For nearly a month, direct negotiations had persisted.  Back-and-forth communications?…more than 18 months.  The Soviet Union had, since April of 1938, been interested in territory that belonged to Finland, its neighbor to the west.  And Finland had (more or less) politely refused.

The Nazi-Soviet Pact came and went.  The combined German-Soviet removal of Poland from the map came and went.  And still the Soviets negotiated with Finland.  Not as far as he could kick him did Soviet dictator Jospeh Stalin trust his counterpart in Berlin.  Yes, half of Poland gave Stalin a sizeable space-cushion between himself and the National Socialism he despised.  But he was still afraid that Adolf Hitler would use his military might, vastly superior to any of the Scandanavian countries, to take over Finland, whose borders were just a stone’s throw from the Communist “Mecca” of Leningrad.

So, Stalin’s representatives asked that Finland give up 20 miles of territory on the Karelian Isthmus (the strip of land between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga).  They also desired that Finland cede several islands in the Gulf of Finland and the northernmost tip of Finland (the Rybachi Peninsula).  Finally, they asked that Finland allow them to lease the port of Hanko (on the the southernmost tip of Finland) and build a base there.  Essentially Stalin was creating additional buffer space on all approaches to Leningrad.

For its part, Finland reiterated that it was a decidedly neutral nation, and any incursion (including one from Germany) would be viewed as hostile.  So there was no need to give the Soviets a buffer zone…Finland would provide it for free.  What’s more, giving up territory in the Karelian Isthmus meant destroying much of the Mannerheim Line, a fairly stout series of fortifications, tank traps, and pillboxes.  Finland would essentially be defenseless, which wasn’t necessarily terrible…if that’s all that Stalin wanted.  If.  IF.

But Joseph Stalin was a man who had spent most of the last several years slaughtering thousands and thousands of officers, including a goodly number of Finnish-born officers.  If his own men could not trust him, how much less a target country with almost no military power?  If Finland ceded the territory, there was no way it could defend itself against subsequent aggression.

Carl Gustav Mannerheim, Finland’s leading military man, did not hold to the Finnish convention.  He strongly believed Finland should give the Soviets what they wanted.  He said that if the Soviets wanted the territory badly enough, they would simply take it by force, and Finland could do nothing anyway.  So while Foreign Minister Eljas Erkko was convinced Stalin was bluffing, Mannerheim was not.

And so the Soviet-Finnish meetings continued.  Having begun in earnest on October 12, 1939, they had lasted throughout the month.  The Finnish delegation (shown above) gave some ground, offering to give up a bit of Karelian territory and some of islands, but the Mannerheim Line and the port of Hanko were simply non-negotiable.

It was on this day, November 9, 1939, that the negotiators met for the last time, where the Finnish delegation reminded Stalin of their compromises…and their unwillingness to go any further.  Stalin was somewhat surprised by the intransigence he witnessed.  After an hour, the meeting concluded (despite the heavy discussions) on an upbeat note. Vyacheslav Molotov, the Soviet Foreign Minister smiled and waved.  Stalin wish the Finns the best and then departed…

…to meet with his generals and begin making plans to subdue a stubborn little pip-squeak country on its western border.

Recommended Reading:  A Frozen Hell – A friend (and fellow reader of Today’s History Lesson) recommended this book to me.  I’m reading it now, and it’s really good.

As General Mark Clark was preparing to depart from his secret rendevous in North Africa, Vichy commander General Charles Mast quietly said to him, “The French navy is not with us.  The army and the air force are.”  So in the early morning hours of November 8, 1942, as Allied forces made ready to disembark, there was a little hope among that the French captains manning the wheelhouses in Casablanca had changed their minds in the previous weeks.

They hadn’t.

At just after 7:00am, the main coastal batteries at El Hank let loose on the fleet arrayed before them, straddling the battleship USS Massachusetts.  The French battleship Jean Bart then opened up as well.  Jean Bart (shown above) was France’s most modern battleship, but she was unfinished and unable to leave port, having but one of her two main turrets installed.  But the one functioning had four rifles, each capable of launching a 15-inch shell that could seriously damage (or sink) any ship on the other side.

As U.S. navy spotters saw the flashes of guns firing at them, they excitedly yelled “Batter up!” into their radios.  Hearing the coded reply of “Play ball!”, the fleet responded in kind, unfurling the guns and filling the skies with high-speed metal projectiles.  Jean Bart, immobile at her moorings, was a sitting duck.  The Massachusetts pelted her with 15″ shot, destroying the one active turret and adding holes in at least three different places.  The not-completed French slugger settled where she sat in shallow water.

Shellfire chopped up the docks, the mooring areas, French submarines docked there, and ten merchantmen that could do nothing but absorb incoming fire and sink.  Admiral Gervais de Lafond, commander the 2nd Light Squadron, quickly put his 16-ship force (destroyers and a cruiser) to sea to avoid disaster.  He actually got himself in a reasonable position to do heavy damage to Allied transports as his enemy battled with Jean Bart and the coastal batteries.

But the shells were coming fast, U.S. carrier aircraft were screaming in with guns blazing, and Lafond’s battle force was badly outgunned.  This engagement would not go well for the French as, one by one, Lafond’s destroyers (and eventually the cruiser) were sunk in shallow waters or beached as burning hulks.  Only the destroyer Alcyon was undamaged.  In all, the French lost 16 ships and 8 submarines.  An injured Admiral Lafond watched helplessly as the U.S. fleet (minus the destroyer USS Ludlow, which had taken significant damage and fled the action) continued on.

The Vichy-controlled French fleet in Casablanca could have decided not to fight against a much larger foe.  But, despite the gallantry of the men, the decision to do otherwise was little more than an irritant in the day’s activities.

When Operation Citadel was abandoned by Adolf Hitler in July of 1943, it left in its wake the scattered bit of destroyed aircraft, the hulks of thousands of tanks, the burned out remains of more artillery pieces, and the still, quiet corpses of even more Russian and German soldiers.

While not marking the eastern-most advance of Germany’s territorial conquests (those honors go to places like Stalingrad and Moscow), it certainly was the last best chance the vaunted Wehrmacht had to push eastward.  When Citadel ended near the city of Kursk, the Germans would, for the next two years, steadily drifting to the west.  The city of Kharkov (south of Kursk) was wrested from German hands six weeks later (toward the end of August), and the Russian advance picked up some momentum.

Somewhat more than 200 miles to the west of Kursk lies Kiev, the Ukranian capital and, at the time, the 3rd-largest city in the Soviet Union.  Two months after retaking Kharkov, the Russians armies were on the cusp of again taking ownership of Kiev.

To the south, Soviet forces were struggling with difficult terrain and well-deployed German defensive positions, and it was believed that a stronger push to the north (around Kiev) might either draw off German guns from the south or allowed those forces to be encircled.

On November 1st, the Soviet 38th Army attacked Kiev (part of the 1st Ukranian Front, comprising nearly three-quarters of a million men), which was occupied by the 4th Panzer Army.  On the 3rd, a massive artillery bombardment (partially using pieces quietly moved from the south) rained down on the Germans, and the Soviet 60th Army entered the fray, supported by heavy firepower from the air.

The Germans were simply overwhelmed and, with their heavy casualties and equipment losses, could do little to stop the onslaught.  It was time to get out of town.  But, as is so often the case in war, the exiting army took time to destroy whatever valuables they could find.

So when the Soviets retook Kiev on November 6, 1943, the city was a smouldering wreck and most of the city’s vast collection of antiquities were nothing more than shattered and burned memories.

Recommended Reading: The Eastern Front – Day By Day, 1941-45

The last two months had been particularly unkind to the Afrika Korps.  Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s gamble at Alma el Halfa had not paid off, and early advances merely gave way to a retreat that, ten days later, found them back where they started…with a smaller force.  And that was the good news.  Two weeks later, Rommel was on his way to Germany, as the constant wear-and-tear of war and his relentless drive across North Africa left him sick and exhausted.

The British were in much the same position, bone-weary but grateful to have at least checked their enemy’s eastward advance.  There is little doubt that the narrow “fighting corridors” around El Alamein had helped General Montgomery, who had replaced Claude Auchinleck in mid-August.  Furthermore, British supply lines were much shorter and the Mediterranean Sea was becoming more “pro-British”.  So supplies destined for Rommel’s forces not only had much, much further to travel, they first had to make their way across an increasingly hostile body of water.

It was against this backdrop that General Montgomery, in early October of 1942, laid the groundwork for what would become the Second Battle of El Alamein.  It commenced on October 23rd with a massive artillery barrage by the British that, apparently, Field Marshal Rommel heard from his convalescent home in Germany.  Two days later, he was back in the theater.

But things would go very differently for the Desert Fox this time.  The vaunted Afrika Korps had been whittled down and, good as it was, the lack of consistent supply meant they simply didn’t have the firepower.  Ever the “man of attack”, Rommel tried a feeble counter-offensive, but there would be no breakthrough this time.  By November 2nd, the men under the Swastika had but 32 tanks intact.  Erwin Rommel had returned from illness to crushing defeat.

He sent word to Hitler, requesting a withdrawal.  The next day, Hitler returned a long eloquent reply that, summarized to just 3 words, said, “Stand and die.”.  On November 4th, Rommel began moving westward anyway, taking with him the 12 (12!!) tanks he had left.

And on November 5, 1942, as a massive invasion fleet closed in on the North African coasts from the west, General Montgomery began his counterattack from the east.  They immediately began capturing thousands of Germans, either too injured to escape or too exhausted to care any longer.  The westward drift would continue for both Axis and Ally until it met with the Allies coming from the west.

There would be many hard-fought battles to come, but the North African dominance of the Desert Fox ended here.

Recommended Reading:  Pendulum of War

On November 2, 1947, the largest flying boat ever constructed lifted off on its maiden flight near Long Beach, California.  Officially called the H-4 Hercules, it was built by billionaire aircraft designer (and noted eccentric) Howard Hughes, and it was immense.  The contract for three prototypes, which was awarded to Hughes in 1942 with the help of famous shipbuilder Henry Kaiser, came during wartime, when aircraft metals were scarce and mostly spoken for.  The size of the plane dictated that more abundant materials be used, so it was made almost entirely of birch wood.

The time required to design and build the prototype (partially due to Hughes’ fanatical attention to detail) meant that it was finished too late to serve in the Second World War, but it was still a very impressive aircraft.  It’s 320-foot wingspan was (and still is and probably will be in the future) the largest ever.  It’s also one of the tallest, with it’s rear stabilizer reaching nearly 80 feet skyward.

It was powered by eight 3000-horsepower Pratt and Whitney engines, the same engines powering the brand-new Convair B-36 Peacemaker.  Those engines (with a bit of jet assistance) would keep B-36’s aloft for more than a decade.

But for the H-4, just 30 seconds over the water would suffice, because that’s all the longer the flight lasted…and Howard Hughes’ labor of love would never fly again.  The public, in an attempt to ridicule this “one-flight-wonder”, called the plane the “Spruce Goose”.  Hughes loathed the name, and not just because the public got the type of wood wrong.  But it was the name that stuck.

Recommended Activity:  Visit the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum – The Spr…the H-4 Hercules is there, along with a bunch of other cool stuff.

“The immense house was still unfinished.  It reeked of wet plaster and wet paint.  Fires had to be kept blazing in every fireplace on the main floor to speed up the drying process.  Only a twisting back stair had been built between floors.  Closet doors were missing.  There were no bells to ring for service.  And though the furniture had arrived from Philadelphia, it looked lost in such enormous rooms.  Just one painting had been hung, a full-length portrait of Washington in his black velvet suit, by Gilbert Stuart, which had also been sent from Philadelphia.

The house stood in a weedy, wagon-rutted field with piles of stone and rubble about.  It all looked very raw and unkempt.”

I don’t usually borrow large chunks of text from books I read, but this seemed so appropriate.  Taken from David McCullough’s masterful John Adams, it shatters the stereotypical minds-eye view that we usually have when the White House is mentioned in conversation.  We see cherry trees in blossom, the impeccably manicured South Lawn, and the flower gardens.  Maybe we think of that big fence were people with a point to make (and signs to prove it) will often gather.  Possibly, we hear the “whump, whump” of Marine One as it prepares to touch down, pick up the President, and whisk him to Air Force One and more high-level meetings across the globe.

Whatever our image, it bears little resemblence to what McCullough described, and what President John Adams saw when arrived by unescorted stage to his new home shortly after 1pm on November 1, 1800.  But that’s what greeted Adams…a big house pretty much in the middle of nowhere.  One imagines that it was a lonely site for the 2nd President, which likely added to his own feelings of melancholy.

Adams had been largely marginalized by his own Federalist Party, trivialized by the opposition Anti-Federalist Party, and just weeks before, villianized by fellow Federalist Alexander Hamilton, who in a fit of I-don’t-know-what (rage, vengeance, jealousy, ??) published a 50+ page pamphlet that called the President everything but a deranged lunatic.  Even Anti-Federalists (to say nothing of the Federalists) were aghast at Hamilton’s stunning move, which was nothing short of political suicide.

What little chance Adams had against his opponent, the scheming Thomas Jefferson, in the upcoming election largely vaporized.  News of a peace treaty with France might have swayed the vote, but there was still no word, and the election was right around the corner.

McCullough’s thought continues…“Yet the great white-washed stone building, the largest house in America – as large as the half of the capital that had been erected – was truly a grand edifice, noble even in its present state.”

The words speak of better things to come, and apparently our country’s 2nd President largely saw that hope through the clouds of his own political despair.  The next morning, he would write to his wife back home those famous words:  “I pray heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this house and all that shall hereafter inhabit.  May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.”

The Executive Mansion has been lived in, burned down, rebuilt, lived in, completely rennovated, and lived in some more.  But Adams’ words remain our desire, constant more than 200 years later.

Recommended Reading: John Adams

We rarely visit the movie theater.  Occasionally, we’ll go and watch a movie, but even “occasionally” is too strong a word.  The last time I occupied a theater seat was in December of 2006, when I took my wife to a show as part of a Christmas present.  I don’t remember when I went before that, but I remember the movie I saw…U-571.

U-571 is another of those movies that’s “based on a true story“…which can mean just about anything in Hollywood parlance.  It stars Matthew McConaughey and is about a U.S. submarine crew that, in 1942, chases down a crippled German submarine (U-571) to capture it and remove the code machine and cipher keys.  It’s a decent movie that’s pretty exciting,which you would expect.  It’s also not that all that historically accurate, which you would also expect.

So let’s use the platform of Today’s History Lesson the clarify things.  The real U-571 was sunk in 1944, but the movie’s story more closely matches that of U-559.

U-559 was a modestly successful German submarine.  Her first few patrols were in the Atlantic, but she spent the remainder of her time patrolling the Mediterranean Sea in obscurity, putting holes in a handful of freighters and a frigate.  It wasn’t until the day of her sinking that she attained notoriety.

In the early morning hours of October 30, 1942, the sub was spotted in the eastern Mediterranean by a patrol plane, who radioed the destroyer HMS Hero.  She, along with four other destroyers, spent the rest of the day chasing and depth-charging U-559.

As night fell, the now-damaged sub was forced to surface.  Surrounded by destroyers and thinking his vessel was sinking, the captain decided to abandon it and sink it with explosives.  The crew, in its panic to get off the sub, opened the sea valves, but failed to destroy the Enigma machine and its code books.

The German crew was quickly taken into custody and below decks, at which point 3 British sailors volunteered to board the sinking sub and see what they could find.  Lt. Tony Fasson knew the sub carried the Enigma, and probably figured it was destroyed.  But still, it never hurt to take a peek.  He, along with Able Seaman Colin Grazier and Canteen Assistant Tommy Brown boarded the dying sub…

…and found a bonanza.  The Enigma machine was quickly removed, along with the code books, cipher keys, and various maps.  With Brown waiting outside, Grazier and Fasson re-entered the sub again, looking for more documents.  And then the sub gave up its fight with gravity’s pull, and sank in about 200′ of water.  Brown could do nothing but swim free, knowing his two mates were now dead.

But those two deaths prevented hundreds, and maybe thousands, of other deaths.  For not only had they captured an intact Enigma machine, they also had in their hands the keys for German Navy’s SHARK and TRITON code systems.  For the codebreakers at Bletchley Park, this was like winning the lottery…twice.

The British worked very hard keeping their discovery a secret, to the point of not awarding the Victoria Cross (Britain’s highest award) to the three men, fearing it might tip off the Germans.

Like I said, U-571 was a pretty exciting movie.  But the story on which it is based would have been just as good a movie.  One wonders why Hollywood can’t simply tell the real story.  I suppose if that were the case, guys like me would have take up decoupage or something…

Recommended Reading:  uboat.net – Need to find information on a German submarine?  Look no further.  I’ve linked you to U-559’s page.  Need to cross-reference?  Maybe uboatwaffe.net can help.

It’s a special day at Today’s History Lesson.  I’m just brimming with stuff to talk about, though I have but one subject.

For those of you that grew up watching Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, you know how relaxing…and calming…and soothing…and gentle that program was.  Rambunctious children like you, by the millions, exorcised their “energy” demons with this magic 30-minute elixir provided by the Friends of Public Television (and RKO General…whatever that was).

But then you grew up to be a teenager (and beyond), and Mr. Rogers, great as he was, was a little too young for you.  Awesome for the kids, a little embarrassing to sit with your buddies as a teen.  And let’s face it…college life was hectic.  Always on the go, not eating right, not sleeping nearly enough, the constant studying.  Sometimes a person just needed a break…another of those 30-minute wind-downs.

If you’re like me (and I know I am), you again turned to Public Television.  This time for The Joy of Painting…with Bob Ross.

Bob Ross was a genius with oils and The Joy of Painting (which ran for anywhere from 25 to 100 years) was a masterpiece.  Like Fred Rogers, he never raised his voice, he was never rushed, and he never stopped smiling.  And he could do things with a brush that were just awesome.  I’ve heard tell that others artists didn’t care for Bob’s techniques, because he made it look so easy.  It was as though he took the “mystery” of painting and made it “mundane”.

But Bob thought everyone should be able to paint, so he worked out ways to make complicated procedures easy.  Making mountains involved cutting off a little roll of paint from 2 or 3 mixed colors laid out flat.  His 2-inch brush could create “the illusion of mist” or “happy little clouds” instantly.  Reflections on water?…pull the brush down, then lightly sweep back and forth.  Beauty.  Snow on the mountains…no problem.  Big trees?…piece of cake.

Every episode showed Bob using the same techniques, and he used the same phrases every time, so it was an art instruction class without the silly homework and nerve-wracking exams.  I told people that, even though I was the farthest thing from an artist, I could paint just by remembering the words Bob repeated over and over.

But Bob was also quirky, and it was those quirks that I think made him so lovable.  I’m a bunch of words into this and haven’t mentioned them.  Bob had the biggest hair ever seen on a guy not living in the 1970’s.  And those little things he sprinkled throughout each episode.  Let’s make a (partial) list:

• Of course, the always goofy opening intro sequence.
• There was the “18 by 24 double-primed pre-stretched canvas” he used for nearly every painting.
• The “little roll of paint” he cut with the knife.
• “We don’t make mistakes, we have happy accidents.”
• Nearly every show had, at some point, “your bravery test”, and it usually involved putting big trees over something you just painted (“because you know me, I love big trees”).
• And of course, “every tree should have a friend.”
• Those times when Bob said, “Let’s get crazy!!”…”crazy” in Bob’s world usually involved a waterfall with some big rocks or maybe a wave crashing on the shore.
• The constant reminders that, “in your world, you can do anything you want.”
• The occasional visits from his squirrel friends.
• (Possibly my favorite) The highly-anticipated cleaning of the brush.  Bob would dip the brush in odorless, colorless paint thinner, stir it around, take it out, flick it twice, then rap it against the easel leg, look at the camera, give a snicker, and say “and then we beat the devil out of it.”  Absolutely classic (and I’ll bet you did it along with him like I did).
• The colors that ran across the bottom of the screen at the show’s beginning…Van Dyke Brown, Alizarin Crimson, Pthalo Blue (did I spell that right?…who cares…if not, it’s just a happy accident anyways), Yellow Ochre, and Midnight Black.  Did you try (like me) to name them before they appeared?
• His collection of brushes…the fan brush, the round brush, the philbert brush, the 2″ brush, the knife.

Everything about The Joy of Painting was just a bit off-beat, and it was wonderfully addictive.  In college, “the Dan’s” and I would gather at 2:30 on Saturday afternoons with religious regularity, drink a soda, and relax to the sounds of the world’s smoothest painter.  And then the 30 minutes would be done, and Bob would look at us and say, “And from all of us here, I’d like to wish you happy painting…”, give that little wave of the barely-raised right hand, “…and God bless my friend.”

Bob Ross was born on October 29, 1942 and died of lymphoma way too young at just 52 years of age.  But he touched a generation of viewers and turned more than a few into artists themselves.  The Joy of Painting still brightens Public Television’s screens from time to time, and is an absolute must-see.

Can we buy the various series on DVD anywhere?

Happy Birthday, Bob Ross!!

Italian dictator Benito Mussolini clearly had a flair for ineptitude.  He may have made the trains run on time in Rome and he may have made the grapes more delicious in Tuscany.  He might have even single-handedly kept Venice from sinking deeper into the Adriatic.

But on military matters…well…most people wanted him fighting for “the other guy”.

As a member of the Axis, Italy’s part (militarily speaking) was often to sit by and watch Germany and Japan pretty much do what they wanted.  And that didn’t sit well with Mussolini, who became jealous of their “easy” conquests.  Oh sure, there had been some gains in Africa (Abyssinia, British Somaliland, Eritrea).  And don’t forget the “conquering” of Albania.  But they paled when compared with Poland and China and Norway and France.

Mussolini needed a big feather in war-time cap.

Romania had, in the middle of October of 1940, accepted German protection for its massive oil fields at Ploesti, which bothered Benito badly.  He had long considered Romania to be in the Italian sphere of influence, and believed Germany was overstepping its bounds a little.  So he turned at Greece, sending an ultimatum demanding they allow Italy to occupy their territory.

Greece and Italy had a history of troubled relations.  Italy’s conquest (I use that term lightly) of Albania put them right on Greece’s border, and Prime Minister Metaxas was showing a preference for Britain.  For his part, Metaxas did what he could to maintain neutrality, going so far as to cover up the origins of the sinking of the Elli in Tinos Harbor in August…clearly an Italian operation and a topic worthy of discussion at some point.

But there was no way the Prime Minister of Greece was going to allow an Italian occupation.  He refused on October 28, 1940…and was attacked by Italy on October 28, 1940.  Italian Generals launched their attacks while simultaneously trying to recall the men they had sent home just weeks before to help with the harvests.

Within two weeks, Greece’s military had stopped the Italian advance.  A stalemate, which would last six months, began.  Hitler was, once again, angry with the Italian leader for going off and beginning an operation he couldn’t finish.  Evenutally (in the spring of 1941), Germany would have to delay Operation Barbarossa and commit his own forces to finally subdue Greece.

Recommended Reading: Crete 1941 – This is a somewhat dry book dealing mostly with British naval operations around Crete, but it provides good background information on Greece as well.  It should go quickly for you.

As we saw a few months back, the ratification of the U.S. Constitution caused no end of debate among the Colonists.  The new charter called for a stronger central government than the Articles it replaced, albeit a 3-sided government designed to hold itself in check.

But its passage, in September of 1787, had the effect of dividing the Colonies along political lines.  Hyperbole, foolish rhetoric, and exaggeration certainly aren’t exclusive to our day, and they were rampant as the second half of 1787’s September turned to October.  Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton is immensely quotable, and his characterization of the time is most telling.

“The rancor ushered in a golden age of literary assassination in American politics. No etiquette had yet evolved to define the legitimate boundaries of dissent.  Poison-pen artists on both sides wrote vitriolic essays that were overtly partisan, often paid scant heed to accuracy, and sought a visceral impact.”

It was against this backdrop that Alexander Hamilton, already busy with the duties of an attorney, threw himself into a project of his own creation…defending the U.S. Constitution.  Hamilton possessed a brilliant mind, and was smart enough to know that he couldn’t handle all aspects of a proper defense.  So he put together a “dream team”.

John Jay, with his sharp intellect and strong integrity, was the first choice.  The two of them then selected three additional supporting writers.  James Madison and Gouverneur Morris were natural choices, as both had been at the Constitutional Convention and would clearly understand the Framers’ intents.  The fifth was William Duer, with whom we are also familiar.

Morris really wanted to contribute, but was too busy.  Duer began a couple papers, but they weren’t finished and didn’t make the completed set.  That left Jay, Madison, and Hamilton.  Jay, with his expertise in foreign affairs (he had helped negotiate the Treaty of Paris in 1783), handled that arena.  Madison covered issues relating to the Republic itself.  Hamilton took the executive and judiciary sections, taxes, and the military.

In the end, John Jay’s rheumatism limited him to a mere 5 essays, so the Constitution’s defense became largely a two-man show.  James Madison wrote 29 essays, and Hamilton contributed the remaining 51.

The first of the essays, from Hamilton, appeared in The Independent Journal on October 27, 1787.  Over the next seven months, these writings, penned by the anonymous “Publius”, would lay the groundwork of “Constitutional” understanding to the public.

More than 200 years later, those same essays, published as The Federalist Papers, continue to give us insight into the hearts and minds of the creators of one of the most exceptional documents in written history.

Recommended Reading: The Federalist Papers – Every American citizen should read at least two works…the U.S. Constitution and The Federalist Papers.  I’ve read the first, but sadly, only a couple of essays from the second.  That will change.  I’m making The Federalist the first book on my 2010 reading schedule.  I challenge you to do the same.