Custer
by David Shumate

He is a hard one to write a poem about. Like Napoleon.
Hannibal. Genghis Khan. Already so large in history. To do it
right, I have to sit down with him. At a place of his own
choosing. Probably a steakhouse. We take a table in a corner.
But people still recognize him, come up and slap him on the
back, say how much they enjoyed studying about him in school
and ask for his autograph. After he eats, he leans back and
lights up a cigar and asks me what I want to know. Notebook in
hand, I suggest that we start with the Little Big Horn and work
our way back. But I realize I have offended him. That he
would rather take it the other way around. So he rants on
about the Civil War, the way west, the loyalty of good soldiers
and now and then twists his long yellow hair with his fingers.
But when he gets to the part about Sitting Bull, about Crazy
Horse, he develops a twitch above his right eye, raises his
finger for the waiter, excuses himself and goes to the restroom
while I sit there along the bluffs with the entire Sioux nation,
awaiting his return.


"Custer" by David Shumate, from High Water Mark. © University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

In 1945 at about 9 a.m. on this day in Tokyo Bay on board the USS Missouri battleship, surrounded by the sunken wrecks of Japanese ships in the harbor, Japan formally surrendered to the United States.

A Navy chaplain delivered an invocation, "The Star-Spangled Banner" was played, and General Douglas MacArthur read a few remarks. Then, the Japanese delegation signed the official documents. Carried out in silence, the whole ceremony took about 10 minutes and General MacArthur walked off the ship without ever having looked at — and without having shaken hands with — the Japanese delegation.

It was on this day in 1901 that Theodore Roosevelt uttered his famous words "Speak softly and carry a big stick." He was vice president at the time and was giving a speech at the Minnesota State Fair. He continued, "If the American nation will speak softly and yet continue to build and keep at a pitch of the highest training a thoroughly efficient Navy, the Monroe Doctrine will go far."

This Monroe Doctrine that he was talking about was a policy dating back to 1823 from a speech that President Monroe delivered at one of his State of the Union addresses. At the time a lot of colonies in Latin America were struggling for independence from Spain and the U.S. was worried that other European powers might step in and take over these fledgling republics, claiming them their own colonies instead.

So President Monroe said that, if any European nations tried to newly colonize any Latin American lands, the United States would consider this a sign of aggression and would intervene to fight off these would-be European colonizers.

Monroe likely meant for this policy to deal with immediate problems of protecting newly independent lands, but the words he said took on a life of their own. Teddy Roosevelt bolstered and expanded the idea of America policing the Western Hemisphere with his Big Stick diplomacy, which he described as "the exercise of intelligent forethought and of decisive action sufficiently far in advance of any likely crisis." He passed it off as a corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.

The Monroe Doctrine and its spinoffs have served as a central part of America's foreign policy since then, invoked by many presidents. In the intervening years it's been the precedent for U.S. intervention in Latin American countries like Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Cuba.

Less than two weeks after Vice President Teddy Roosevelt uttered these famous words at the Minnesota State Fair President William McKinley was assassinated and Teddy Roosevelt found himself the youngest person ever to serve as president of the United States. His Big Stick diplomacy, as it came to be known, served as the centerpiece of America's foreign policy under his administration.

On another occasion, he said, "If a man continually blusters, if he lacks civility, a big stick will not save him from trouble, and neither will speaking softly avail, if back of the softness there does not lie strength, power."

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.^®

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