Finding James Dudley Gray in History

After the American Century

We live life forward, enjoying what moments we can, but history gets written backward, and a major event tends to be read into the years before it occurred.

I was forcibly reminded of this when beginning to read a collection of letters I have in my possession, written in the nineteenth century. They are American letters, composed by one James Dudley Gray, born in eastern Ohio. He began to write to his favorite cousin in 1842 and sent her at least one letter each year until the Civil War began. In 1850 he moved to Iowa, which was then the frontier, and settled half way between the towns of Washington and Sigourney

It is hard to read these letters today in the same spirit that they were written. The author did not know that he would go into the Civil War as an assistant surgeon and treat casualties of the fighting in Vicksburg and other battles up and down the Mississippi. Even more frustrating for me, the modern reader, the letters cease in 1861 and I have nothing more from his pen about the war or anything else, even though he lived for another thirty years.

Yet James D. Gray was a highly literate man, who quoted Thomas Carlyle and occasional poems in his letters. He spent some years working for newspapers in Ohio, and possessed an uncommonly high level of literacy and more than the usual political engagement. One of his sons, Charles Gray, was so accomplished a painter that two of his portraits hang in the halls of Congress in Washington, DC.

Charles Gray, portrait of Joseph Warren Keifer

As far as I can tell from preliminary research, James D. Gray has been completely forgotten by posterity, one of the millions of men and women who settled in the American west during the nineteenth century. Yet it seems to me inconceivable that someone who wrote over 100 pages to just one correspondent left no other records anywhere. With luck, I hope to recreate his life right up to his passing, apparently in 1894.

What Does Iowa Mean?

The caucuses in Iowa this week will be the subject of every political reporter in the US, and each of them wants to convince us that the Iowa results are very important. But what exactly do these caucuses mean? To a considerable degree, the result reflects the depth and organization of a politician's local staff. That is why Hilary Clinton has been flying around the state in a helicopter, trying to inspire and energize her people, as well as the more obvious goal of meeting with the public.  Four years ago Kerry did well in Iowa because he inspired a strong local organization. This is one important thing for a candidate, but we found out that Kerry did not run a very good campaign once he got the nomination.  

One of the curious things this year is that Kerry's VP candidate, John Edwards, is running so well. Consider that he failed to deliver a single Southern state to the Democrats, and therefore cost them the election. In 2004, Edwards could not carry his home state, and yet he is considered one of the top three candidates at the moment. 

As of this writing the polls put Edwards in a statistical dead heat with Clinton and Obama, with each getting slightly less than one quarter of the vote.  The problem in Iowa is that knowing who is tied for first is only part of the equation. In the actual caucuses the room is full of people who can, and indeed often must, change their vote, based on the passions and arguments on that night. Iowans are not fickle. Rather, they must assemble at least 15% of the vote in any given hall for a candidate's supporters to be counted at all. So the roughly 30% of the voters who do not want Clinton, Obama, or Edwards all have to switch their votes as the evening progresses. And given the fact that no one has more than 24% of the vote right now, quite possibly in any given meeting one of the leaders will fall short of the 15%.  In other words, Iowa culls out the weaker candidates, and suggests who is acceptable, but it seldom discovers the winner all by itself. The results can surprise, but one should wait to see how voters respond in New Hampshire, where for the first time they use a secret ballot and they have only one chance.

As for the Republicans, things are even more volatile, and my sense is that many voters could change their minds in the next four days or on the night itself. Giuliani, Huckabee, and Romney all have such obvious flaws for some Republicans and most Democrats, that one cannot write off Fred Thompson, even if he has run a rather lackluster campaign until now. Overall, based on my extensive conversations with ordinary Americans last week, all of the Republican front runners generate considerable bad vibes among many voters. Giuliani is by no means everyone's hero, and has even been attacked by some members of the New York Fire Department. He has skeletons aplenty that are not well hidden in the closet, both personal and political. For the Southern wing of the GOP, he is too liberal, too soft on abortion, and too divorced. For Northern Republicans, Huckabee is almost a joke, a caricature of the poorly educated Bible-thumping snake oil salesman, who has no international experience at all. Hardly the sort to put in charge as the US faces such a volatile world.  Romney seems to lack principles, flip-flopping on issues. Many people in Massachusetts, where he was governor, really hate the guy. In any case, polls indicate that more than a third of Americans, perhaps as many as 40%, are not ready to vote for a Mormon. In short, the Republicans have a flawed field, and the average voter is not very excited by anyone in the group, nor the group as a whole.  

All these observations aside, my personal preference as of the moment is Obama, who seems to me the brightest of all the candidates. He is a wonderful breath of fresh air. Besides, we have had Yale in the White House continuously since 1988! Twenty years of Yale, and Hilary would just be more Yale. This being a democracy, it is time to give the former editor of the Harvard Law Review a chance.  However, this particular argument will likely have little weight with the Iowa voter. Which is as it should be.