The Beginnings Of Chickenhawks

[illinoisprogressive]

Nice little post from Sadly, No. This is the full article. It's short but, gives the argument of where the Chickenhawk came from and who was the first one.




Posted at 2:49 by Retardo Montalban

Alas, the cock has now crowed much more than thrice. But when did its awful racket first disturb the barnyard, inciting so many jackasses to bray and warpigs to snort?

I’ve been reading an older biography of the Eighth President, Martin Van Buren: a Democrat, it’s true, but the original Master Triangulator of American politics; a Jacksonian, a creep, a man utterly without principle — in short, he had a wingnut’s spirit. I thought the following paragraph was funny:

..ost important of his measures at Albany was one promoting the aggressive conduct of the War. For this he was hailed as the noblest of patriots, and doubtless he was so long as patriotism could be practiced at a safe distance from the smoke of the battle. He doted on calling the affair of 1812 the “Second War of Independence” and one of his published speeches “the Second Declaration of Independence.” But though he devoutly served the cause by drafting a bill for compulsory enlistment, he himself never smelt gunpowder. When the state he so professed to love was invaded, nearly everyone of consequence rushed to join the colors. There still existed at that time the now-obsolete theory of noblesse oblige, that men who rule a country are the ones to protect her in an emergency, but the Red Fox was a man too much ahead of his time to be influenced by any such trumpery. His own brother donned a uniform, the Governor, the Mayor, the Adjutant General, the Patroon, flocks of Senators and Assemblymen, three future Presidents and a dozen future candidates — family men all — but not Martin, though he dutifully spent his sessions cheering on the combatants and his recesses scouring the landscape for new recruits. Mr. Monroe, Secretary of War, so mistook the Kinderhooker’s zeal as to offer him an Army commission, but Martin <…> preferred to express himself only in words. Not the least of his examples to posterity was this salutary mode of enacting patriotism. After his day there would never be an American War which was fought by the same men who encouraged it.

To his credit, though, Martin Van Buren was an excellent blogger.