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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: coug who wrote (49765)	6/9/2002 1:07:54 AM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

I am a COUG, and I am out in front of the future.. <vbg>... While you guys ponder the past.. Those who do not understand the past are destined to repeat it. I do remember something about 49 40 or fight, Does that connect? < Nope. Not at all. First, it was 54-40 or fight. That was Polk's campaign slogan in the election of 1844. This was part of Manifest Destiny, and would have given us up to about where Alaska starts now. But we eventually settled for the 49th parallel, in about 1845 or 46 as I recall -- my memory of dates isn't perfect. But that treaty establishing that line said that the line would run to the middle of the channel separating Vancouver Island from the mainland, but that ran right through the San Juan Islands. So both England and the United States claimed the islands. Settlers from both countries came over and each thought they were on home turf. In 1859 things came to a head when Lyman Cutler shot a Britsh pig. Both countries set up camps, the British one in the nicer location right around the corner from us, the Americans down on the windswept southern end of the island. And it stayed this way for 12 years, right through the period of the Civil War. But nobody really wanted a war over the islands, so the countries agreed to refer the issue to Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany to adjudicate. in October, 1872 he ruled that the islands would belong to the Americans, and the British withdrew. The only shot fired in the 12 year pig war was Lyman Cutler's. His rifle is in the Historical Museum here. Actually, the Americans and British got along quite well together, for enemies. They used to attend dances at each others' camps. And the war was the beginning of the tourism industry in the San Juans -- tour boats used to come out from Victoria, B.C. with sightseers coming to see the British Camp and see the war zone first hand. You do recall, I assume, that in the early days of the Civil War picnickers used to bring their blankets and picnic baskets out to the battlefields and watch the battles. Quite a spectacle for the admiring crowd. We used to get Sunset, but don't any more. In fact, I had an idea that it had folded. But I guess not. But I'm in enough trouble with generalizations tonight that I'm not going to make another one about the California parents to whom those ads are directed.