All posts by Kevin Brewer

About Kevin Brewer

I am Kevin Terral Brewer, a history and government teacher in the Benton County, Tennessee public school system. I have taught history, United States government, and other social studies for over twenty years, and I hold three college degrees: a B.A. in political science and an M.S. in education curriculum and instruction, both from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, and an M.S. in history from Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky. I have a deep and abiding interest in United States political and cultural history, particularly the history of institutions, such as the presidency and the Supreme Court. I am an active follower of, and commentator on, conservative and libertarian causes. I am married, nearly fifty years old, and am the father of three children, one of whom is grown and is the mother of my only grandchild. I can also be found on Facebook.

A Tribute to Uncle Fred Hudson, 1927 -2017

Miscellany

Yesterday, along with cousins and friends, I struggled through rain and mud to serve as a pall bearer for my uncle, Fred Hudson. The husband for 64 years of my Aunt Inez, my father’s oldest sibling, he was actually my uncle by marriage, of course, but you would never have known that; he treated all of us—my brothers, my cousins, and me— like his children. I grew up in Uncle Fred’s shadow. For the first twenty years or so of my life, I could see his house from my own, and he was as much a part of my life as breathing. When my brothers and I were old enough to occasionally stay at home alone, one of our parents’ backup emergency instructions was always, “Call Uncle Fred.” I don’t think we ever did, but we knew from a lifetime of experience that he was the kind of man who could fix problems and make things happen.

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Searching for the Witches’ Sabbath as an Objective Event

Folklore, History, Miscellany

This 2007 paper represents historiographical research done for a graduate history seminar at Murray State University under the supervision of Professor Alice Walters, to whom I am grateful. I am posting it here on American Pathos so I may more easily share it with an interested friend.

One of the most enduring and provocative images of the witch-hunts of the Early Modern Period in Europe is that of the witches’ sabbath. The cartoon witches that were once popular fare in modern entertainment often appeared in groups, and the glamorized (and sometimes eroticized) witch imagery that appears throughout the western world each October portrays the witch as a gregarious creature, meeting with other witches, stirring pots, and flying about. To the people of the witch-hunt era, however, and especially to secular and church officials who sought out and punished suspected witches, the witch sabbaths were deadly serious business.

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On the Death of Noah Chamberlin

Miscellany

I wrote this short essay on the night Noah Chamberlin’s body was found, and published it as a Facebook note. It did not occur to me to put it on my blog, which was new at the time. I republish it here on the anniversary of that sad event. I did not know the child or his family, but was literally en route to aid in the search when news broke that he had been found. –KB

History is filled with stories of ordinary men and women discovering community in the facing-down of tragedy, even when–perhaps especially when–it was clear, or seemed clear, that tragedy would carry the day.

In 1881, when the wounded President James A. Garfield expressed a desire to die amid the gulls and breezes of the New Jersey Shore, rather than in the sweltering confines of his White House sick room, the citizens of Elberon labored through the night to lay a rail spur right to the stricken president’s cottage door. In our own time, unemployed, suffering, and disheartened hard rock miners flocked to Texas, in the face of almost certain failure, and somehow saved the life of Jessica McClure, a small child who had fallen into a well.

No one who followed the Noah Chamberlin story will go to bed happy tonight; a family and a community grieve. And bound up in the tragic death of the child there is another, more subtle, different kind of grief, less acute, but grief all the same: the surrender of the dream of the victory–the letting go of the miracle. The people who pulled Baby Jessica from the well never knew that grief. Her story stands as a monument to the hopes and dreams to which shattered people dare cling.

Miracles are fickle.

Still, we mustn’t despair. Noah was found. In this, his poor family can find the strength to live again, difficult as that may seem tonight. Likewise, the effort to save his life brought out the best in our people: the grit of our frontier and immigrant ancestors; the simple, pragmatic compassion of our rural, agrarian past; and the courage of our martial heritage.

In a world without front porches, quilting bees, or barn raisings, a child wanders away, and suddenly we are all neighbors again.

To find community, people need a port to seek. There is no more effective lighthouse than a child in trouble. One yearns only to have seen the light before it dimmed.

KB

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Todd Anderson Blaeuer: In Memoriam

Memorials, Miscellany, Phi Kappa Tau Fraternity,

I originally wrote this memorial on the night of October 31, 2015, when I learned of the death of my friend, Todd Blaeuer. That was one year ago this week, and I have moved it to American Path[o]s to make it more permanent and more accessible.

As one who talks and writes and, in some sense, “performs” for a living, I am not accustomed to being at a loss for words, as I have been for the last few hours. I feel compelled, on this Halloween night, now that my house is quiet, to change the clocks to standard time and go to bed.

The news of the death of my old friend and fraternity brother, Todd Blaeuer, has made that impossible.

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The Death of George Washington in American Memory and in the Memories of his Successors

Miscellany, Presidential History

On the night of Saturday December 14, 1799, George Washington, 67 years old, died in his bed at Mount Vernon. His death was a family and medical drama, a source of endless controversy, and the opening act in a period of official and unofficial anguish throughout the United States. As the sad tidings spread, the country experienced a sense of collective and national loss never before known and rarely equaled since. The United States government, sitting in Philadelphia, received the news with reluctant incredulity and then began the long process of national mourning under the leadership of its president. Scattered across the country were other men who would one day succeed Washington as chief executive. Some were already national figures, while others remained in obscurity or in childhood, little dreaming that they would someday occupy the presidential office. Those of his successors who wrote in memory of him, as many of them eventually did, would find, in their reflections upon the life and death of Washington, that, for good or ill, their lives had been inextricably linked with his.

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This Most Interesting Moment: Legend, Fact, and Speculation in the death of William Henry Harrison and the Accession of John Tyler

History, Presidential History,

In this 2006 monograph, originally submitted as a seminar paper, I attempt to untangle the many strands of legend surrounding the United States’ first presidential vacancy, the 1841 death of the new president, William Henry Harrison, and Vice President John Tyler’s controversial claim that he was entitled to the whole of the presidential office.

On February 10, 1967, the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was ratified. The amendment addressed a number of pressing though long-neglected issues that had become impossible to ignore in the nuclear age. Section 2 provided a means of filling a vacancy in the vice presidency, a problem that had gone unresolved for nearly two centuries despite more than a dozen such vacancies amounting to a total of nearly forty years. Sections 3 and 4 set forth methods by which presidential disability might be determined, either by the president himself or by others, and provided for the vice president to serve as “acting president” under specific circumstances. Compared to these critically important and timely provisions, Section 1 seems, at first glance, a curiosity. It reads, “In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.”[1]

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Recent Scholarship on Aristotelian and Scientific Views of Eclipses and Comets in the Seventeenth Century

History, History of Science

March 29 is the 363rd anniversary of the Great Eclipse of 1652, which, despite the relatively late date, terrified people in Europe. In this paper from 2007, I attempt to explain the persistence of this fear by examining the historiography of seventeenth century eclipse and comet lore. 

As the year 1651 neared its end, England was experiencing a small but steadily increasing panic. On March 29, 1652, there was to be a total solar eclipse. Fanning the flames of unrest were those who distributed pamphlets predicting that all manner of terror and disaster would accompany the inevitable darkening of the sun. The pamphlets forecast “darkness, sudden death and ‘great madness, raging and terrifying thousands of the people.’”[1] Workers stayed home; the poor begged God for deliverance. The fear was not confined to the lowly and downtrodden; the rich ran away. [2] The powerful and the would-be powerful engaged in a flurry of optimism, predicting the collapse of the religious and political institutions to which they were opposed.[3] The government issued rational-sounding opinions, assuring the public that there was nothing to fear, and “explaining that eclipses were natural events which could have no political effects.”[4] Continue reading Recent Scholarship on Aristotelian and Scientific Views of Eclipses and Comets in the Seventeenth Century →

The Ghost of the White House : Jane Appleton Pierce in the Shadows of Power

First Ladies, History, Presidential History, , ,

You are a shy, retiring woman, devoted to religion and intellectual pursuits, but your husband is an extrovert—smart, charming, and so very handsome. You have suffered crushing losses and want nothing more than a peaceful life centered on home, family, and, above all, your beloved and only surviving child. Unexpectedly, your country bestows upon your husband its greatest honor. You hesitate, but unwilling to deny him such a prize and recognizing what it could mean for your son’s advancement, you reluctantly embrace your spouse’s dream and with it a future of attention, fashion, protocol, criticism, and intrigue: all that you most hate.

Then, in an instant, before it has even begun,  it all turns to ashes.

Today marks the 209th birthday of Jane Means Appleton Pierce, the wife of President Franklin Pierce, First Lady of the United States from March 4, 1853, until March 3, 1857. First lady lore is full of tragedies and tragic figures. Mary Lincoln and Jacqueline Kennedy both lost children while residing in the White House and then saw their husbands murdered before their eyes, prematurely ending their tenures. Three first ladies, Letitia Christian Tyler, Caroline Scott Harrison, and Ellen Axson Wilson, died in the White House itself. Still, no president’s wife ever entered the Executive Mansion bearing more sorrow—and with less fortitude to endure it—than did Jane Pierce. Continue reading The Ghost of the White House : Jane Appleton Pierce in the Shadows of Power →