Tuesday, December 23, 2014

1010: But How?

Actually, someone just spikes the watercooler water everyday because they work at a dying tea cozy company run by Rancid W. Veeblefester.

Monday, December 22, 2014

1009: HR Wanted Me To Tell You Because They Are Scared of You

It may also help if you kept your sacks of money behind your desk or in a closet where people can't see them. In addition, calling your employees doofuses tends to send out negative connotations.

Sunday, December 21, 2014

1008: The Most Beautiful Tree Must Die

I've always wanted to get a real Christmas tree some year just to say I've had one. I hear they are difficult to deal with and that's the main reason I've never gotten one. I do think that it's too bad that we don't get to see Brutus chop his wife and son into small bits with the axe but that's what happens when you reduce the size of a Sunday comic strip by 75-85% over the last 100 years or so.

What's Wilberforce doing in the last panel? Some kind of weird force field-type thing?

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Rev. John E. Stewart


In a continuation of the post last week, another member of The Immortal Ten helped on the Underground Railroad and lived about a mile east of Kennedy Valley.

Reverend John E. Stewart was born in England in 1818 and was a minister in New Salem, New Hampshire before coming to Kansas. Stewart's claim with a few miles southeast of Lawrence along the Wakarusa River. It was near what is now North 1175 Road and East 1600 Road but the exact location of where the house was is unknown.

Stewart operated a branch of the Underground Railroad on his land and helped roughly 70 slaves to freedom from Missouri. Stewart also was a close friend of Charley Hart--better known as William Quantrill. When Stewart found out that Hart was hunting down freed slaves and sending them back to Missouri, Stewart broke off all ties and helped get Hart run out of Lawrence. Hart would return to Lawrence with about 300 additional men during the morning of August 21, 1863.

A couple of portrayals paint Stewart in a different light where he had no regard for property or life and was more than happy using terror and threats to further the abolitionist cause. Stewart married Mary Ann in the late 1850s and remarried to Jenny Blackmar in 1870 and Sarah Hufford after that. He moved to Ohio in 1870 and is buried in Perrysburg.

Sources
John Stewart and Others of the Wakarusa/Kennedy Valley by The Wakarusa Valley Heritage Museum

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Tuesday, December 16, 2014

1007: Does This Make Brutus Crazy Eyes?

The best thing I like about Veeblefester that I have created in my mind and not actually canon is that even though he reaps the benefits of politicians bowing down to the rich and creators of jobs I do not believe he actively donates to them. If Rep. Dingus Q. McMoronaville wants to give him a tax break, great but Veeblefester isn't going to thank him for it.

Monday, December 15, 2014

1006: That Took Brutus Down a Peg

Holy crap that middle panel is scary. Actually, now that I look at it, the first panel is a little frightening too. It's been so long since Chip has drawn someone happy in this strip that he can't do it without making them look like a twisted monster.

Sunday, December 14, 2014

1005: Slick Sammy's, At the Corner of Harvard and East 64th

I assume that you get to take the fridge home. I've never done anything like this so I'm just assuming that you get to take it home and use it but I don't know. I'd be more concerned with doing business with a guy who goes by Slick Sammy.

Saturday, December 13, 2014

1004: What Will the Internet Talk About for the Next 89 Years?

In our lifetime. It won't be sequentially ordered again in our lifetime. January 2, 2103 to be exact. I love how it seems as if Chip is tired of people making big deals about dates, too. I bet Chip has lost a lot of friends due to the dates 10/10/10, 11/11/11, and 12/12/12.

Thursday, December 11, 2014

1003: Shouldn't an Old Person Know All the Remedies?

Brutus, do you really want your last words to your mother-in-law to be an insult on her appearance? What? Oh, you do. Well then please continue.

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Silas Soule and Sand Creek


In 1851, the Treaty of Fort Laramie recognized that the Cheyenne and Arapaho held territory encompassing land between the North Platte River and Arkansas River from the Rocky Mountains to western Kansas. By 1859, gold was discovered in the Rockies bringing a gold rush to what was then western Kansas Territory. The Cheyenne and Arapaho urged federal authorities to redefine what their lands were and in the fall of 1860, a new treaty was negotiated.

The delegation of Kiowa, Cheyenne and
Arapaho chiefs, September 1864. Black
Kettle is 2nd from left, front row.
Photo: Smithsonian Institute.
The Treaty of Fort Wise was signed February of 1861. The new reserve was less than 1/13th the size of the 1851 reserve. Some bands were angry at the chiefs who signed the treaty feeling that the treaty was signed by a minority and didn't fully represent the rest of the tribe and refused to abide by the treaty. Black Kettle, leading chief of a band of around 800 mostly Southern Cheyenne, led his band to Fort Lyon in accordance with provisions of a peace parley held in Denver in September 1864. Bands not abiding by the 1861 treaty were not a part of Black Kettle's tribe nor a part of the Arapaho who joined Black Kettle in November. Black Kettle flew an American flag and a white flag as ordered by the commander of nearby Fort Lyon suggested to show he was friendly and was assured of protection.

Col. John Chivington
Meanwhile, Colonel John Chivington and his 700 soldiers went to Fort Lyon and then set out for Black Kettle's camp. The evening of November 28, 1964, the soldiers and militia drank heavily and celebrated their anticipated victory. Disregarding the American and white flag, Chivington and his men attacked. Numbers vary about how many Indians were killed ranging from as high as 600 to 20. Chivington and his men scalped many of the dead including the women and children and dressed their weapons, hats and other gear with scalps, human fetuses and genitalia.

Silas Soule, circa 1864-65.
Photo: Denver Public Library
Silas Soule was born in 1838 in Bath, Maine and, in 1854, joined his family with the New England Emigrant Aid Company in settling the Kansas Territory. The Soule family was one of founding families of Lawrence. Silas' mother and two sisters arrived in Kansas the following summer and the Soules moved to the Coal Creek area of Douglas County near present day Vinland. The Soule house was a stop on the Underground Railroad and Silas, at the age of 17, was helping escort slaves who had escaped from Missouri.

In July 1859, 20 pro-slavery men crossed into Kansas and ambushed a party led by Dr. John Doy who was escorting 13 former slaves to Iowa. The men from Missouri arrested Doy, tried and convicted him sentencing him to five years in prison. Soule and a group of other men decided to free Doy, overpowered the jailer, freeing Doy and leading him across the border back to Kansas. When they got back to Lawrence, their photo was taken. The photo, called The Immortal Ten, is widely circulated and a Kansas icon. Soule was also tasked with freeing John Brown after he was captured after his raid on Harper's Ferry. Brown allowed himself to be hanged hoping his death would start a war. Soule then tried to free two of Brown's men who refused to come with him.
The John Doy rescue party "The Immortal Ten." Doy is seated. Soule is 2nd
from the right. Photo: Amon Gilbert DeLee, courtesy Kansas State Historical Society.
During the Colorado gold rush in 1860, Soule, along with his brother and cousin, went out west where he dug for gold and worked in a blacksmith shop. In 1861, after the start of the Civil War, Soule enlisted in Company K, 1st Colorado Infantry and took part in the victorious New Mexico Campaign of 1862. In November 1864, he was assigned the command of Company D. On November 29, Soule and his men were with Colonel Chivington at Sand Creek when he ordered the cavalry to attack the Cheyenne and Arapaho camp. Seeing that the camp was flying an American and white flag, Soule, and Lt. Joseph Cramer, ordered their men to hold their fire.

The Army investigated what would become the Sand Creek Massacre and Soule testified against Chivington in court in January 1865. Soule was married to Hersa Coberly in March of 1865 and was on duty as a Provost Marshal in Denver on April 23, 1865 when shots rang out. One of the bullets hit Soule in the head, killing him almost instantly. It is believed that someone who was a supporter of Chivington did the killing or ordered it. The murderer was never brought to justice. Soule was buried in Denver's historic Riverside Cemetery and is remembered every year during remembrance ceremonies of the Sand Creek Massacre where the graves of Soule and Cramer are decorated. A plaque commemorating Soule was also placed on a building at 15th and Arapaho in Denver.
Soule's gravestone in Riverside Cemetery
in Denver, Colorado. Courtesy FindAGrave.


1002: Hail the Tea Cozy King

There is something to be said about a man who can manage a tea cozy conglomerate in this economy and still produce a profit.

Tuesday, December 09, 2014

Monday, December 08, 2014

1000: Has Brutus Seriously Never Heard That Saying Before?

An itchy nose means that you are about to kiss a fool so the joke is on Gladys, or should I say, fool?

Additional original content will be returning later this week. I'm hoping to have at least one thing posted every week and something else every two weeks or so. Because of this, original content will no longer be posted at The Point of Beginning. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with that site but it will probably be coming to an end at some point in the future.

Sunday, December 07, 2014

999: And You Know Brutus' Ringtone Is That Generic Nokia One

Who is calling Brutus? Everyone Brutus knows is at this staff meeting and I'm pretty sure Wilberforce's school would call Gladys if Wilberforce was sick or hoisted up the flagpole again and we all know Gladys would rather die than call Brutus for anything so I'm going to say the important policy meeting is being interrupted by a wrong number. Classic Brutus.