May 02, 2019 Thursday
Bedtime Story
The Times of Johns Hopkins
The reason why Lincoln is still voted as
the number one president in the surveys of U.S. scholars is because for the sake
of principle of abolition of slavery and human liberty and dignity he dared to
take the nation through its greatest peril in the history of its existence.
The nation as a test of its commitment to
constitutional values and human morality had to endure its bloodiest civil war
that threatened to split the Union for good.
And yet he managed kept the Union intact
and along with it strengthened the federal government and modernized the
economy.
It is not my intent to narrate the entire
war of 1812 or the civil war of 1861 to you or even the life story of the 16th
President of the United States.
And yet I have narrated to you both the background
of the civil war of 1861 and the War of 1812 in a little bit more detail that I
would have wished to.
This is simply because both these wars took
place in the life time of the entrepreneur, philanthropist and benefactor who
came from Baltimore, Maryland Johns Hopkins (1795-1873).
These two wars – both the international and
the civil – undoubtedly make that century (nineteenth) the most traumatic of
the four that this nation has been through.
It has to be pointed that out that of the
four centuries that I have made the claim, only the nineteenth and the twentieth
were lived to their entirety, with the eighteenth century contributing merely a
quarter of its part and the current twenty first century not even that much.
It was in these tumultuous times (1819 to
be precise) that Johns Hopkins along with his three brothers established a
company that they called Hopkins and Brothers Wholesalers which specialized in
selling wares using Conestoga Wagons.
Conestoga wagons (you might have seen them
in some movies depicting medieval times) are large (as everything American
tends to be), heavy and covered wagons that were driven by oxen and capable of
carrying load as heavy as 6 tons.
The wagon itself would stretch for 18 feet
and would be as high as 11 feet.
Incidentally Hopkins family too (much like
the plantation owners of the Southern States) owned 500-acre tobacco plantation
(but not cotton) along with Afro-American slaves which as we saw were the bones
of contention in the civil war that broke out in 1861.
This means that Hopkins came from an
affluent family with enough money to set up his own enterprise and had the
luxury of not being a bonded labor like those his family owned.
The company Hopkins and Brothers
Wholesalers did well and prospered but it did not create the wealth that Hopkins
is known for.
The money came from investment into several
ventures which on hind sight would be labeled as “wise and thoughtful” but
generally such freak bountiful investments are a matter of chance.
You can beat the fact of indeterminism or
chance.
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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