Today is the birthday, in 1779, of Joel Roberts Poinsett, an American physician, botanist, politician, and diplomat. He was the first U.S. agent in Hispanic America, a member of the South Carolina Legislature, and later a United States Representative from 1821 to 1825. In 1825, he was appointed by John Quincy Adams as the first United States Minister to Mexico and serving through the first year of Andrew Jackson’s administration in 1829. He represented the United States government to the First Mexican Empire and the First Mexican Republic in Mexico City.
Poinsett was a strong supporter of Andrew Jackson and Jacksonian democracy. He was a Unionist leader in South Carolina during the Nullification Crisis in 1832 and 1833, when the state refused to enforce federal tariffs, declaring them unconstitutional. Poinsett was subsequently appointed 15th U.S. Secretary of War under Martin Van Buren. He was a co-founder of the earlier National Institute for the Promotion of Science and the Useful Arts in 1840, a predecessor of the modern Smithsonian Institution.
Beginning in 1801, Poinsett traveled the European continent. In the spring of 1803 he arrived in Switzerland and stayed at the home of Jacques Necker and his daughter, Madame de Stael. On one occasion, Robert Livingston, the United States minister to France, was invited for a visit. Poinsett was compelled to assume the role of interpreter between the deaf Livingston and the aged Necker, whose lack of teeth made his speech almost incomprehensible. Fortunately, Madame de Stael tactfully assumed the duty of translation for her elderly father.
Poinsett arrived in the Russian capital of Saint Petersburg in November 1806. Learning that Poinsett was from South Carolina, the Empress asked him if he would inspect the cotton factories under her patronage. Poinsett made some suggestions on improvement, which the Dowager Empress accepted. In January 1807, Czar Alexander and Poinsett dined at the Palace. Czar Alexander attempted to entice Poinsett into the Russian civil or military service. Poinsett was hesitant, which prompted Alexander to advise him to “see the Empire, acquire the language, study the people”, and then decide. Always interested in travel, Poinsett accepted the invitation and left Saint Petersburg in March 1807 on a journey through southern Russia. He was accompanied by his English friend Philip Yorke, Viscount Royston and eight others. They were among the last westerners to see Moscow before its burning in October 1812 by Napoleon’s forces.
They were provided with a Cossack escort as they traveled in Dagestan, but when a Tartar dignitary claimed that this would only provoke danger, the escort was bypassed for the security of the Tartar chiefs. This new security increased the numbers in Poinsett’s company, which they believed made it less vulnerable to attack as it passed out of Russia proper. Thus, they were joined by a Persian merchant, who was transporting young girls he had acquired in Circassia to harems in Turkey. With a strong Persian and Kopak guard, the party left Derbent and entered the realm of the Khan of Kuban.
Upon his return to Moscow, Czar Alexander discussed the details of Poinsett’s trip with him and offered him a position as colonel in the Russian Army. However, news had reached Russia of the attack of the Chesapeake affair, and war between the United States and Great Britain seemed certain. Poinsett eagerly sought to return to his homeland.
He served as a “special agent” to two South American countries from 1810 to 1814, Chile and Argentina. President James Madison appointed him in 1809 as Consul in General. Poinsett was to investigate the prospects of the revolutionists, in their struggle for independence from Spain.
In 1820, Poinsett won a seat in the United States House of Representatives for the Charleston district. As a congressman, Poinsett continued to call for internal improvements, but he also advocated the maintenance of a strong army and navy. Poinsett simultaneously served as a special envoy to Mexico from 1822 to 1823, when the government of James Monroe became concerned about the stability of newly independent Mexico. On January 12, 1828, in Mexico City, Poinsett signed the first treaty between the United States and Mexico, the Treaty of Limits, a treaty that recognized the U.S.-Mexico border established by the 1819 Adams–Onís Treaty between Spain and the U.S.
After visiting an area south of Mexico City near Taxco de Alarcón, Poinsett saw what later became known in the United States as the poinsettia. (In Mexico it is called Flor de Nochebuena, Christmas Eve flower, or Catarina). Poinsett, an avid amateur botanist, sent samples of the plant to the United States, and by 1836 the plant was widely known as the “poinsettia”. Also a species of Mexican lizard, Sceloporus poinsettii, is named in Poinsett’s honor.
Poinsett served as Secretary of War from March 7, 1837, to March 5, 1841, overseeing the forced ethnic cleansing and dispossession of land from Native Americans to European settlers known as the Trail of Tears. reduced the fragmentation of the army by concentrating elements at central locations; equipped the light batteries of artillery regiments as authorized by the 1821 army organization act; and again retired to his plantation at Georgetown, South Carolina, in 1841. He died of tuberculosis, hastened by an attack of pneumonia and is buried at the Church of the Holy Cross Episcopal Cemetery.
Joel Roberts Poinsett, Secretary of War
(this image does not depict a horngus (or anything else) attached to a dongfish — a creature that does not exist. It’s an altered version of a Wikipedia entry for Aristotle’s theory of biology, which includes a site note describing that “Aristotle recorded that the embryo of a dogfish was attached by a cord to a kind of placenta (the yolk sac)”)
Snow Sculpture Contest…
Don’t order the pineapple pizza…
TEA??
Spring is in the air!
SIGNZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
Today is the birthday, in 1950, of American singer and drummer Karen Carpenter, who with The Carpenters had the 1973 UK No.2 single ‘Yesterday Once More’ plus 3 US No.1’s including the 1975 US No.1 single ‘Please Mr Postman’. Their 1974 UK & US No.1 album ‘The Singles 1969-1973 spent 125 weeks on the UK chart. The Carpenters album and single sales total more than 90 million making them one of the best-selling music artists of all time. She died on 4 February 1983 of anorexia nervosa. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hJCr9cq5co
