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Choate, Rufus (1799-1859) → Global Index  → Persons Index
Lawyer and politician.
1825-1826 Member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives (preceded and succeeded by Daniel Webster), 1827 Member of the Massachusetts Senate.
1831-1834 Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, 1841-1845 Member of the U.S. Senate. 1853-1854 Massachusetts Attorney General.
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Letter to the Maine Whig Committee (August 9, 1856): → 8.24
Letter to E.W. Farley, and other gentlemen, of the Maine Whig State Central Committee (August 9, 1856):
[...][...]
If it accomplishes its objects and gives the government to the North, I turn my eyes from the consequences. To the fifteen States of the South that government will appear an alien government. It will appear worse. It will appear a hostile government. It will represent to their eye a vast region of States organized upon anti-slavery, flushed by triumph, cheered onward by the voices of the pulpit, tribune, and press ; its mission to inaugurate freedom and put down the oligarchy ; its constitution the glittering and sounding generalities of natural right which make up the Declaration of Independence. And then and thus is the beginning of the end.
[...][...]
Cit. Brown, Samuel Gilman. The Life of Rufus Choate. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 21870: 301-307, here: 306.
Elected to Congress as a Whig, Choate supported Democrat James Buchanan in the 1856 presidential campaign. In his letter to the Whigs of Maine, he declares his opinion that a Republican government would divide the country.
A note on Emerson's essay "Perpetual Forces" in the Centenary Edition of his works reports that "[i]n allusion to Rufus Choate's flippant allusion to the declaration [...], Mr. Emerson said, 'Only the great generalizations survive. The sharp words of the Declaration of Independence, lampooned then and since as 'glittering generalities,' have turned out blazing ubiquities that will burn forever and ever.'" (cit. The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Vol. X: Lectures and Biographical Sketches. Ed. Edward Waldo Emerson. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1904: 530.)
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Clark House Player (1930s) → Global Index  → Groups Index
An amateur drama group attached to the Alfred Corning Clark Neighborhood House, located at 283 Rivington Street, a Lower East Side settlement house established January 9, 1899, and "[d]esigned to serve a Jewish immigrant group" (Kraus 1980: 114).
For Ethel Rosenberg's association with the group cf. Antler (1997: s.p.): "An excellent student at Seward Park High School on Manhattan's Lower East Side, Ethel planned to attend college and took college preparatory courses. Graduating in 1931 at the height of the Depression, however, she felt lucky to obtain a clerical job with the National New York Shipping and Packing Company. The Clark House Players, an amateur theater group sponsored by a settlement house around the corner from her home, was the object of most of her enthusiasm over the next few years; she also took acting classes at the Henry Street Settlement and attended lectures by members of several experimental theater companies."
Incidentally, Rivington Street is named after James Rivington, the King's printer for New York during the American War of Independence and publisher of the infamous loyalist Rivington's New York Loyal Gazette in British-occupied New York City, but also a spy for George Washington's Continental Army (cf. Crary, Catherine Snell. "The Tory and the Spy: the Double Life of James Rivington." The William and Mary Quarterly Third Series, 16 (1), 1959: 61-72.)
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Wade, Louise Carroll. "Settlement Houses." in: Janice L Reiff, Ann Durkin Keating and James R. Grossmann (Eds.).Encyclopedia of Chicago. Chicago: Newberry Library/Chicago Historical Society, 2004/2005. GI

"Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean" → Global Index  → Works Index
Patriotic song, commissioned and performed by David T. Shaw, (re)written and composed by Thomas á Becket in 1843. Becket's words are plagiarized from Stephen Joseph Meany's "Britannia, the Pride of the Ocean".
In the song, 'Columbia' refers to the United States rather than its personification (the female counterpart of Uncle Sam). Wrt. its application to the Statue of Liberty, that second meaning is important, though, as the Statue (nicknamed 'Lady Liberty' or 'Liberty Enlightening the World') has largely replaced 'Columbia' in that use in the 20th century. In the second stanza, the 'nation as ship' metaphor results in the designation of Columbia as an "ark", which neatly fits in with another of the epithets applied to the Statue, "Ark of the Covenant".
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Oh Columbia, the gGem of the oOcean,
The home of the brave and the free,
The shrine of each patriot's devotion,
A world offers homage to thee;
Thy mandates make heroes assemble,
When liberty's form stands in view,
Thy banners make tyranny tremble,
When borne by the red, white and blue,
When borne by the red, white and blue,
 When borne by the red, white and blue,
 Thy banners make tyranny tremble,
 When borne by the red, white and blue.
 When war wing'd its wide desolation,
And threatend our land to deform,
The ark then of freedom's foundation,
Columbia, rode sage through the storm,
With garlands of victory around her,
When so proudly she bore her brave crew,
With her flag floating proudly before her,
The boast of the red, white and blue,
The boast of the red, white and blue,
 The boast of the red, white and blue,
 With her flag floating proundly before her,
 The boast of the red, white and blue.
 The Star Spangled Banner bring hither,
O'er Columbia's true sons let it wave,
May the wreath they have won never wither,
Nor the stars cease to shine on the brave.
May the service united ne'er sever,
But they to their colors prove true,
The Army and Navy for ever,
Three cheers for the red, white and blue.
Three cheers for the red, white and blue,
 Three cheers for the red, white and blue,
 The Army and Navy for ever,
 Three cheers for the red, white and blue.
"Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean" in the Performing Arts Encyclopedia of the Library of Congress incl. sheet music, song sheets and sound recordings [2012-01-15] GI

Crocker, Betty (1921-) → Global Index  → Persons Index
Advertising persona and brand name of American food company General Mills; voiced by Marjorie Child Husted and others for The Betty Crocker Cooking School of the Air (1924-1953); played by Adelaide Hawley (Cumming) for The Betty Crocker Show and other TV series (1949-1964).
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Who was Betty Crocker? [2010-08-08] GI