forever the world in which we live.  Eighty-one years ago on August 6, 1945 the Atomic Bomb was first used as a weapon of war, exploding with unprecedented devastation over Hiroshima, Japan and ushering in decades of fear known as the Nuclear Age.  Twenty years later President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 ushering in an era of increased Black political participation and power particularly in the states of the old Confederacy.

Despite the anniversary, the defining world historical event of the 20th Century attention to Hiroshima seems, at least to me, to be more muted than during previous years.  Perhaps it has to do with the rapid fading of the World War II generation itself.  Perhaps because a generation or more has come of age since the demise of the old Soviet Union and with it the Sword of Damocles threat of global incineration that Baby Boomers like me grew up with.  Despite rising tensions with Russia under Vladimir Putin and the invasion of Ukraine few expect that not-so-veiled threats to seriously threaten the United States or its European allies with nukes.  China, the emerging polar power vs. the U.S. has not been unclearly aggressive. 

There have been periodic scares from the Third World—largely fantastic attempts to whip up hysteria over supposed suite case bombs in the hands of terrorists, the so called Islamic bomb in Pakistan which was preemptively squashed by India, periodic bluster and chest beating threats from North Korea, and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s persistent attempts to drum up a war between the U.S. and Iran over as yet undeveloped possible nuclear arms.  With Donald Trump as his imbecilic dupe, he finally stirred up a war with the Islamic Republic.  You may have heard that is not going well.

Despite all this most Americans no longer live with the dread of the world coming to an end tomorrow.  

 

The Doomsday clock is set closer than ever to Midnight

We may be too nonchalant.   In 2023 the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists which keeps close track on such things re-set their famous Doomsday Clock to 90 seconds to Midnight, the most alarming re-set ever which reflected North Korean efforts, the collapse of agreements by Iran to suspend weapon development, and the general instability of the world largely due to Donald Trump’s feckless policies, and population pressures from accelerating climate change.  The Clock has been re-set again to 85 seconds to Midnight.

The devastation in Hiroshima.

The U.S. Army Air Corps B-29 bomber Enola Gay piloted by Colonel Paul Tibbets dropped a bomb on Hiroshima at 8:15 local time as residents were beginning their work and school days.  To do justice to the occasion today, I would have to dwell in detail on what it was like in the city that morning when “the face of the sun seemed to kiss the earth.”  And frankly I am not up to that ever-wrenching experience.  Call me a coward.  Instead, for just a taste of the horror and destruction I invite you to view Hiroshima: The Lost Photographs.

Voting rights demonstrations across the South, often brutally suppressed, like the first attempt of a march from Selma Alabama where young John Lewis had his skull fractured and the deaths of White civil rights workers pressured Lyndon Johnson to act and ultimately gave him the leverage to get an act through Congress.

The anniversary of the Voting Rights Act continues to generate more interest than usual because voting rights are under such relentless attack and because of the deaths of voting rights champions Congressman John Lewis and Rev. C.T. Vivian.  Progressive forces are now rallying to preserve them and to recoup what has been lost since 2013 when the Supreme Court overturned a key provision to combat racial discrimination in voting.

Under Section 5 of the landmark civil rights law, jurisdictions with a history of discrimination needed to seek pre-approval of changes in voting rules that could affect minorities.  It blocked discrimination before it occurred. In Shelby County V. Holder the Court invalidated Section 4—which laid out criteria for identifying states and localities covered by Section 5—claiming that current conditions require a new coverage formula.  That left Section 5 intact but unenforceable.  The conservative majority on the Court claimed that Congress could easily adopt a new formula and restore enforcement, knowing full well that with the House of Representatives in the iron grip of reactionary Republican majorities that no remedy would be enacted.

Since then, attacks on voting rights have intensified across the country—and not just in the old Deep South.  Republican Legislatures and Governors have enacted waves of legislation aimed at curbing or discouraging voting by minorities and any groups of voters suspected of possible Democratic tendencies.  In the name of fighting a virtually nonexistent form of voter fraud—registration and voting by non-citizens misrepresenting their status—burdensome proof of identity legislation, including very limited numbers of approved identification documents and fees and charges for attaining those documents.  Places where applicants can obtain documents have been reduced requiring burdensome travel and their hours of operation restricted.  Students have been barred from registering where they attend college, even if they live there year around.  Early voting periods have been reduced and restricted.  Polling places have been eliminated and consolidated in minority areas to guarantee long and discouraging lines.  It seems like new and creative ways to curb registration or discourage voting are introduced every year, churned out as model legislation by some right wing think tank and spreading from red state to red state like a virus.

The Rev. William Barber in the red stole became a leading voice for the "Civil Rights Movement for our times" and demands to end the GOP rampage of voter suppression laws.  Seen here before his arrest with other faith leaders in Washington.

Many, maybe even most, of these restrictions eventually get struck down in the courts, but not before having their desired effect for an election cycle or two.  With Section 4 in place, many of these changes would have been stopped by Federal review before they were even put in place. 

Meanwhile there was a growing rank-and-file movement to reclaim voting rights in the same way as they were first won at bitter cost to begin with—with street protests and civil disobedience.  The NAACP’s Moral Monday movement in South Carolina was a model for a new activism and a movement that has been called the Selma of the 21st Century.

Lyndon Johnson signing the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  Among the witnesses are Senate Co-Sponsor and Republican Minority Leader Everett Dirksen of Illinois, Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. , Benjamin Hooks and Rosa Parks.

On August 6, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the landmark National Voting Rights Act of 1965 in a ceremony at the White House attended by leaders of both parties in Congress and Civil Rights leaders including the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Benjamin Hooks. 

My generation, which grew up protesting the War in Vietnam, grew to regard Johnson as “the enemy.”  Yet his record on domestic issues was unmatched by any President except Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  His Great Society programs, though far from perfect, were the last great systematic assault on poverty in our history.  And this Texas wheeler-dealer accomplished what Northern liberals like John F. Kennedy never could—a comprehensive legislative attack on discrimination and the subjugation of Black citizens. 

Perhaps we expected that subsequent Democratic Presidents would take up where Johnson left off without the stain of a fruitless war.  The fact is that whatever their intentions, none of them did.  The previous year the Civil Rights Act of 1964 opened doors of public accommodations in response to ongoing campaigns by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), branches of the National Association of Colored People (NAACP), and others. 

But the historic pattern of restricting voting by Blacks through the use of poll taxes, literacy tests, and outright intimidation that was the hallmark of the Jim Crow era after Southern Whites dismantled the reforms of post-Civil War Reconstruction, remained untouched.  With new militancy the SCLC and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) turned to campaigns to register voters. 

That campaign took a bloody, violent turn in Selma, Alabama earlier that year. Marchers attempting to reach the local Court House to register were attacked and many severely beaten. Black demonstrator, Jimmy Lee Johnson, was killed during a march in near-by Marion City.  Then James Reeb, a White Unitarian Universalist Minister who had responded to a call by Dr. King for support, was beaten to death shortly after arriving in the city. 

Johnson instinctively knew that the death of the White minister would galvanize public sentiment and support in the way no number of Black deaths could. A few days later a massive Selma to Montgomery March was turned back with violence at the Edmund Pettis Bridge—Bloody Sunday.   

On March 15, Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress to call for the Voting Rights Act. It was introduced in the Senate on March 18 by Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield of Montana and Republican Minority Leader Everett Dirksen of Illinois.  

A second March to Montgomery, this time under the protection of Federal Authorities, got underway on March 21 and arrived at the Alabama capital for a massive rally on March 25 with the renewed purpose of supporting the Voting Rights Act.  After the rally a White Unitarian Universalist volunteer from Michigan, Viola Liuzzo, was shot and killed while driving a Black demonstrator back to Selma.  

The deaths of a white minister and a white woman volunteer during the Selma Campaign spurred Congress to action on the Voting Rights act in a way the vastly more numerous murders of Black activists like Jimmy Lee Jackson had ever done.  White privilege thus leveraged the landmark act.  At least the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) recognized the sacrifice of Jackson alongside UUs Rev. James Reeb and Viola Liuzzo in the memorial plaque that hangs in the Boston headquarters.

That only stepped up pressure on Congress, where despite a fierce last line of resistance by Southern Democrats, a filibuster was broken and the measure passed the upper chamber on May 26.   The vote was 77-19 with 47 Democrats in favor, 17 opposed and 30 Republicans—who still were proud to be the party of Lincoln—in favor and 2 opposed. 

Delaying tactics and attempts at gutting the measure by amendment slowed action in the House of Representatives but it passed with minor amendments on a vote of 333-85 when Congress reconvened from the Independence Day recess on July 9.  A Conference Committee reconciliation of the two versions cleared the House on August 3 and the Senate the next day. 

Johnson wasted no time including King and Rosa Parks to attend. 

 

Mr. Lincoln’s Hand in the Pocket—First U.S. Income Tax Funded the Civil War

 

Lincoln's Income Tax proposal was bitterly opposed by Democrats and mocked in the press.  Here he is not only depicted as a court fool, but his exaggerated nose is meant to suggest that he was a "greedy Jew."

Nobody, and I mean nobody—not even progressives—likes paying taxes.  Especially income taxes.  We are aware of the need to fund the essential work of government, and may even support wider spending for public benefit, but when the tax bite falls on us personally, it hurts. 

On August 5, 1861 President Abraham Lincoln signed into law the first American income tax.  It was a provision of the Revenue Act of 1861.  The new tax was 3% on all income above $800 to be “…levied, collected, and paid, upon the annual income of every person residing in the United States, whether such income is derived from any kind of property, or from any profession, trade, employment, or vocation carried on in the United States or elsewhere, or from any other source whatever…”  The same act hiked the tax to 5% on all citizens living outside the country.  It was essentially a flat rate tax. 

Needless to say, it was unpopular.  But the President had few alternatives.  He had raised a massive Army, outfitted, and armed it with money that the government didn’t have.  And despite the hopes for a quick victory, Lincoln knew that the War to Preserve the Union, as he called it, was apt to take a while. 

Since the foundation of the Republic the Federal government had been on a strict revenue diet for both philosophic and practical reasons.  The realm of Federal activity was strictly limited by the Constitution as it was interpreted at the time.  Most governmental functions fell to the individual states and local governments. 

Federal revenues were limited.  Most came either from the Tariff or from the sale of government land.  But because of anti-tariff feeling in the agricultural South, where the plantation elites relied on the importation of cheap manufactured goods from Europe and resented protectionist levies that benefited Northern manufacturers, import levies had been slashed in 1841 and lowered again in 1856.  Land sales were also in the decline as most Federal land east of the Mississippi was settled and western sales were slowed by the continuing border wars in Kansas and Indian peril elsewhere.   Then, of course, the secession of the Southern states cut Tariff revenue from important ports like Charleston, Savannah, and New Orleans.  

                              

                                         Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase conceived the Income Tax plan.

Lincoln was caught in a bind between soaring costs and plummeting income.  He turned to his Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase for advice.  Chase, like other members of Lincoln’s Cabinet, notably Secretary of State William H. Steward, had been Lincoln’s rivals for the Republican presidential nomination.  Unlike Steward, who entered the job thinking he could be a prime minister to weak President but soon came to respect and admire Lincoln, Chase always looked down on the President and frequently was engaged in political sniping and backstabbing.  None-the-less, Lincoln had to rely on his judgment and the support he had in financial circles. 

Chase discounted the possibility of any kind of new Federal Tax on property as un-Constitutional.  Instead, he proposed borrowing most war funds by issuing bonds, the model of Albert Gallatin during the War of 1812.  He engaged Jay Cooke, a Philadelphia financier to handle the bonds.  Cooke performed spectacularly with special patriotic appeals that sold bonds not just to wealthy investors but to many middle class citizens.  Eventually nearly one quarter of all Northern families purchased war bonds.  But those bonds would eventually have to be repaid.  To reassure investors that there would be a revenue stream capable of repaying the bonds, Chase reluctantly advised the income tax. 

Surprisingly, given the fact that there was little ability for the government to assess actual income, voluntary compliance was relatively high, particularly in the industrial and commercial New England and Eastern states where both incomes and support of Lincoln’s war aims was highest.  The starting base for payment, $800, is estimated to be about the equivalent of $18,750 today.  When most Americans were still farmers and many city workers, even skilled craftsmen, earned far less, the tax fell on only a fraction of families.  Even with subsequent hikes and adjustments over the war 10% of families nationally and 15% in the northeast had paid some income tax by war’s end.  

New Yorkers line up to pay the first Income Tax in 1862.

The Revenue Act of 1862, which also created the office of Commissioner of Internal Revenue, moved from a flat rate to a modified “progressive” system that exempted the first $600, imposed a 3 percent rate on incomes between $600 and $10,000, and a 5 percent rate on those over $10,000. The first withholding taxes were imposed on Federal employees and on dividends paid by corporations.  In addition, the Act also imposed a raft of new or greatly hiked excises taxes—many of them sin taxes—and fees.  

Now freed from pesky southern Democrats, Congress also imposed a high new protective tariff, which would continue to be a hallmark of Republican policy for the next hundred years.  Even these measures were insufficient to the need. 

Key to financing the war was the Legal Tender Act of 1862 which authorized the Treasury to issue notes—Greenbacks—that were required to be recognized for the payment of all debts except redemption of bonds and payment of Tariffs.  This departure from traditional hard currency was inherently inflationary but combined with other measures kept inflation in the North well below the out-of-control Confederate rates and well below inflation during future American wars. 

A bonus was that shrewd investors could purchase war bonds with inflated Greenbacks and be repaid later in specie, which spurred more bond sales.  By war’s end, with costs running to an astonishing $2 million per day, income tax rates had been raised twice more.  In the end the income tax proved to be a reliable and flexible revenue stream.  But although tolerated as a war time necessity, there was no public support to continue the tax. 

This wealthy taxpayer paid a whopping $889 in Income Tax in 1884 and all he got was this lousy receipt.

After reductions in 1868, it was allowed to expire in 1872.  Efforts by Populists and other reformers in the late 19th Century to resurrect the tax were resisted.  An income tax adopted in 1898 was struck down by the Supreme Court because the tax was not levied proportionally among the states. 

It took the 1913 16th Amendment to the Constitution to make the income tax a permanent fixture in the U.S. tax system.

Reminder to DJT--John Peter Zenger, Freedom of the Press, and the Precious Right to be Obnoxious

 

Philadelphia lawyer Andrew Hamilton making his dramatic appeal to the jurors in the John Peter Zenger Libel Trial.

August 4 is often considered the birthday of Freedom of the Press in the United States.  On this day in 1736 the original Philadelphia lawyer, Andrew Hamilton, successfully persuaded a New York jury to acquit John Peter Zenger of a charge of seditious libel for printing criticisms of Royal Governor William Cosby.  It was no easy feat. 

Cosby stacked the deck against the German-born printer by hand picking loyal toadies to sit on the special two-judge court that conducted the trial and then caused both of Zenger’s original lawyers to be disbarred for objecting to the irregularity.  

                        

                                New York Royal Governor William Crosby's armor did not protect his thin skin from the sting of criticism.

Zenger was a master printer who was hired by the owners of the New-York Weekly Journal to produce the paper.  He was listed as printer and editor, but the editorial content of the publication was controlled by political opponents of the Governor including James Alexander, a leading lawyer, former Attorney General for both New York and New Jersey and a member of the powerful Governor’s Council for both colonies.  Alexander anonymously wrote scathing denunciations of Governor Crosby printed each Monday. 

The unpopular Governor was infuriated.  He was turned down by the Provincial Assembly when he asked for permission to conduct a public burning of copies of the Weekly Journal.  Instead, he ordered Zenger arrested and jailed, although it is unclear whether the printer even shared the views of his employers.  In short, Zenger was a fall guy for Alexander and his fellow Whig opponents of the governor.  

German born printer John Peter Zenger was the fall guy for the real authors of articles castigating the Governor in the New York Weekly Journal.

But Zenger was up for the game.  He dictated an account of his arrest through a hole in the door of his jail cell to his wife and his apprentices set up and distributed it in an edition of the Weekly Journal.  Alexander and another prominent lawyer, William Smith, agreed to represent Zenger.  When they objected to Cosby’s stacked court, they were disbarred.  Naturally, no other local members of the bar were eager to take their place.  

The newspaper and the criticism that got its printer into trouble.

The case came to the attention of another printer, Benjamin Franklin of Philadelphia.  Franklin had a natural interest in freedom of the press and as Postmaster General of the Colonies he was in an unusually good position to be kept on top of developments far and wide.  He was also the acknowledged leader of the Philadelphia business and professional community.  Franklin recruited Hamilton, the leading member of the Pennsylvania Bar to accept Zenger’s case on a pro bono basis. 

Hamilton, like Alexander, was Scottish emigrant with a Jacobean past.  In court, he took a daring approach.  The presiding judges already warned jurors to disregard Hamilton’s “slanders” and render a verdict of guilty based on his charge of printing false, scandalous, and malicious articles about the Governor.  

                        

Philadelphia lawyer Andrew Hamilton for the defense.

Hamilton readily admitted to the facts.  Zenger had indeed printed and distributed the articles as charged and under the law, he acknowledged, that was sufficient for conviction of libel.  In defense, he argued that the articles if libelous, were none-the-less true.  His offer to produce evidence of their truth was squelched by the Judge. 

But in a magnificent summation he called upon the jurors to recognize the truth of the charges on the basis of their own experience of affairs in the colony.  “The question before the court and you, gentlemen of the jury, is not of small nor private concern,” Hamilton pleaded. “...No! It may in its consequences affect every free man that lives under a British government on the main of America. It is the best cause of liberty...” 

Then he shocked the jury—he called upon them to vote for acquittal because the prosecution was a manifest injustice whatever the letter of the law read.  And the jury bought it.  They brought in a unanimous verdict for acquittal.  It was the first instance of jury nullification in North American history.  

The verdict was popular in New York and across the Colonies and Hamilton became widely celebrated.  The Common Council of New York City awarded him the freedom of city, and a group of prominent residents contributed to the production of a 5½-ounce gold box that was presented to him as a lasting mark of their gratitude.  The box remained a family heirloom, but replicas are still given out by the Philadelphia Bar Association to their out-going Chancellor, a position once held by Hamilton.  

                                       

                                                        The title page of the first London edition of Zngler's account of his trial including transcripts.

Zenger published a verbatim account of the trial as A Brief Narrative of the Case and Trial of John Peter Zenger and then quietly returned to his trade and continued printing the Weekly Journal.  He died in 1746 at the age of 49. 

Governor Cosby did not last so long.  He died of tuberculosis in Albany in March 1736. 

George Clarke was elevated to acting Royal Governor until a permanent replacement, George Clinton, took office in 1743.  Clarke restored Alexander and Smith to the Bar and reappointed Alexander to his Council. 

Alexander resumed his career becoming leading Whig in provincial politics of both New York and New Jersey.  In 1743 he became a co-founder with Franklin of the American Philosophical Society and in 1751 helped establish King’s College (now Columbia University.)  He died full of honors in 1756. 

Writing after the American Revolution, Gouverneur Morris observed that the “trial of Zenger in 1735 was the germ of American freedom, the morning star of that liberty which subsequently revolutionized America.”