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Kit Bond | |
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United States Senator from Missouri |
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In office January 3, 1987 – January 3, 2011 |
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Preceded by | Thomas Eagleton |
Succeeded by | Roy Blunt |
47th and 49th Governor of Missouri | |
In office January 12, 1981 – January 14, 1985 |
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Lieutenant | Kenneth Rothman |
Preceded by | Joseph P. Teasdale |
Succeeded by | John Ashcroft |
In office January 8, 1973 – January 10, 1977 |
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Lieutenant | William C. Phelps |
Preceded by | Warren E. Hearnes |
Succeeded by | Joseph P. Teasdale |
28th Missouri State Auditor | |
In office 1971–1973 |
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Governor | Warren E. Hearnes |
Preceded by | Haskell Holman |
Succeeded by | John Ashcroft |
Chairman of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship | |
In office January 4, 1995 – January 3, 2001 |
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Preceded by | Dale Bumpers |
Succeeded by | John Kerry |
In office January 20, 2001 – June 6, 2001 |
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Preceded by | John Kerry |
Succeeded by | John Kerry |
Personal details | |
Born | Christopher Samuel Bond (1939-03-06) March 6, 1939 (age 73) St. Louis, Missouri |
Nationality | American |
Political party | Republican |
Spouse(s) | Linda Bond |
Residence | Mexico, Missouri |
Alma mater | Princeton University University of Virginia School of Law |
Occupation | attorney |
Religion | Presbyterian |
Signature | Kit Bond's signature |
Christopher Samuel "Kit" Bond (born March 6, 1939) is a former United States Senator from Missouri and a member of the Republican Party. First elected to the U.S. Senate in 1986, he defeated Democrat Harriett Woods by a margin of 53%-47%. He was re-elected in 1992, 1998, and 2004. On January 8, 2009, he announced that he would not seek re-election to a fifth term in 2010, and was succeeded by current Senator Roy Blunt on January 3, 2011.[1] Following his retirement from the Senate, Bond became a partner at Thompson Coburn.[2]
Before his career in the U.S. Senate, Bond served two terms as Governor of Missouri, from 1973 to 1977 and from 1981 to 1985. He was previously State Auditor of Missouri from 1971 to 1973.
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A sixth-generation Missourian, Bond was born in St. Louis, Missouri, to Elizabeth (née Green) and Arthur D. Bond.[3] His father was captain of the 1924 Missouri Tigers football team and a Rhodes Scholar. His maternal grandfather, A.P. Green, founded A.P. Green Industries, a fireclay manufacturer and a major employer for many years in Bond's hometown Mexico, Missouri. Kit Bond graduated from Deerfield Academy in 1956, Princeton University in 1960, and the University of Virginia School of Law in 1963. From 1963 to 1964, Bond served as a law clerk to the Honorable Elbert Tuttle, then Chief Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Atlanta, Georgia. From 1964 to 1967, Bond practiced law at Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C.
Bond moved back to his hometown of Mexico, Missouri in the fall of 1967, and ran for Congress in 1968 in Missouri's 9th congressional district, the rural northeastern part of the state. He defeated Anthony Schroeder in the August Republican primary, 56% to 44%, winning 19 of the district's 23 counties.[4] In the November general election, Bond almost defeated incumbent Democratic U.S. Congressman Bill Hungate, 52% to 48%. Bond won eight of the district's 23 counties.[5] Out of Hunsgate's five re-election campaigns, that 1968 election against Bond was his worst performance.[6]
State Attorney General John Danforth hired Bond as an Assistant Attorney General in 1969, where Bond led the office's Consumer Protection Division. in 1970, at the age of 31, Bond was elected Missouri State Auditor.
Bond won election for governor by a margin of 55% to 45%, making him, at 33 years of age, the youngest governor in the history of Missouri. Kit Bond was the first Republican in 28 years to serve as governor of Missouri.
Bond's residency qualifications to be governor were challenged but upheld the Missouri Supreme Court in 1972. Missouri law said the governor had to be a resident for 10 years. In the 10 years before his run, he had attended college in Virginia, clerked for a federal appeals court judge in Atlanta, worked for a firm in Washington, D.C., applied to take the bar in Virginia and Georgia, registered a car in Washington, DC and applied for a marriage license in Kentucky. The Court sided with him noting that residence "is largely a matter of intention" and did not require "actual, physical presence." The court ruled that a residence was "that place where a man has his true, fixed and permanent home and principal establishment, and to which whenever he is absent he has the intention of returning."[7]
In 1976, he was on the short list of to be Gerald Ford's vice presidential running mate.[8]
In many ways Bond governed as a moderate during his first term as governor: for example, he drew criticism from conservatives for his support of the Equal Rights Amendment. While governor, on June 25, 1976 he signed an executive order rescinding the Extermination Order against Mormons issued by Governor Lilburn Boggs on October 27, 1838. In 1976, in a surprising upset, Bond was narrowly defeated for re-election by Democrat Joseph P. Teasdale, then Jackson County Prosecutor. Teasdale's tenure was rocky, and in 1980 Bond made a successful comeback, defeating fellow Republican and incumbent Lieutenant Governor Bill Phelps in the primary, and Teasdale in November. Among Bond's most noted accomplishments was taking the Parents As Teachers program statewide.
Bond served as the Chairman of the Midwestern Governors Association in 1983. Bond was succeeded as governor in 1985 by John Ashcroft, also a Republican. Ashcroft later served alongside Bond in the Senate.
After Sen. Thomas Eagleton decided not to run for re-election, Bond was elected Senator in 1986, defeating Lieutenant Governor Harriett Woods by 53% to 47% . Bond was re-elected in 1992 by less than expected over St. Louis County Councilwoman Geri Rothman-Serot. In 1998 Bond decisively defeated Attorney General Jay Nixon and Libertarian Tamara Millay after a hard-fought campaign, and in 2004 he won re-election over Democratic challenger State Treasurer Nancy Farmer with 56 percent of the vote.
Facing the expiration of his fourth full term in January 2011, Bond announced on January 8, 2009 that he did not plan to seek a fifth term and would not run for re-election in November 2010.[1]
The environmental watchdog group Republicans for Environmental Protection (REP) has given Bond an exceptionally low rating of –2 for the 109th United States Congress, citing anti-environment votes on seven out of seven issues deemed critical by the organization. According to the 2006 REP scorecard, Bond supported oil drilling both offshore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, while opposing a bill for “efficiency and renewable-resource programs to improve energy security, lower costs, and reduce energy-related environmental impacts."[9] He strongly favors zero-carbon energy from nuclear power.[10]
"If the IRS wants to know why they are the most hated federal agency in America, they need look no further than this." – Bond, commenting on an IRS spokesman's claim that a person catching a record-breaking home run ball from Mark McGwire could be "responsible for paying any applicable tax on any large gift" (thought to be close to $140,000 in this circumstance).[11]
Bond has opposed setting forth interrogation methods used by the Central Intelligence Agency to conform to the U.S. Army Field Manual. While drawing criticism for being one of only nine senators to oppose such a bill, Bond made it clear from his remarks on the floor that he does not favor or approve of torture, but he does not approve of making interrogation techniques public information on the basis that it would allow enemy combatants to train and prepare themselves for what they might go through if captured. Bond also drew criticism when, during a debate he made a comment comparing waterboarding to swimming, stating "There are different ways of doing it. It's like swimming, freestyle, backstroke," in response to the question "do you think that waterboarding... constitutes torture?"[12]
Bond has been a great supporter of expanding free trade to the third world, and he believes in giving presidential authority to fast track trade relations.[citation needed] He has voted for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and believes in permanently normalizing trade relations with China and Vietnam.
While Bond voted in favor in banning members of Congress from receiving gifts from lobbyists[citation needed], he has generally opposed campaign reform. He voted against the McCain Feingold Act for bipartisan campaign finance solutions. Bond also voted against limiting contributions from corporations or labor.
Bond received an 11% rating from the NAACP.[13] He has voted consistently against same-sex marriage, supporting the proposed constitutional ban of it.
On June 25, 1976 Kit Bond officially ordered the recension of Executive Order Number 44 issued by Lilburn W. Boggs that ordered the expulsion or extermination of all Mormons from the State of Missouri and issued an apology to the Mormons on behalf of all Missourians.[14][15]
As governor of the state of Missouri in 1983, Bond signed a declaration of recognition in support of the group known as the Northern Cherokee, now called the Northern Cherokee Nation of the Old Louisiana Territory attempting to grant a form of State recognition by way of executive order. This act was part of the group's attempt to gain Federal Recognition and to receive the related benefits for the group.[16][17][18]
In October 2008, Bond apologized to former U.S. Attorney Todd Graves, after a U.S. Justice Department report cited Bond for forcing Graves out over a disagreement with Representative Sam Graves.[19] Following the report, Attorney General Michael Mukasey appointed a special prosecutor to investigate whether former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and other officials involved in the firings of nine U.S. attorneys broke the law.[20] Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed an Ethics Committee complaint against Bond over his role in the ouster of Graves.[21]
In 2009, it was revealed according to White House documents that Graves was put on a dismissal list a month after White House e-mail indicated that his replacement was part of a deal between Bond and the Bush administration.[22] The e-mail suggested that Graves was replaced with a candidate favored by Bond for clearing the way for an appointment of a federal judge from Arkansas on the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals.[22]
In the last few days of his long political career, Kit Bond through his staff, solved a mystery that had intrigued the press, Missouri politicians and member of academia for much of 2010. Missouri state officials had wrongly believed up until June 8, 2010, that they had the very rare and very valuable Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rock at its state museum, when all they had was the Missouri Apollo 11 moon rock. On June 8, 2010, the state woke up to a reality that their 5 million dollar piece of Apollo 17 history was missing.[23][24] In cleaning out his Senatorial office in December 2010, it was uncovered that Kit Bond had inadvertently taken the Goodwill Moon Rock when he left the Governor's Office, and kept it for decades. Bond returned the Missouri Goodwill Moon Rock to the current Governor of Missouri. Kit Bond was one of three former Governors who each took their state moon rocks upon leaving office, the other two were the former Governor's of Colorado and West Virginia.[25][26]
After leaving office in January 2011, Bond joined the law firm of Thompson Coburn.[2][27]
Bond serves as a co-chair of the Housing Commission at the Bipartisan Policy Center's Housing Commission.[28]
In August 2011, Bond announced that he would join alliantgroup's strategic advisory board and serve as a senior adviser for the firm.[29]
Bond formally launched his own firm, Kit Bond Strategies, in November 2011.[30]
Bond's son Sam returned in the fall of 2007 from his second tour of duty in Iraq, and is an officer in the United States Marine Corps.
In 1994, Bond's wife, Carolyn, filed for a divorce, which was finalized the following year. Bond married Linda Pell, now Linda Bond, in 2002. She grew up in the Kansas City suburb of Gladstone and works as a consultant to the National Republican Senatorial Committee. She and Bond had dated for about a year before they were engaged on May 17, 2001, and had also dated in 1996 and 1997. It is her second marriage as well.
After winning his second term as Governor, Bond sued his investment manager and Paine Webber, alleging his $1.3 million trust fund had been drained. He was one of several clients who sued, and he settled in 1996 for $900,000.[citation needed]
In 2009, Bond co-authored a book with Lewis Simons entitled The Next Front: Southeast Asia and the Road to Global Peace with Islam.[31]
Bond has permanent vision loss in one eye, which he attributes to undiagnosed amblyopia during childhood.[32][33]
On January 8, 2009, Senator Bond announced that he would not be seeking re-election in 2010.[34]
United States Senate election in Missouri, 2004
Kit Bond (R) (inc.) 56% |
Nancy Farmer (D) 42.8% |
Kevin Tull (Lib.) 0.7% |
Don Griffin (Constitution) 0.4% |
United States Senate election in Missouri, 1998
Kit Bond (R) (inc.) 52.7% |
Jay Nixon (D) 43.8% |
Tamara Millay (Lib.) 2% |
Curtis Frazier (U.S. Taxpayers) 1% |
James F. Newport (Reform) 0.5% |
United States Senate election in Missouri, 1992
Kit Bond (R) (inc.) 51.9% |
Geri Rothman-Serot (D) 44.9% |
Jeanne Bojarski (Lib.) 3.2% |
United States Senate election in Missouri, 1986
Kit Bond (R) 52.6% |
Harriet Woods (D) 47.4% |
1980 Missouri Gubernatorial Election
Kit Bond (R) 52.6% |
Joseph P. Teasdale (D) 47% |
Helen Savio (Socialist Workers) 0.3% |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Kit Bond |
Political offices | ||
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Preceded by Haskell Holman |
Missouri State Auditor 1971–1973 |
Succeeded by John Ashcroft |
Preceded by Warren E. Hearnes |
Governor of Missouri 1973–1977 |
Succeeded by Joseph P. Teasdale |
Preceded by Joseph P. Teasdale |
Governor of Missouri 1981–1985 |
Succeeded by John Ashcroft |
Preceded by Dale Bumpers |
Chairman of the Senate Small Business Committee 1995–2001 |
Succeeded by John Kerry |
United States Senate | ||
Preceded by Thomas Eagleton |
United States Senator (Class 3) from Missouri 1987–2011 Served alongside: John Danforth, John Ashcroft, Jean Carnahan, Jim Talent, Claire McCaskill |
Succeeded by Roy Blunt |
Party political offices | ||
Preceded by Lawrence K. Roos |
Republican Party nominee for Governor of Missouri 1972, 1976, 1980 |
Succeeded by John Ashcroft |
Preceded by Gene McNary |
Republican Party nominee for United States Senator from Missouri (Class 3) 1986, 1992, 1998, 2004 |
Succeeded by Roy Blunt |
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Persondata | |
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Name | Bond, Kit |
Alternative names | |
Short description | American politician |
Date of birth | March 6, 1939 |
Place of birth | St. Louis, Missouri |
Date of death | |
Place of death |
James Bond | |
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James Bond, 007 character | |
200px Ian Fleming's image of James Bond; commissioned to aid the Daily Express comic strip artists. |
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First appearance | Casino Royale, 1953 novel |
Last appearance | Quantum of Solace, 2008 film |
Created by | Ian Fleming |
Portrayed by |
Barry Nelson (1954) |
Voiced by |
Bob Holness (1956) |
Information | |
Gender | Male |
Occupation | 00 Agent |
Title | Commander (Royal Naval Reserve) |
Family | Andrew Bond (Father) Monique Delacroix Bond (Mother) |
Spouse(s) | Teresa di Vicenzo (widowed) Kissy Suzuki (invalid) Harriett Horner (invalid) |
Children | James Suzuki Bond (son with Kissy) |
Relatives | Charmian Bond (Aunt) Max Bond (Uncle) |
Nationality | British |
James Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis, Christopher Wood, John Gardner, Raymond Benson, Sebastian Faulks and Jeffery Deaver; a new novel, written by William Boyd, is planned for release in 2013.[1] Additionally, Charlie Higson wrote a series on a young James Bond and Kate Westbrook wrote three novels based on the diaries of a recurring series character, Moneypenny.
The fictional British Secret Service agent has also been adapted for television, radio, comic strip and video game formats as well as being used in the longest running and the second-highest grossing film franchise to date, which started in 1962 with Dr. No, starring Sean Connery as Bond. As of 2012, there have been twenty two films in the Eon Productions series, with a twenty third, Skyfall, due for release on 26 October 2012. The film will star Daniel Craig in his third portrayal of Bond: he is the sixth actor to play Bond in the Eon series. There have also been two independent productions of Bond films, Casino Royale, a 1967 spoof, and Never Say Never Again, a 1983 remake of an earlier Eon-produced film, Thunderball.
The films are renowned for a number of features, including the musical accompaniment, with the theme songs to the films having picked up Academy Award nominations on several occasions. Other important elements which run through most of the films include Bond's cars, his guns and the gadgets he is supplied with by Q Branch.
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As the central figure for his works, Ian Fleming created the fictional character of James Bond, an intelligence officer in the Secret Intelligence Service, commonly known as MI6. Bond was also known by his code number, 007, and was a Royal Naval Reserve Commander.
Fleming took the name for his character from that of the American ornithologist James Bond, a Caribbean bird expert and author of the definitive field guide Birds of the West Indies; Fleming, a keen birdwatcher himself, had a copy of Bond's guide and he later explained to the ornithologist’s wife that "It struck me that this brief, unromantic, Anglo-Saxon and yet very masculine name was just what I needed, and so a second James Bond was born".[2] He further explained that:
When I wrote the first one in 1953, I wanted Bond to be an extremely dull, uninteresting man to whom things happened; I wanted him to be a blunt instrument...when I was casting around for a name for my protagonist I thought by God, (James Bond) is the dullest name I ever heard.—Ian Fleming, The New Yorker, 21 April 1962[3]
On another occasion Fleming said: "I wanted the simplest, dullest, plainest-sounding name I could find, "James Bond" was much better than something more interesting, like "Peregrine Carruthers". Exotic things would happen to and around him, but he would be a neutral figure—an anonymous, blunt instrument wielded by a government department."[4]
Fleming based his fictional creation on a number of individuals he came across during his time in the Naval Intelligence Division during World War II, admitting that Bond "was a compound of all the secret agents and commando types I met during the war".[5] Among those types were his brother, Peter, who had been involved in behind the lines operations in Norway and Greece during the war.[6] Aside from Fleming's brother, a number of others also provided some aspects of Bond's make up, including Conrad O'Brien-ffrench, Patrick Dalzel-Job and Bill "Biffy" Dunderdale.[5]
Fleming also endowed Bond with many of his own traits, including sharing the same golf handicap, the taste for scrambled eggs and using the same brand of toiletries.[7] Bond's tastes are also often taken from Fleming’s own as was his behaviour,[8] with Bond's love of golf and gambling mirroring Fleming's own. Fleming used his experiences of his espionage career and all other aspects of his life as inspiration when writing, including using names of school friends, acquaintances, relatives and lovers throughout his books.[5]
Fleming decided Bond should look a little like both the American singer Hoagy Carmichael and himself[9] and in Casino Royale, Vesper Lynd remarks, "Bond reminds me rather of Hoagy Carmichael, but there is something cold and ruthless." Likewise, in Moonraker, Special Branch Officer Gala Brand thinks that Bond is "certainly good-looking… Rather like Hoagy Carmichael in a way. That black hair falling down over the right eyebrow. Much the same bones. But there was something a bit cruel in the mouth, and the eyes were cold."[9]
It was not until the penultimate novel, You Only Live Twice, that Fleming gave Bond a sense of family background. The book was the first to be written after the release of Dr. No in cinemas and Sean Connery's depiction of Bond affected Fleming's interpretation of the character, to give Bond both a sense of humour and Scottish antecedents that were not present in the previous stories.[10] In a fictional obituary, purportedly published in The Times, Bond's parents were given as Andrew Bond, from the village of Glencoe, Scotland, and Monique Delacroix, from Yverdon, Switzerland.[11] Fleming did not provide Bond's date of birth, but John Pearson's fictional biography of Bond, James Bond: The Authorised Biography of 007, gives Bond a birth date on 11 November 1920,[12] while a study by John Griswold puts the date at 11 November 1921.[13]
Whilst serving in the Naval Intelligence Division, Fleming had planned to become an author[15] and had told a friend, "I am going to write the spy story to end all spy stories."[5] On 17 February 1952, he began writing his first James Bond novel, Casino Royale at his Goldeneye estate in Jamaica,[16] where he wrote all his Bond novels, during the months of January and February each year.[17] He started the story shortly before his wedding to his pregnant girlfriend, Ann Charteris, in order to distract himself from his forthcoming nuptials.[18]
After completing the manuscript for Casino Royale, Fleming showed the manuscript to his friend (and later editor) William Plomer to read. Plomer liked it and submitted it to the publishers, Jonathan Cape, who did not like it as much. Cape finally published it in 1953 on the recommendation of Fleming's older brother Peter, an established travel writer.[17] Between 1953 and 1966, two years after his death, twelve novels and two short-story collections were published, with the last two books – The Man with the Golden Gun and Octopussy and The Living Daylights – published posthumously.[19] All the books were published in the UK through Jonathan Cape.
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After Fleming's death a continuation novel, Colonel Sun, was written by Kingsley Amis (as Robert Markham) and published in 1968.[34] Amis had already written a literary study of Fleming's Bond novels in his 1965 workThe James Bond Dossier.[35] Although novelizations of two of the Eon Productions Bond films appeared in print, James Bond, The Spy Who Loved Me and James Bond and Moonraker, both written by screenwriter Christopher Wood,[36] the series of novels did not continue until the 1980s. In 1981, thriller writer John Gardner picked up the series with Licence Renewed.[37] Gardner went on to write sixteen Bond books in total; two of the books he wrote – Licence to Kill and GoldenEye – were novelizations of Eon Productions films of the same name. Gardner moved the Bond series into the 1980s, although he retained the ages of the characters as they were when Fleming had left them.[38] In 1996, Gardner retired from writing James Bond books due to ill health.[39]
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In 1996, American author Raymond Benson became the author of the Bond novels. Benson had previously been the author of The James Bond Bedside Companion, first published in 1984.[54] By the time he moved on to other, non-Bond related projects in 2002, Benson had written six Bond novels, three novelizations and three short stories.[55]
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After a gap of six years, Sebastian Faulks was commissioned by Ian Fleming Publications to write a new Bond novel, which was released on 28 May 2008, the 100th anniversary of Ian Fleming's birth.[65] The book—titled Devil May Care—was published in the UK by Penguin Books and by Doubleday in the US.[66] American writer Jeffery Deaver was then commissioned by Ian Fleming Publications to produce Carte Blanche, which was published on 26 May 2011.[67] The book updated Bond into a post 9/11 agency, independent of MI5 or MI6.[68]
The Young Bond series of novels was started by Charlie Higson[69] and, between 2005 and 2009, five novels and one short story were published.[70] The first Young Bond novel, SilverFin was also adapted and released as a graphic novel on 2 October 2008 by Puffin Books.[71]
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The Moneypenny Diaries are a trilogy of novels chronicling the life of Miss Moneypenny, M's personal secretary. The novels are penned by Samantha Weinberg under the pseudonym Kate Westbrook, who is depicted as the book's "editor".[79] The first instalment of the trilogy, subtitled Guardian Angel, was released on 10 October 2005 in the UK.[80] A second volume, subtitled Secret Servant was released on 2 November 2006 in the UK, published by John Murray.[81] A third volume, subtitled Final Fling was released on 1 May 2008.[82]
In 1954 CBS paid Ian Fleming $1,000 ($8,654 in 2012 dollars[86]) to adapt his novel Casino Royale into a one-hour television adventure as part of its Climax! series.[87] The episode aired live on 21 October 1954 and starred Barry Nelson as "Card Sense" James 'Jimmy' Bond and Peter Lorre as Le Chiffre.[88] The novel was adapted for American audiences to show Bond as an American agent working for "Combined Intelligence", while the character Felix Leiter—American in the novel—became British onscreen and was renamed "Clarence Leiter".[89]
In 1973 a BBC documentary Omnibus: The British Hero featured Christopher Cazenove playing a number of such title characters (e.g. Richard Hannay and Bulldog Drummond). The documentary included James Bond in dramatised scenes from Goldfinger—notably featuring 007 being threatened with the novel's circular saw, rather than the film's laser beam—and Diamonds Are Forever.[90] In 1991 a TV cartoon series James Bond Jr. was produced with Corey Burton in the role of Bond's nephew, also called James Bond.[91]
In 1956, the novel Moonraker was adapted for broadcast on South African radio, with Bob Holness providing the voice of Bond.[92] According to The Independent, "listeners across the Union thrilled to Bob's cultured tones as he defeated evil master criminals in search of world domination".[93]
The BBC have adapted three of the Fleming novels for broadcast: in 1990, You Only Live Twice was adapted into a 90 minute radio play for BBC Radio 4 with Michael Jayston playing James Bond. The production was repeated a number of times between 2008 and 2011.[94] On 24 May 2008, BBC Radio 4 broadcast an adaptation of Dr. No. Actor Toby Stephens, who played Bond villain Gustav Graves in the Eon Productions version of Die Another Day, played James Bond, while Dr. No was played by David Suchet.[95] Following the success of Dr. No, a second Bond story was adapted and on 3 April 2010, BBC Radio 4 broadcast Goldfinger with Toby Stephens again playing Bond.[96] Sir Ian McKellen was Goldfinger and Stephens' Die Another Day co-star Rosamund Pike played Pussy Galore. The play was adapted from Fleming's novel by Archie Scottney and was directed by Martin Jarvis.[97]
In 1957, the Daily Express approached Ian Fleming to adapt his stories into comic strips, offering him £1,500 per novel and a share of takings from syndication.[98] After initial reluctance, Fleming, who felt the strips would lack the quality of his writing, agreed.[99] To aid the Daily Express in illustrating Bond, Fleming commissioned an artist to create a sketch of how he believed James Bond looked. The illustrator, John McLusky, however, felt that Fleming's 007 looked too "outdated" and "pre-war" and changed Bond to give him a more masculine look.[100] The first strip, Casino Royale was published from 7 July 1958 to 13 December 1958[101] and was written by Anthony Hern and illustrated by John McLusky.[102]
Most of the Bond novels and short stories have since been adapted for illustration, as well as Kingsley Amis's Colonel Sun; the works were written by Henry Gammidge or Jim Lawrence with Yaroslav Horak replacing McClusky as artist in 1966.[101] After the Fleming and Amis material had been adapted, original stories were produced, continuing in the Daily Express and Sunday Express until May 1977.[100]
Several comic book adaptations of the James Bond films have been published through the years: at the time of Dr. No's release in October 1962, a comic book adaptation of the screenplay, written by Norman J. Nodel, was published in Britain as part of the Classics Illustrated anthology series.[103] It was later reprinted in the United States by DC Comics as part of its Showcase anthology series, in January 1963. This was the first American comic book appearance of James Bond and is noteworthy for being a relatively rare example of a British comic being reprinted in a fairly high-profile American comic. It was also one of the earliest comics to be censored on racial grounds (some skin tones and dialogue were changed for the American market).[104][103]
With the release of the 1981 film For Your Eyes Only, Marvel Comics published a two-issue comic book adaptation of the film.[105][106] When Octopussy was released in the cinemas in 1983, Marvel published an accompanying comic;[103] Eclipse also produced a one-off comic for Licence to Kill, although Timothy Dalton refused to allow his likeness to be used.[107] New Bond stories were also drawn up and published from 1989 onwards through Marvel, Eclipse Comics and Dark Horse Comics.[103][106]
In 1962 Eon Productions, the company of Canadian Harry Saltzman and American Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli released the first cinema adaptation of an Ian Fleming novel, Dr. No, featuring Sean Connery as 007.[108] Connery starred in a further four films before leaving the role after You Only Live Twice,[109] which was taken up by George Lazenby for On Her Majesty's Secret Service.[110] Lazenby left the role after just one appearance and Connery was tempted back for his last Eon-produced film Diamonds Are Forever.[111]
In 1973, Roger Moore was appointed to the role of 007 for Live and Let Die and played Bond a further six times over twelve years before being replaced by Timothy Dalton for two films. After a six year hiatus, during which a legal wrangle threatened Eon's productions of the Bond films,[112] Irish actor Pierce Brosnan was cast as Bond in GoldenEye, released in 1995; he remained in the role for a total of four films, before leaving in 2002. In 2006, Daniel Craig was given the role of Bond for Casino Royale, which rebooted the franchise.[113] The twenty-third Eon produced film, Skyfall, was announced in November 2011, with release scheduled for 26 October 2012.[114] The Eon Productions series has grossed $4,910,000,000 (over $12,360,000,000 when adjusted for inflation) worldwide, making it the second highest grossing film series, behind Harry Potter.[115]
Title | Year | Actor | Director |
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Dr. No | 1962 | Sean Connery | Terence Young |
From Russia with Love | 1963 | ||
Goldfinger | 1964 | Guy Hamilton | |
Thunderball | 1965 | Terence Young | |
You Only Live Twice | 1967 | Lewis Gilbert | |
On Her Majesty's Secret Service | 1969 | George Lazenby | Peter R. Hunt |
Diamonds Are Forever | 1971 | Sean Connery | Guy Hamilton |
Live and Let Die | 1973 | Roger Moore | |
The Man with the Golden Gun | 1974 | ||
The Spy Who Loved Me | 1977 | Lewis Gilbert | |
Moonraker | 1979 | ||
For Your Eyes Only | 1981 | John Glen | |
Octopussy | 1983 | ||
A View to a Kill | 1985 | ||
The Living Daylights | 1987 | Timothy Dalton | |
Licence to Kill | 1989 | ||
GoldenEye | 1995 | Pierce Brosnan | Martin Campbell |
Tomorrow Never Dies | 1997 | Roger Spottiswoode | |
The World Is Not Enough | 1999 | Michael Apted | |
Die Another Day | 2002 | Lee Tamahori | |
Casino Royale | 2006 | Daniel Craig | Martin Campbell |
Quantum of Solace | 2008 | Marc Forster | |
Skyfall (unreleased) | 2012 | Sam Mendes |
In 1967, Casino Royale was adapted into a parody Bond film starring David Niven as Sir James Bond and Ursula Andress as Vesper Lynd. David Niven had been Ian Fleming's preference for the part of James Bond.[116] The result of a court case in the High Court in London in 1963 allowed Kevin McClory to produce a remake of Thunderball titled Never Say Never Again in 1983.[117] The film, starring Sean Connery as Bond, was not part of the Eon series of Bond films. In 1997 the Sony Corporation acquired all or some of McClory's rights in an undisclosed deal,[117] which were then subsequently acquired by MGM, whilst on 4 December 1997, MGM announced that the company had purchased the rights to Never Say Never Again from Schwartzman's company Taliafilm.[118] Eon now currently (as of 2012) holds the full adaptation rights to all of Fleming's Bond novels.[117][119]
Title | Year | Actor | Director |
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Casino Royale | 1967 | David Niven | Ken Hughes John Huston Joseph McGrath Robert Parrish Val Guest Richard Talmadge |
Never Say Never Again | 1983 | Sean Connery | Irvin Kershner |
“ | ...cocky, swaggering, confident, dark, dangerous, suggestive, sexy, unstoppable. | ” |
—David Arnold, on the "James Bond Theme"[120] |
The "James Bond Theme" was written by Monty Norman and was first orchestrated by the John Barry Orchestra for 1962's Dr. No, although the actual authorship of the music has been a matter of controversy for many years.[121] In 2001, Norman won £30,000 in libel damages from the The Sunday Times newspaper, which suggested that Barry was entirely responsible for the composition.[122] The theme, as written by Norman and arranged by Barry, was described by another Bond film composer, David Arnold, as "bebop-swing vibe coupled with that vicious, dark, distorted electric guitar, definitely an instrument of rock 'n' roll...it represented everything about the character you would want: It was cocky, swaggering, confident, dark, dangerous, suggestive, sexy, unstoppable. And he did it in two minutes."[120] Barry composed the scores for eleven Bond films[123] and had an uncredited contribution to Dr. No with his arrangement of the Bond Theme.[120]
A Bond film staple are the theme songs heard during their title sequences sung by well-known popular singers.[124] Several of the songs produced for the films have been nominated for Academy Awards for Original Song, including Paul McCartney's "Live and Let Die",[125] Carly Simon's "Nobody Does It Better"[126] and Sheena Easton's "For Your Eyes Only".[127] For the non-Eon produced Casino Royale, Burt Bacharach's score included "The Look Of Love", which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Song.[128]
In 1983, the first Bond video game, developed and published by Parker Brothers, was released for the Atari 2600, the Atari 5200, the Atari 800, the Commodore 64 and the ColecoVision.[129] Since then, there have been numerous video games either based on the films or using original storylines. In 1997, the first-person shooter video game GoldenEye 007 was developed by Rare for the Nintendo 64, based on the 1995 Pierce Brosnan film GoldenEye.[130] The game received very positive reviews,[131] won the BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Award for UK Developer of the Year in 1998[132] and generated $250 million of sales worldwide.[133]
In 1999, Electronic Arts acquired the licence and released Tomorrow Never Dies on 16 December 1999.[134] In October 2000, they released The World Is Not Enough[135] for the Nintendo 64[136] followed by007 Racing for the PlayStation on 21 November 2000.[137] In 2003, the company released Everything or Nothing,[138] which included the likenesses and voices of Pierce Brosnan, Willem Dafoe, Heidi Klum, Judi Dench and John Cleese, amongst others.[139] In November 2005, Electronic Arts released a video game adaptation of From Russia with Love,[140] which involved Sean Connery's image and voice-over for Bond.[140]
In 2006 Electronic Arts announced a game based on then-upcoming film Casino Royale: the game was cancelled because it would not be ready by the film's release in November of that year. With MGM losing revenue from lost licensing fees, the franchise was removed from EA to Activision.[141] Activision subsequently released the 007: Quantum of Solace game on 31 October 2008, based on the film of the same name.[142]
For the first five novels, Fleming armed Bond with a Beretta 418[143] until he received a letter from a thirty-one-year-old Bond enthusiast and gun expert, Geoffrey Boothroyd, criticising Fleming's choice of firearm for Bond,[144] calling it "a lady's gun – and not a very nice lady at that!"[145] Boothroyd suggested that Bond should swap his Beretta for a Walther PPK 7.65mm and this exchange of arms made it to Dr. No.[146] Boothroyd also gave Fleming advice on the Berns-Martin triple draw shoulder holster and a number of the weapons used by SMERSH and other villains.[147] In thanks, Fleming gave the MI6 Armourer in his novels the name Major Boothroyd and, in Dr. No, M introduces him to Bond as "the greatest small-arms expert in the world".[146] Bond also used a variety of rifles, including the Savage Model 99 in "For Your Eyes Only" and a Winchester .308 target rifle in "The Living Daylights".[143] Other handguns used by Bond in the Fleming books included the Colt Detective Special and a long-barrelled Colt .45 Army Special.[143]
The first Bond film, Dr. No, saw M ordering Bond to leave his Beretta behind and take up the Walther PPK,[148] which the film Bond used in eighteen films.[149] Since Tomorrow Never Dies, Bond's main weapon has been the Walther P99 semi-automatic pistol.[149]
In the early Bond stories Fleming gave Bond a battleship-grey Bentley 4½ Litre with an Amherst Villiers supercharger.[150] After Bond's car was written off by Hugo Drax in Moonraker, Fleming gave Bond a Mark II Continental Bentley, which he used in the remaining books of the series.[151] During Goldfinger, Bond was issued with an Aston Martin DB Mark III with a homing device, which he used to track Goldfinger across France. Bond returned to his Bentley for the subsequent novels.[151]
The Bond of the films has driven a number of cars, including the Aston Martin V8 Vantage[152], during the 1980s), the V12 Vanquish[152] and DBS[153] during the 2000s, as well as the Lotus Esprit;[154] the BMW Z3,[155] BMW 750iL[155] and the BMW Z8.[155] He has, however, also needed to drive a number of other vehicles, ranging from a Citroën 2CV to a Routemaster Bus, amongst others.[156]
Bond's most famous car is the silver grey Aston Martin DB5, first seen in Goldfinger;[157] it later featured in Thunderball, GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies and Casino Royale.[158] The films have used a number of different Aston Martins for filming and publicity, one of which was sold in January 2006 at an auction in the US for $2,090,000 to an unnamed European collector.[159]
Fleming's novels and early screen adaptations presented minimal equipment such as the booby-trapped attaché case in From Russia with Love, although this situation changed dramatically with the films.[160] However, the effects of the two Eon-produced Bond films Dr. No and From Russia with Love had an effect on the novel The Man with the Golden Gun, through the increased number of devices used in Fleming's final story.[161]
For the film adaptations of Bond, the pre-mission briefing by Q Branch became one of the motifs that ran through the series.[162] Dr. No provided no spy-related gadgets, but a Geiger counter was used; industrial designer Andy Davey observed that the first ever onscreen spy-gadget was the attaché case shown in From Russia with Love, which he described as "a classic 007 product".[163] The gadgets assumed a higher profile in the 1964 film Goldfinger. The film's success encouraged further espionage equipment from Q Branch to be supplied to Bond, although the increased use of technology led to an accusation that Bond was over-reliant on equipment, particularly in the later films.[164]
If it hadn't been for Q Branch, you'd have been dead long ago!
Davey noted that "Bond's gizmos follow the zeitgeist more closely than any other...nuance in the films"[163] as they moved from the potential representations of the future in the early films, through to the brand-name obsessions of the later films.[163] It is also noticeable that, although Bond uses a number of pieces of equipment from Q Branch, including the Little Nellie autogyro,[165] a jet pack[166] and the exploding attaché case,[167] the villains are also well-equipped with custom made devices,[163] including Scaramanga's golden gun,[168] Rosa Klebb's poison-tipped shoes,[169] Oddjob's steel-rimmed bowler hat[170] and Blofeld's communication and bacteriological warfare agents vanity case.[163]
Cinematically James Bond has been a major influence within the spy genre since the release of Dr. No in 1962.[171] The first parody was the 1964 film Carry on Spying showing the villain Dr. Crow being overcome by agents who included James Bind (Charles Hawtry) and Daphne Honeybutt (Barbara Windsor).[172] One of the films that reacted against the portrayal of Bond was the Harry Palmer series, whose first film, The Ipcress File was released in 1965. The eponymous hero of the series was what academic Jeremy Packer called an "anti-Bond",[173] or what Christoph Lindner calls "the thinking man's Bond".[174] The Palmer series were produced by Harry Saltzman, who also used key crew members from the Bond franchise, including designer Ken Adam, editor Peter R. Hunt and composer John Barry.[175] In 1966 there were twenty two secret agent films released attempting to capitalise on the popularity and success of Bond.[176] The four "Matt Helm" films starring Dean Martin were released between 1966 and 1969,[177] the "Flint" series starring James Coburn provided two films in 1966 and 1969,[178] whilst The Man from U.N.C.L.E. also moved onto the cinema screen, with eight films released: all were testaments to Bond's prominence in popular culture.[123] More recently, the Austin Powers series by writer, producer and comedian Mike Myers[179] and other parodies such as the 2003 film Johnny English[180] have also used elements from or parodied the Bond films.
Following the release of the film Dr. No in 1962, the quote "Bond ... James Bond", became a catch phrase that entered the lexicon of Western popular culture: writers Cork and Scivally said of the introduction in Dr. No that the "signature introduction would become the most famous and loved film line ever".[181] In 2001 it was voted as the "best-loved one-liner in cinema" by British cinema goers[182] and in 2005, it was honoured as the 22nd greatest quotation in cinema history by the American Film Institute as part of their 100 Years Series.[183] The 2005 American Film Institute's '100 Years' series also recognised the character of James Bond himself in the film as the third greatest film hero.[184] He was also placed at number eleven on a similar list by Empire.[185] Premiere also listed Bond as the fifth greatest movie character of all time.[186]
The twenty two James Bond films produced by Eon Productions, which have grossed $4,910,000,000 in box office returns alone,[187] have made the series one of the highest-grossing ever. It is estimated that since Dr. No, a quarter of the world's population have seen at least one Bond film.[188] The UK Film Distributors' Association have stated that the importance of the Bond series of films to the British film industry cannot be overstated, as they "form the backbone of the industry".[189]
Television also saw the effect of Bond films, with the NBC series The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,[190] which was described as the "first network television imitation" of Bond,[191] largely because Fleming provided advice and ideas on the development of the series, even giving the main character the name Napoleon Solo.[192] Other 1960s television imitations of Bond included I Spy,[178] and Get Smart.[193]
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Christopher Houston "Kit" Carson | |
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Kit Carson |
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Born | (1809-12-24)December 24, 1809[1] Madison County, Kentucky, US[1] |
Died | May 23, 1868(1868-05-23) (aged 58) Fort Lyon, Colorado, US |
Place of burial | Taos, New Mexico, US |
Allegiance | United States of America Union |
Service/branch | Union Army |
Commands held | 1st New Mexico Cavalry |
Battles/wars |
Christopher Houston "Kit" Carson (December 24, 1809[1] – May 23, 1868) was an American frontiersman and Indian fighter. Carson left home in rural present-day Missouri at age 16 and became a mountain man and trapper in the West.[2] Carson explored the west to California, and north through the Rocky Mountains. He lived among and married into the Arapaho and Cheyenne tribes. He was hired by John C. Fremont as a guide, and led 'the Pathfinder' through much of California, Oregon and the Great Basin area. He achieved national fame through Fremont's accounts of his expeditions. He became the hero of many dime novels.
Carson was a courier and scout during the Mexican-American war from 1846 to 1848, celebrated for his rescue mission after the Battle of San Pasqual and his coast-to-coast journey from California to deliver news of the war to the U.S. government in Washington, D.C.. In the 1850s, he was the Agent to the Ute and Jicarilla Apaches. In the Civil War he led a regiment of mostly Hispanic volunteers at the Battle of Valverde in 1862. He led armies to pacify the Navajo, Mescalero Apache, and the Kiowa and Comanche Indians. He is vilified for his conquest of the Navajo and their forced transfer to Bosque Redondo where many of them died. Breveted a general, he is probably the only American to reach such a high military rank without being able to read or write, although he could sign his name.
Kit Carson's alliterative name, adventurous life, and participation in a large number of historical events has made him a favorite subject of novelists, historians, and biographers.
Contents |
Born in Madison County, Kentucky,[1] near the city of Richmond, in 1809, Carson moved at the age of one year with his parents and siblings to a rural area near Franklin, Missouri.[3] Carson's father, Lindsey Carson, a farmer of Scots-Irish descent, had fought in the Revolutionary War[4] under General Wade Hampton. He had a total of fifteen Carson children: five by Lucy Bradley, his first wife, and ten by Kit Carson's mother, Rebecca Robinson.[4] Kit Carson was the eleventh child in the family.[5] He was known from an early age as "Kit".[6] The Carson family settled on a tract of land owned by the sons of Daniel Boone, who had purchased the land from the Spanish prior to the Louisiana Purchase. The Boone and Carson families became good friends, working and socializing together, and intermarrying.
Carson was eight years old when his father was killed by a falling tree while clearing land.[6] Lindsey Carson's death reduced the Carson family to a desperate poverty, forcing young Kit Carson to drop out of school to work on the family farm, as well as to engage in hunting. At age 14 Carson was apprenticed to a saddlemaker (Workman's Saddleshop) in the settlement of Franklin, Missouri. Franklin was situated at the eastern end of the Santa Fe Trail, which had opened two years earlier. Many of the clientele at the saddleshop were trappers and traders, from whom Carson heard stirring tales of the Far West. Carson is reported to have found work in the saddle shop suffocating: he once stated "the business did not suit me, and I concluded to leave". His master may have agreed with his leaving since he offered the odd amount of 1 cent for his return and waited a month to post the notice in the local newspaper.[7]
At sixteen, Carson secretly signed on with a large merchant caravan heading to Santa Fe— with the job of tending the horses, mules, and oxen. During the winter of 1826–1827 he stayed with Matthew Kinkead, a trapper and explorer, in Taos, New Mexico, then known as the capital of the fur trade in the Southwest. Kinkead had served with Carson's older brothers during the War of 1812,[8] and he taught Carson the skills of a trapper. Carson also began learning the necessary languages. Eventually he became fluent in Spanish, Navajo, Apache, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Paiute, Shoshone, and Ute.[9]
After gaining experience as a teamster along the Santa Fe Trail and in Mexico, Carson signed on with a party of forty men, led by Ewing Young which in August, 1829 went into Apache country along the Gila River. There, when the party was attacked, Carson first saw combat. Young's party continued on into California trapping and trading from Sacramento to Los Angeles, returning to Taos in April, 1830 after trapping along the Colorado River.[10] See Ewing Young for more detailed information.
At the age of 25, in the summer of 1835, Carson attended an annual mountain man rendezvous, which was held along the Green River in southwestern Wyoming. He became interested in an Arapaho woman whose name, Waa-Nibe, is approximated in English as "Grass Singing"[11] Her tribe was camped nearby the rendezvous.[12][13][14] Singing Grass is said to have been popular at the rendezvous and also to have caught the attention of a French-Canadian trapper, Joseph Chouinard. When Singing Grass chose Carson over Chouinard, the rejected suitor became belligerent. Chouinard is reported to have thrown a fit, disrupting the camp to the point where Carson could no longer tolerate the situation. Words were exchanged, and Carson and Chouinard charged each other on horses while brandishing their weapons. Using a pistol, Carson blew off Chouinard's thumb. His opponent barely missed killing Carson with his rifle shot; it grazed below his left ear and scorched his eye and hair. Carson said that the fact that Chouinard's horse shied probably saved him, as Chouinard was a splendid shooter
Controversy regarding Chouinard's fate continues. The duel with Chouinard is said to have made Carson famous among the mountain men but was also considered uncharacteristic of him.[15]
Carson considered his years as a trapper to be "the happiest days of my life." Accompanied by Singing Grass, he worked with the Hudson's Bay Company, as well as the renowned frontiersman Jim Bridger, trapping beaver along the Yellowstone, Powder, and Big Horn rivers. They trapped throughout what is now Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. Carson's first child, a daughter named Adeline, was born in 1837. Singing Grass gave birth to a second daughter but developed a fever shortly after the birth, and died sometime between 1838–1840.[12][13][14][16]
At this time, the nation was undergoing a severe depression (see Panic of 1837). In addition, the fur industry was undermined by changing fashion styles: a new demand for silk hats replaced the demand for beaver fur. Also, the trapping industry had devastated the beaver population. These factors ended the need for trappers. Carson said, "Beaver was getting scarce, it became necessary to try our hand at something else."[17]
He attended the last mountain man rendezvous, held in the summer of 1840 (again at Ft. Bridger near the Green River) and moved on to Bent's Fort, finding employment as a hunter. Carson married a Cheyenne woman, Making-Our-Road,[18] in 1841. She left him only a short time later to follow her tribe's migration.[12][13][14]
By 1842 Carson met and became engaged to the daughter of a prominent Taos family: Josefa Jaramillo. After receiving instruction from Padre Antonio José Martínez, he was baptized into the Catholic Church in 1842. At 34, Carson married his third wife, 14-year-old Josefa, on February 6, 1843. They had eight children together, the descendants of whom remain in the Arkansas Valley of Colorado.[14]
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Carson decided early in 1842 to return to Missouri, taking his daughter Adeline to live with relatives near Carson's former home of Franklin, to provide her with an education. That summer he met John C. Frémont on a Missouri River steamboat. Frémont was preparing to lead his first expedition and was looking for a guide to take him to South Pass on the Continental Divide. As the two men became acquainted, Carson offered his services, as he had spent much time in the area. The five-month journey, made with 25 men, was a success, and Fremont's report was published by Congress. His report "touched off a wave of wagon caravans filled with hopeful emigrants" heading West.
Frémont's success in the first expedition led to his second expedition, undertaken in the summer of 1843. He proposed to map and describe the second half of the Oregon Trail, from South Pass to the Columbia River. Due to Carson's proven skills as a guide, Fremont invited him to join the second expedition. They traveled along the Great Salt Lake into Oregon. They determined that all the land in the Great Basin (centered on modern-day Nevada) was land-locked, which contributed greatly to the understanding of North American geography at the time. Farther west, they came within sight of Mount Rainier, Mount Saint Helens, and Mount Hood.
One goal of the expedition had been to locate the Buenaventura River, what was believed to be a major east-west river connecting the Continental Divide with the Pacific Ocean. Though its existence was accepted as scientific fact at the time, it was not to be found. Frémont's second expedition established that the river was a fable.
When the expedition ventured into California, they crossed into Mexican territory. The second expedition became snowbound in the Sierra Nevadas that winter. Carson's wilderness skills averted mass starvation. Food was so scarce that their mules "ate one another's tails and the leather of the pack saddles."[19]
The expedition moved south into the Mojave Desert, enduring attacks by Natives, who killed one man. The threat of military intervention by Mexico sent Fremont's expedition southeast, into Nevada, to a watering hole known as Las Vegas. Carson remembered their arrival as follows:
The party traveled on to Bent's Fort. By August 1844 they returned to Washington, over a year after their departure. Congress published Fremont's report on his expedition in 1845. It added to the national reputations of the two frontiersmen.
Along the route, Frémont and party came across a Mexican man and a boy who had survived an ambush by a band of Natives. They had killed two men, staked two women to the ground and mutilated them, and stolen 30 horses. Carson and fellow mountain man Alex Godey took pity on the two survivors. They tracked the Native band for two days, and upon locating them, rushed into their encampment. They killed two Native Americans, scattered the rest, and returned to the Mexicans with the horses.
On June 1, 1845, John Frémont and 55 men left St. Louis, with Carson as guide, on the third expedition. The stated goal was to "map the source of the Arkansas River", on the east side of the Rocky Mountains. But upon reaching the Arkansas, Frémont suddenly made a hasty trail straight to California, without explanation. Arriving in the Sacramento Valley in early winter 1846, he sought to stir up patriotic enthusiasm among the United States immigrants there. He promised that if war with Mexico started, his military force would "be there to protect them." Frémont nearly provoked a battle with Mexican General José Castro near Monterey, California. Castro's troops so outnumbered the US expedition that they could likely have destroyed it. Frémont fled Mexican-controlled California, and went north to Oregon, making camp at Klamath Lake.
On the night of May 9, 1846, Frémont received a courier, Lieutenant Archibald Gillespie, bringing messages from President James Polk. Reviewing the messages, Frémont neglected the customary measure of posting a watchman for the camp. The neglect of this action is said to have been troubling to Carson, yet he had "apprehended no danger".[22] Later that night Carson was awakened by the sound of a thump. Jumping up, he saw his friend and fellow trapper Basil Lajeunesse sprawled in blood. He sounded an alarm and immediately the camp realized they were under attack by Native Americans, estimated to be several dozen in number. By the time the assailants were beaten off, two other members of Frémont's group were dead. The one dead attacker was judged to be a Klamath Lake native. Frémont's group fell into "an angry gloom." Carson was furious and smashed the dead warrior's face into a pulp.[23]
To avenge the deaths, Frémont attacked a Klamath Tribe fishing village named Dokdokwas, that most likely had nothing to do with the attack, at the junction of the Williamson River and Klamath Lake, on May 10, 1846. Accounts by scholars vary, but they agree that the attack completely destroyed the village structures; Sides reports the expedition killed women and children as well as warriors.[24] Later that day, Carson was nearly killed by a Klamath warrior when his gun misfired as the warrior drew a poison arrow. Frémont trampled the warrior with his horse and saved Carson's life.
Turning south from Klamath Lake, Frémont led his expedition back down the Sacramento Valley, and promoted the Bear Flag Revolt, an insurrection of United States immigrant settlers. He took charge of it once it had adequately developed. When a group of Mexicans murdered two American rebels, Frémont imprisoned José de los Santos Berreyesa, the alcalde, or mayor of Sonoma, two other Berreyesa brothers, and others he believed were involved.
On June 28, 1846, Berreyesa's father, José de los Reyes Berreyesa, an elderly man, crossed the San Francisco Bay and landed near the area known as San Quentin with two cousins, twin sons of Francisco de Haro, who were 19 years old, to visit his own sons in jail. According to Frémont they were carrying Mexican military dispatches. The men were captured by Carson and his companions when they disembarked. Carson rode to where Frémont was and inquired as to what should be done with the prisoners. Frémont ordered their execution stating, "I want no prisoners, Mr. Carson, do your duty." The men were shot.[26][27] Afterwards the soldiers robbed them of their belongings and left them naked along the shore. Later, Carson told Jasper O'Farrell that he regretted killing the men, but that the act was only one such that Frémont ordered him to commit.[28]
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Frémont's California Battalion next moved south to the Mexican provincial capital of Monterey, where they met US Commodore Robert Stockton in mid-July 1846. Stockton had sailed into harbor with two American warships and laid claim to Monterey for the United States. Learning that the war with Mexico was underway, Stockton made plans to capture Los Angeles and San Diego and proceed on to Mexico City. He joined forces with Frémont, and made Carson a lieutenant, thus initiating Carson's military career.
Frémont's unit arrived in San Diego on one of Stockton's ships on July 29, 1846, and took over the town without resistance. Stockton, on a separate warship, claimed Santa Barbara a few days later. (See Mission Santa Barbara and Presidio of Santa Barbara). Meeting up and joining forces in San Diego, the men marched to Los Angeles and claimed the town without any challenge. On August 17, 1846, Stockton declared California to be United States territory. The following day, August 18, Stephen W. Kearny rode into Santa Fe, New Mexico with his Army of the West and declared the New Mexican territory conquered.
Stockton and Frémont were eager to announce the conquest of California to President Polk. They asked Carson to carry their correspondence overland to the President. Carson accepted the mission, and pledged to cross the continent within 60 days. He left Los Angeles with 15 European-American men and six Delaware natives on September 5.
Thirty-one days later on October 6, Carson chanced to meet Kearny and his 300 dragoons at the deserted village of Valverde.[29] Kearny was under orders from the Polk Administration to subdue both New Mexico and California, and set up governments there. Learning that California was already conquered, he sent 200 of his men back to Santa Fe, and ordered Carson to guide him back to California to stabilize the situation there. Kearny sent the mail on to Washington by another courier.
For the next six weeks, Lt. Carson guided Kearny and the 100 dragoons west along the Gila River over rugged terrain, arriving at the Colorado River on November 25. On some parts of the trail, mules died at a rate of almost 12 a day. By December 5, three months after leaving Los Angeles, Carson had brought Kearny's men to within 25 miles (40 km) of their destination San Diego.
A Mexican courier was captured en route to Sonora, Mexico carrying letters to General Jose Castro that reported a Mexican revolt that had retaken California from Commodore Stockton. All the coastal cities were back under Mexican control except San Diego, where the Mexicans had Stockton pinned down and under siege. Kearny and his forces were in danger, as his men were reduced in number and exhausted from the trek from New Mexico. They had to come out of the Gila River trail and confront the Mexican forces, or risk perishing in the desert.
While approaching San Diego, Kearny sent a rancher ahead to notify Commodore Stockton of his presence. The rancher, Edward Stokes, returned with 39 American troops and information that several hundred Mexican dragoons under Capt. Andres Pico were camped at the indigenous village of San Pasqual, between Kearny and Stockton. Kearny decided to raid Pico to capture fresh horses, and sent out a scouting party on the night of December 5–6.
The scouting party set off a barking dog in San Pasqual, and Captain Pico's troops were aroused from their sleep. Having been detected, Kearny decided to attack, and organized his troops to advance on San Pasqual. A complex battle evolved. Twenty-one Americans were killed. By the end of the second day, December 7, the Americans were nearly out of food and water, low on ammunition and weak from the journey along the Gila River. They faced starvation and possible annihilation by the superior numbers of Mexican troops. Kearny ordered his men to dig in on top of a small hill.
Kearny sent Carson and two other men to slip through the siege and get reinforcements. Carson, Edward Beale, and a Native American left on the night of December 8 for San Diego, 25 miles (40 km) away. They left their canteens to avoid noise. Their boots also made too much noise, therefore Carson and Beale removed them and tucked them under their belts. They lost their boots, and had to make the journey barefoot through desert, rock, and cactus.
By December 10, Kearny believed all hope was gone, and planned to attempt a breakout the next morning. That night 200 American troops on fresh horses arrived, and the Mexican army dispersed in the face of the superior American forces. Kearny arrived in San Diego by December 12. His arrival contributed to the prompt reconquest of California by the American forces.
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Following the recapture of Los Angeles in 1846, Stockton appointed Frémont as Governor of California. Frémont sent Carson to carry messages back to Washington, D.C. He stopped in St. Louis and met with Senator Thomas Benton, a prominent supporter of settling of the West and a proponent of Manifest Destiny. He had been instrumental in getting Frémont's expedition reports published by Congress. Once in Washington, Carson delivered his messages to Secretary of State James Buchanan, and had meetings with Secretary of War William Marcy and President James Polk. The president also proposed Carson as a lieutenant in the mounted rifle regiment, but the United States Senate rejected the appointment.[30]
The Navajo raided Socorro, New Mexico near the end of September, 1846. General Kearny, passing nearby on his way to California after his recent conquest of Santa Fe, learned of the raid and sent a note to Col. William Doniphan, his second-in-command in Santa Fe. He ordered Doniphan to send a regiment of soldiers into Navajo country and secure a peace treaty with them.
A detachment of 30 men made contact with the Navajo and spoke to the Navajo Chief Narbona in mid-October, about the same time that Carson met Gen. Kearny on the trail to California. A second meeting between Chief Narbona and Col. Doniphan occurred several weeks later. Doniphan informed the Navajo that all their land now belonged to the United States, and the Navajo and New Mexicans were the “children of the United States” . The Navajo signed a treaty, known as the Bear Spring Treaty, on November 21, 1846. The treaty forbade the Navajo to raid or make war on the New Mexicans, but allowed the New Mexicans to make war on the Navajo if they saw fit.[31][32]
Despite the treaty, the Navajo continued raiding in New Mexico, which they considered a category separate from war, as did the Jicarilla Apache, Mescalero Apache, Ute, Comanche, and Kiowa. On August 16, 1849 the US Army began an expedition into the heart of Navajo country on an organized reconnaissance to impress the Navajo with the might of the U.S. military. They also mapped the terrain and planned forts. Col. John Washington, the military governor of New Mexico at the time, led the expedition. Forces included nearly 1000 infantry (US and New Mexican volunteers), hundreds of horses and mules, a supply train, 55 Pueblo scouts, and four artillery guns.
On August 29–30, 1849, Washington's expedition needed water, and began pillaging Navajo cornfields. Mounted Navajo warriors darted back and forth around Washington's troops to push them off. Washington reasoned he could pillage Navajo crops because the Navajo would have to reimburse the U.S. government for the cost of the expedition. Washington still suggested to the Navajo that in spite of the hostile situation, they and the whites could “still be friends if the Navajo came with their chiefs the next day and signed a treaty”. This is what they did.
The next day Chief Narbona came to “talk peace”, along with several other headmen. After reaching an accord, a scuffle broke out when a New Mexican thought he saw his stolen horse and tried to claim it from the Navajo. (The Navajo held that the horse had passed through several owners by this time, and rightfully belonged to its Navajo owner). Washington sided with the New Mexican. Since the Navajo owner took his horse and fled the scene, Washington told the New Mexican to pick out any Navajo horse he wanted. The rest of the Navajo also left. At this, Col. Washington ordered his soldiers to fire.
Seven Navajo were killed in the volleys; the rest ran and could not be caught. One of the dying was Chief Narbona, who was scalped as he lay dying by a New Mexican souvenir hunter. This massacre prompted the warlike Navajo leaders such as Manuelito to gain influence over those who were advocates of peace.
By the end of the Frémont expeditions and California rebellion, Carson decided to settle down with Joséfa. In 1849 they moved to Taos to take up ranching and farming. However, a peaceful life at home was not to be.
Carson's public image as a hero had been sealed by the Frémont expedition reports of 1845. In 1849 the first of many Carson action novels appeared. Written by Charles Averill, it bore the name Kit Carson: The Prince of the Gold Hunters. This type of western pulp fiction was known as “blood and thunders”. In Averill's novel, Carson finds a kidnapped girl and rescues her, after having vowed to her distraught parents in Boston that he would scour the American West until she was found.
In November 1849, Carson and Major William Grier found the camp of the Jicarilla Apaches who had captured Mrs. Ann White and her daughter. The Jicarilla had attacked the White home and had killed her husband and others. Knowing the soldiers were near, the Jicarilla killed Mrs. White. While picking through the belongings that the Jicarilla had left in their camp, one of Major Grier's soldiers came across a book that the White family had carried with them from Missouri — the paperback novel starring Kit Carson. This was the first time that Carson had come in contact with his own myth.
The episode of the White family killings haunted Carson's memory for many years. He wrote in his autobiography:
Later, when a friend offered Averill's book as a gift, Carson told the friend he would rather “burn the damn thing.” In fact, these extravagant novels set the public's view of Carson for a generation. Near the end of his life, Carson met a man from Arkansas. He recounted the incident later:
Following the March 30, 1854 battle of Cieneguilla, Lieutenant Colonel Philip St. George Cooke of the Second Regiment of Dragoons organized an expedition to pursue the Jicarilla. With the help of scouts led by Kit Carson, he caught and defeated them April 4, at the canyon of Ojo Caliente.
On January 22, 1858, Kit Carson concluded a treaty of peace between the Muatche Utah, the Arapaho, and the Pueblo of Taos. They agreed to support the United States in the event of any issue between them and the people of any Territory, and to do what they could to suppress rebellion in Utah. At one time the US feared that the Muatche Utah were in alliance with the Mormons.[35]
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When the American Civil War began in April 1861, Kit Carson resigned his post as federal Indian agent for northern New Mexico. He joined the New Mexico volunteer infantry organized by Ceran St. Vrain. Although New Mexico Territory officially allowed slavery, geography and economics made the institution so impractical that there were few slaves within its boundaries. The territorial government and the leaders of opinion all threw their support to the Union.
Overall command of Union forces in the Department of New Mexico fell to Colonel Edward R. S. Canby of the Regular Army’s 19th Infantry, headquartered at Ft. Marcy in Santa Fe. Carson, with the rank of Colonel of Volunteers, commanded the third of five columns in Canby’s force. Carson’s command was divided into two battalions, each made up of four companies of the First New Mexico Volunteers, in all some 500 men.
Early in 1862, Confederate forces in Texas under General Henry Hopkins Sibley invaded New Mexico Territory. They aimed to conquer the rich Colorado gold fields and to redirect the resource from the North to the South.
Advancing up the Rio Grande, Sibley’s command clashed with Canby’s Union force at Valverde on February 21, 1862. The day-long Battle of Valverde ended when the Confederates captured a Union battery of six guns and forced the rest of Canby’s troops across the river. The Union lost 68 killed and 160 wounded. Colonel Carson’s column spent the morning on the west side of the river out of the action, but at 1 p.m., Canby ordered them to cross. Carson’s battalions fought until ordered to retreat. Carson lost one man killed and one wounded. Colonel Canby had little or no confidence in the hastily recruited, untrained New Mexico volunteers, “who would not obey orders or obeyed them too late to be of any service.” However, Canby did remark about Carson and his volunteer’s “zeal and energy”.[36]
After the battle at Valverde, Colonel Canby and most of the regular troops were ordered to the eastern front. Carson and his New Mexico Volunteers were fully occupied by “Indian troubles”.
Outlaw Navajos (called ladrones, Spanish for thieves), as well as other Native Americans, and their neighboring New Mexicans, had raided, killed and enslaved each other since they had lived side by side during Spanish rule. A lull had taken place in the 1850s under the jurisdiction of Captain Henry Kendrick, commandant of Fort Defiance in northeast Arizona, and Henry Dodge, the government agent. But after Dodge disappeared in late 1856, and Kendrick was transferred to another post, the raids resumed. With the withdrawal of many troops at the start of the Civil War, New Mexicans became more outspoken and demanded that something be done.[37]
Col. Canby devised a plan for the removal of the Navajo to a distant reservation and sent his plans to his superiors in Washington D.C. But he was promoted to general and recalled east for other duties.[38]
His replacement as commander of the Federal District of New Mexico was Brigadier General James H. Carleton. Carleton believed that the Navajo conflict was the reason for New Mexico's "depressing backwardness". He turned to Kit Carson to help him fulfill his plans of upgrading New Mexico and advancing his own career, as Carson's national reputation had boosted the careers of a series of military commanders who had employed him.
Carleton saw a way to harness the anxieties that had been stirred up [in New Mexico] by the Confederate invasion and the still-hovering fear that the Texans might return. If the territory was already on a war footing, the whole society alert and inflamed, then why not direct all this ramped up energy toward something useful? Carleton immediately declared a state of martial law, with curfews and mandatory passports for travel, and then brought all his newly streamlined authority to bear on cleaning up the Navajo mess. With a focus that bordered on obsession, he was determined finally to make good on Kearny's old promise that the United States would "correct all this".[39]
Carleton believed there was gold in the Navajo country, and that they should be driven out to allow its development.[40] The immediate prelude to Carleton's Navajo campaign was to force the Mescalero Apache to Bosque Redondo. Carleton ordered Carson to kill all the men of that tribe, and say that he (Carson) had been sent to "punish them for their treachery and crimes."[citation needed]
Carson was appalled by this brutal attitude and refused to obey it. He accepted the surrender of more than a hundred Mescalero warriors who sought refuge with him. Nonetheless, he completed his campaign in a month.
When Carson learned that Carleton intended him to pursue the Navajo, he sent Carleton a letter of resignation dated February 3, 1863.[41] Carleton refused to accept this and used the force of his personality to maintain Carson's cooperation. In language similar to his description of the Mescalero Apache, Carleton ordered Carson to lead an expedition against the Navajo, and to say to them, "You have deceived us too often, and robbed and murdered our people too long, to trust you again at large in your own country. This war shall be pursued against you if it takes years, now that we have begun, until you cease to exist or move. There can be no other talk on the subject."[42] However, it was largely Canby's proposed plan, written from a position of relative neutrality and created in hopes of defusing the situation, that Carleton and Carson ultimately carried out.[38]
Under Carleton's direction, Carson instituted a scorched earth policy, which coerced the Navajo to surrender. Most corn fields were used to feed his horses, and some fields were destroyed. Carleton had insisted that livestock was not to be used for personal use. To carry out his orders, Carson asked that the government recruit Utes to assist him. He did not personally cut down the orchards; he was aided by other Native American tribes with long-standing enmity toward the Navajos. Carson was pleased with the work the Utes did for him, but they went home early in the campaign when told they could not confiscate Navajo booty.[43]
Carson had difficulty with New Mexico volunteers as well. Officers typically came from the ranks of Anglos in the territory, and were not of the best calibre. Carson urged Carleton to accept two resignations he was forwarding, “as I do not wish to have any officer in my command who is not contented or willing to put up with as much inconvenience and privations for the success of the expedition as I undergo myself”.[36]
Unlike the battles in the Civil War, the campaign did not consist of head-to-head battles. Instead, Carson fought when necessary, to round up and take prisoner all the Navajo he could find, to force them to go to Bosque Redondo, also called Fort Sumner.
Finally, in January 1864, after long resisting the plan, Carson sent a company into Canyon de Chelly to investigate the last Navajo stronghold, presuming them to be under the leadership of Manuelito. Carson had feared a trap. But Carleton's orders proved to be effective, and the Navajo realized they had only two choices: surrender and go to Bosque Redondo, or die. By the spring of 1864, 8,000 Navajo men, women and children were forced to march or ride in wagons 300 miles (480 km) from Fort Canby to Fort Sumner, New Mexico. Navajos call this “The Long Walk”.[44]
Carson had left the Army and returned home before the march began, but some Navajo held him responsible for the events. He had promised that those who surrendered would not be harmed, and indeed, they were not attacked directly, but the journey was hard on the people, as they were already starving and poorly clothed, and the provisions were scanty. An estimated 300 Navajo died along the way.[45] Many more died during the next four years on the encampment at Fort Sumner. Carleton had underestimated the number of Navajo that would arrive at Sumner, and also had ordered insufficient provisions, a factor that Carson deplored.[46]
In 1868, after signing a treaty with the US government, the Navajo were allowed to return to their homeland. Since then the Navajo Reservation has been enlarged several times to its current size. Thousands of other Navajo who had been living in the wilderness returned to the Navajo homeland centered around Canyon de Chelly.
In November 1864, Carson was sent by General Carleton to deal with the Indians in western Texas. Carson and his 400 troopers and Indian scouts met a combined force of Kiowa, Comanche, and Plains Apache numbering as much as 1,500 at the ruins of Adobe Walls, Texas. In the Battle of Adobe Walls, the Indian force led by Dohäsan made several assaults on Carson's forces which were supported by two mountain howitzers. Carson retreated after burning a Kiowa village. Carson lost the battle, but most authorities give him credit for a skillful defense and a wise decision to withdraw when confronted by numerically superior Indian army.[47]
A few days later, Colonel John M. Chivington led US troops in a massacre at Sand Creek. Chivington boasted that he had surpassed Carson and would soon be known as the great Indian killer. Carson expressed outrage at the massacre and openly denounced Chivington's actions.
The Southern Plains campaign led the Comanches to sign the Little Rock Treaty of 1865. In October 1865, General Carleton recommended that Carson be awarded the brevet rank of brigadier general, "for gallantry in the battle of Valverde, and for distinguished conduct and gallantry in the wars against the Mescalero Apaches and against the Navajo natives of New Mexico".
When the Civil War ended, and the Indian Wars campaigns were in a lull, Carson was breveted a General and appointed commandant of Ft. Garland, Colorado, the heart of Ute country. Carson had many Ute friends in the area and assisted in government relations. He was interviewed there by Wm. T. Sherman. A description of that meeting is included in the Charles Burdett book Life of Kit Carson. After being mustered out of the Army, Carson took up ranching. In late 1867 he personally escorted four Ute chiefs to Washington DC to visit the President and seek additional government assistance. Soon after his return, his wife Josefa ("Josephine") died from complications after giving birth to their eighth child.
Carson died a month later at age 58 on May 23, 1868, in the presence of Dr. Tilton. Dr. Tilton's description of Carson's last days are included in J. S. C. Abbott's Life of Kit Carson. He died from an abdominal aortic aneurysm in the surgeon's quarters in Fort Lyon, Colorado, located east of Las Animas.[48] He was buried in Taos, New Mexico, next to his wife. His headstone inscription reads: "Kit Carson / Died May 23, 1868 / Aged 59 Years."[49]
His last words were: "Adios Compadres" (Spanish for "Goodbye friends").[50]
Many general accounts of Kit Carson describe him as an outstanding honorable person. Albert Richardson, who knew him personally in the 1850s, wrote that Kit Carson was "a gentleman by instinct, upright, pure, and simple-hearted, beloved alike by Indians, Mexicans, and Americans".[51]
Oscar Lipps also presented a positive image of Carson in 1909: "The name of Kit Carson is to this day held in reverence by all the old members of the Navajo tribe. They say he knew how to be just and considerate as well as how to fight the Indians".[52]
Carson's contributions to western history have been reexamined by historians, journalists and Native American activists since the 1960s. In 1968, Carson biographer Harvey L. Carter stated:
Some journalists and authors during the last 25 years presented an alternative view of Kit Carson. For instance, Virginia Hopkins stated in 1988 that "Kit Carson was directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of thousands of Indians".[54] Tom Dunlay wrote in 2000 that Carson was directly responsible for the deaths of at least fifty indigenous people.[55] Dunlay portrays Carson as a man with divided loyalties whose beliefs and prejudices were shaped by his times.
In 1970, Lawrence Kelly noted that Carleton had warned 18 Navajo chiefs that all Navajo peoples "must come in and go to the 'Bosque Redondo' where they would be fed and protected until the war was over. That unless they were willing to do this they would be considered hostile."[56]
On January 19, 2006, Marley Shebala, senior news reporter and photographer for Navajo Times, quoted the Fort Defiance Chapter of the Navajo Nation as saying, "Carson ordered his soldiers to shoot any Navajo, including women and children, on sight." This view of Carson's actions may be taken from General James Carleton’s orders to Carson on October 12, 1862, concerning the Mescalero Apaches: "All Indian men of that tribe are to be killed whenever and wherever you can find them: the women and children will not be harmed, but you will take them prisoners and feed them at Ft. Stanton until you receive other instructions".[57]
Sides said that Carson believed the Native Americans needed reservations as a way of physically separating and shielding them from white hostility and white culture. Carson believed most of the Indian troubles in the West were caused by "aggressions on the part of whites." He is said to have viewed the raids on white settlements as driven by desperation, "committed from absolute necessity when in a starving condition." Native American hunting grounds were disappearing as waves of white settlers filled the region.[58]
In 1868, at the urging of Washington and the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Carson journeyed to Washington D.C. where he escorted several Ute Chiefs to meet with the President of the United States to plead for assistance to their tribe.[59]
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At least 25 titles were recorded, from Kit Carson, Prince of the Gold Hunters (1849) through Kit Carson, King of Scouts (1923). Kit Carson is included in a number of 20th century novels and pulp magazine stories: Comanche Chaser by Dane Coolidge, On Sweet Water Trail by Sabra Conner, On to Oregon by H. W. Morrow, The Pioneers by C. R. Cooper, The Long Trail by J. Allan Dunn and Peltry by A. D. H. Smith.
In Willa Cather's novel Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927), the legend of Kit Carson is explored, first as compassionate friend to the natives, later as "misguided" soldier.
William Saroyan's Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Time of Your Life (1939) includes a colorful character, an old man, based on the image and reputation of Kit Carson.
Kit Carson also appears in Flashman and the Redskins (1982) by George MacDonald Fraser.
Carson appears as a supporting character in the The Berrybender Narratives (2002–2004), a series of four novels by Larry McMurtry.
Four silent films were made featuring Kit Carson as the "star" from 1903 to 1928. From 1933-1947 Hollywood produced three talking films: Fighting with Kit Carson, a serial (1933), revised as a single movie: The Return of Kit Carson (1947); Overland with Kit Carson (1939); and Kit Carson (1940), starring Jon Hall in the title role. Disney released Kit Carson and the Mountain Men in 1977.
A fictional western television series, The Adventures of Kit Carson, starring Bill Williams and Don Diamond, ran in syndication from 1951-1955. Dream West was a TV 1986 docudrama that includes Kit Carson and John C. Fremont as characters. The History Channel produced Carson and Cody, the Hunter Heroes in 2003. In 2008 PBS/The American Experience produced Kit Carson, a film biography.
The Canadian singer-songwriter, Bruce Cockburn, has a track entitled "Kit Carson" on his 1991 album Nothing But a Burning Light that does not present Carson in a positive light.[60]
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The Kit Carson House in Taos, New Mexico, is a U.S.-designated National Historic Landmark. It is operated as a museum.
The Kit Carson Museum in Las Animas, Colorado, is located in an adobe building that was built in 1940 to hold German prisoners of war captured in North Africa during World War II. The museum houses artifacts relating to Bent County, Colorado covering the period from the days of Kit Carson, through World War II. It is scheduled to move into a new facility, once completed.
Fort Garland, located within the city of the same name in Colorado, was the location where Kit Carson briefly re-located his family while he served as commandant of a company of roughly 100 New Mexico Volunteers in 1866-1867. It includes original adobe buildings that house a reconstruction of Carson's commandant quarters. The site is a U.S.-designated National Historic Landmark, and is operated as the "Fort Garland Museum".
The Kit Carson Chapel, located in Fort Lyon, Colorado, was constructed from the stones of the surgeons' quarters where he died. It is open to the public.
In Rayado, NM, the Kit Carson Museum is operated as a living museum, staffed by nearby Philmont Scout Ranch interpreters.
San Pasqual Battlefield State Historic Park, located near Escondido, California, is a California State Park which honors the memory of the participants from both the United States and Mexico, including Kit Carson, who contested the Battle of San Pasqual on December 5–6, 1846 during the Mexican-American War. The State Park includes a visitor's center that in addition to housing exhibits and a film about the battle, also includes information about the cultural history of the San Pasqual Valley. The State Park also hosts living history presentations, which once a year in December includes a recreation of the battle itself.
A partial list of places named after Carson:
|
Persondata | |
---|---|
Name | Carson, Kit |
Alternative names | |
Short description | Union Army general |
Date of birth | December 24, 1809 |
Place of birth | Madison County, Kentucky |
Date of death | May 23, 1868 |
Place of death | Fort Lyon, Colorado |
Andrew Breitbart | |
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Andrew Breitbart speaking at CPAC on February 10, 2012. |
|
Born | (1969-02-01)February 1, 1969 Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
Died | March 1, 2012(2012-03-01) (aged 43) Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
Residence | Westwood, Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
Alma mater | Tulane University (B.A.) |
Occupation | Writer, Columnist, Publisher |
Spouse | Susannah Bean (m. 1997–2012); 4 children |
Andrew Breitbart (pronounced /ˈbraɪtbɑrt/ (February 1, 1969 – March 1, 2012) was an American publisher,[1] commentator for The Washington Times, author,[2] and occasional guest commentator on various news programs, who served as an editor for the Drudge Report website. He was a researcher for Arianna Huffington, and helped launch her web publication The Huffington Post.[3]
He ran his own news aggregation site, Breitbart.com, and five other websites: Breitbart.tv, Big Hollywood, Big Government, Big Journalism, and Big Peace. He played key roles in the Anthony Weiner sexting scandal, the resignation of Shirley Sherrod, and the ACORN 2009 undercover videos controversy.
Contents |
Breitbart was the adopted son of Gerald and Arlene Breitbart, a restaurant owner and banker respectively, and grew up in upscale Brentwood, Los Angeles. He was raised Jewish (his adoptive mother had converted to Judaism when marrying his adoptive father).[4][5] He had explained that his birth certificate indicated his biological father was a folk singer. He was ethnically Irish by birth, and his adopted sister is Hispanic.[4] He changed his political views after experiencing an "epiphany" during the Clarence Thomas hearings, and later described himself as "a Reagan conservative" with libertarian sympathies.[1]
While in high school, Breitbart was a pizza delivery driver; he sometimes delivered to celebrities such as Judge Reinhold.[6] He earned a B.A. in American studies from Tulane University in 1991, graduating with "no sense of [his] future whatsoever".[7] His early jobs included a stint at cable channel E! Entertainment Television, working for the company's online magazine, and some time in film production.[5]
In 1995 Breitbart saw the Drudge Report and was so impressed that he emailed Matt Drudge. Breitbart said, "I thought what he was doing was by far the coolest thing on the Internet. And I still do."[3] Breitbart described himself as "Matt Drudge's bitch"[8] and selected and posted links to other news wire sources. Later Matt Drudge introduced him to Arianna Huffington (when she was still a Republican)[5] and Breitbart subsequently assisted her in creating her website.
Breitbart's work has been published in the Wall Street Journal, National Review Online and the Weekly Standard Online, among others. He wrote a weekly column for The Washington Times, which also appeared at Real Clear Politics. Breitbart also co-wrote the book Hollywood, Interrupted: Insanity Chic in Babylon with Mark Ebner, a book that is highly critical of U.S. celebrity culture.[9] On January 19, 2011, the conservative gay rights group GOProud announced Breitbart had joined its Advisory Council.[10]
In April 2011 Grand Central Publishing released Breitbart's book, Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World, in which he discussed his own political evolution and the part he took in the rise of new media, most notably at the Drudge Report and The Huffington Post.
In June 2011 Breitbart was involved in the Anthony Weiner sexting scandal when his websites broke the story that Weiner was sending women revealing photographs of himself.[11]
Breitbart appeared as a commentator on Real Time with Bill Maher and Dennis Miller. In 2004 he was a guest commentator on Fox News Channel's morning show and frequently appeared as a guest panelist on Fox News's late night program, Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld. Breitbart also appeared as a commentator in the 2004 documentary Michael Moore Hates America.[12]
On October 22, 2009, Breitbart appeared on the C-SPAN program Washington Journal. He gave his opinions on the mainstream media, Hollywood, the Obama Administration and his personal political views, having heated debates with several callers.[1]
In the hours immediately following Senator Ted Kennedy's death, Breitbart called Kennedy a "villain", a "duplicitous bastard", a "prick"[13] and "a special pile of human excrement".[14][15]
In February 2010 Breitbart received the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award during the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C. During his acceptance speech, he responded directly to accusations by New York Times reporter Kate Zernike that Jason Mattera, a young conservative activist, had been using "racial tones" in his allusions to President Barack Obama, and had spoken in a "Chris Rock voice". From the podium, Breitbart called Zernike "a despicable human being" for having made such allegations about Mattera's New York accent.[16] At the same conference, Breitbart was also filmed saying to journalist Max Blumenthal that he found him to be "a jerk", and "a despicable human being" due to a blog entry posted by Blumenthal.[17]
Breitbart often appeared as a speaker at Tea Party movement events across the U.S. For example, Breitbart was a keynote speaker at the first National Tea Party Convention at Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville on February 6, 2010.[18] Breitbart later involved himself in a controversy over homophobic and alleged racial slurs being used at a March 20, 2010, rally at the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C., by asserting that slurs were never used, and that "It was a set-up" by Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Party. Breitbart offered to donate $100,000 to the United Negro College Fund "for any audio/video footage of the N-word being hurled", claiming that the several Congressmen made it up. Breitbart insisted Congressman John Lewis and several other witnesses were forced to lie, concluding that "Nancy Pelosi did a great disservice to a great civil rights icon by thrusting him out there to perform this mischievous task. His reputation is now on the line as a result of her desperation to take down the Tea Party movement."[19][20]
I'm committed to the destruction of the old media guard. And it's a very good business model.
Breitbart launched a number of websites, including Breitbart.com,[22] BigHollywood.com,[23] BigGovernment.com,[24] BigJournalism.com,[25] and BigPeace.com.[26]
Breitbart launched his first website as a news site; it is sometimes linked to by the Drudge Report and other websites. It has wire stories from the Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse, Fox News, PR Newswire, and U.S. Newswire, as well as direct links to a number of major international newspapers. Its Blog & "Network" links tend to run to the right within the U.S. political spectrum (e.g., National Review and Townhall.com). The site also has a search engine powered by Lingospot and a finance channel powered by FinancialContent. In 2007, Breitbart launched a video blog, Breitbart.tv.[27]
In 2008 Breitbart launched the website "Big Hollywood," a "group blog" driven by some who work within Los Angeles, with contributions from a variety of writers, including politically conservative entertainment-industry professionals.[citation needed] The site was an outgrowth of the Breitbart's Washington Times "Big Hollywood" column included issues conservatives faced working in Hollywood.[28] In 2009, the site used audio from a secretly recorded conference call to accuse the National Endowment of the Arts of encouraging artists to create work in support of Barack Obama's domestic policy agenda.[29][30]
Breitbart launched BigGovernment.com on September 10, 2009.[31] He hired Mike Flynn, a former government affairs specialist at Reason Foundation,[32] as Editor-in-Chief of Big Government.[33] The site premiered with hidden camera video footage taken by Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe at Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now offices in various cities, attracting nationwide attention resulting in the ACORN 2009 undercover videos controversy.
In January 2010, Breitbart launched Big Journalism. He told Mediaite:[34] "Our goal at Big Journalism is to hold the mainstream media's feet to the fire. There are a lot of stories that they simply don't cover, either because it doesn't fit their world view, or because they're literally innocent of any knowledge that the story even exists, or because they are a dying organization, short-staffed, and thus can't cover stuff like they did before." Big Journalism was edited by Michael A. Walsh, a former journalism professor and Time magazine music critic.[34] It is now currently edited by Dana Loesch. The site has a fictional contributor named "Retracto, the Correction Alpaca" who posts items requesting corrections from the traditional media.[35]
BigPeace.com debuted July 4, 2010. The site covers topics such as international issues and foreign policy, the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, terrorism, Islamic extremism, espionage, border security, and energy issues.
On May 28, 2011, Breitbart posted a sexually explicit photo on his BigJournalism website of New York Representative Anthony Weiner obtained through Weiner's Twitter account.[36] Weiner initially denied that he had sent a 21-year-old female college student the link to the photograph, but after questions developed, he admitted to inappropriate online relationships. On June 6, 2011, Breitbart reported other photos Weiner had sent, including one that was sexually graphic. On June 8, 2011, the sexually graphic photo was leaked after Breitbart participated in a radio interview with hosts Opie and Anthony, though Breitbart stated that the photo was published without his permission.[37] Weiner subsequently resigned from his congressional seat on June 21, 2011.
In July 2010 Breitbart was accused of smearing USDA official Shirley Sherrod with the viral video "Proof NAACP Awards Racism". Breitbart's video showed Sherrod speaking at a NAACP fundraising dinner in March 2010 admitting to a racial reluctance to help a white farmer get government aid. The NAACP condemned Sherrod video comments and approved her July 19 dismissal from government service. After being criticized for presenting Sherrod out of context, Breitbart posted the full 40-minute video of the speech.[38][39][40][41] In the full video Sherrod said the reluctance to help a white man was wrong, and she had ended up assisting him. Following the release of the full video, the NAACP also reversed their rebuke of Sherrod,[39][40], and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack apologized and offered Sherrod a new government position.[42] In 2011, Sherrod sued Breitbart for defamation,[43] Breibart said that the point of the piece was not to target Sherrod, but said the NAACP audience's reception of the parts of the speech demonstrated the same racism the NAACP's President had accused The Tea Party of harboring.[44]
Breitbart was also involved in the 2009 ACORN video controversy. Hannah Giles[45][46] posed as a prostitute seeking assistance while James O'Keefe portrayed her boyfriend, and clandestinely videotaped meetings with ACORN staff.[47] Subsequent criminal investigations by the Brooklyn District Attorney's office and the California Attorney General found the videos were heavily edited in an attempt to make ACORN's responses "appear more sinister",[48][49][50] and contributed to the group's demise.[51][52]
Breitbart was also embroiled in a controversy within the conservative movement related to the participation of gay group GOProud in the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), an annual conference held in Washington, D.C., by the American Conservative Union. In 2011 he was the primary host of a party that served to "welcome" the "homocons" to the convention (though it was the second year they had been participants). This flew in the face of a boycott staged by a few social conservative groups that were offended by the inclusion of GOProud within the conservative fold. Writer, producer, and publisher Roger L. Simon referred to the group as a "game-changer" for the Republican party, and asserted that it represented a turning point in the appeal that the conservative movement might hold for young people. Breitbart was on the Advisory Board of GOProud until he stepped down in the wake of the group's inadvertent outing of a senior Rick Perry aide.[53][54]
In February 2012 a YouTube video showed Breitbart yelling at Occupy D.C. protesters outside a Washington D.C. hotel hosting a Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). The video showed security escorting Breitbart back to the hotel while he told the protestors to "behave yourself", and alluding to reported assaults of women at Occupy encampments, he repeatedly yelled "stop raping people" and called the protestors "filthy, filthy, raping, murdering freaks!”. David Carr said with the incident Briebart had caused his last "viral storm on the Web".[55][56]
Breitbart was married to Susannah Bean, the daughter of actor Orson Bean, and had four children.[3][57]
On February 9, 2012, Breitbart while in Washington, DC was quoted as saying, “wait til they see what happens March first.” Breitbart was referring to his plan to release "damning" footage of President Obama that he had been promising to reveal throughout the month of February.[58] However, on March 1, 2012, Breitbart died at the UCLA Medical Center after he collapsed while walking in Brentwood.[59] He was 43 years old. An autopsy by the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office showed that he had cardiomegaly and died of heart failure.[60] The toxicology report showed "No prescription or illicit drugs were detected. The blood alcohol was .04%. No significant trauma was present and foul play is not suspected."[60] Personal friend of Breitbart, Bill Whittle, had said that Breitbart had a "serious heart attack" just months before his passing.[61]
In remembrance, Republican presidential candidates Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney, and Newt Gingrich praised Breitbart.[62] Santorum called Breitbart's passing "a huge loss" that strongly affected him,[62][63] while Romney said Breitbart was a "fearless conservative", and Gingrich called him "the most innovative pioneer in conservative activist social media in America...."[62]
His funeral was held March 6, 2012, at a Jewish cemetery in West Los Angeles. Attendees included his father-in-law Orson Bean, Matt Drudge, Herman Cain, Thaddeus McCotter, Greg Gutfeld, Ed Morrissey, Guy Benson, and Rob Long.[64][65][66]
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Andrew Breitbart |
Persondata | |
---|---|
Name | Breitbart, Andrew |
Alternative names | |
Short description | American writer and publisher |
Date of birth | 1969-02-01 |
Place of birth | Los Angeles, California, United States |
Date of death | 2012-03-01 |
Place of death | Los Angeles, California, United States |
D.C. Douglas | |
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Born | (1966-02-02) February 2, 1966 (age 46) Berkeley, California, U.S. |
Occupation | Actor, Voice Actor |
Years active | 1978–present |
Website | |
http://www.dcdouglas.com |
D.C. Douglas (born February 2, 1966) is an American character actor, voice actor, and director now living in Los Angeles. Douglas was born in Berkeley, California.[1] His father was a salesman,[1] and his mother was an artist and writer.[1][2] His grandparents were vaudeville performers.[1] His grandmother, Grace Hathaway,[3] continued in burlesque as a dancer and his grandfather, Joe Miller,[4] became known in San Francisco for his talks at the Theosophy Lodge and his weekly walks through Golden Gate Park.[5]
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Douglas performed on stage in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1970s and early 1980s, moving to Los Angeles in 1985 to study at the Estelle Harman Actors Workshop. In Los Angeles, he co-founded the improvisation troupe Section Eight, and was a member of Theatre of NOTE.
In 1996, he landed a small role in Boston Common, an NBC pilot. When the show was picked up for a season he returned in ten additional episodes as the character D.C., the antagonist to Hedy Burress's character.
That same year, Douglas wrote, produced and starred in Falling Words, his first festival film short. In subsequent years he wrote, produced and directed The Eighth Plane, an anti-Scientology gangster film short and Freud and Darwin Sitting in a Tree, about cousin marriage and Lewis Henry Morgan.
In 2005, Douglas's film short, Duck, Duck, Goose!, played film festivals worldwide and received awards for the Best Short from the Seattle's True Independent Film Festival (STIFF) and Best Actor from the Trenton Film Festival.
His 2009 CGI film short, The Crooked Eye starring Fay Masterson and narrated by Academy Award winner Linda Hunt, played festivals around the world and won awards for Best Narration (STIFF), Best Screenplay (HDFest - New York) and Best Animated Short (Red Rock Film Festival)[6]
Film credits include Black Ops with Lance Henriksen and Universal Remote: The Movie with Charles Q. Murphy; Hallmark Channel TV movie Final Approach with Dean Cain; and the Lindsay Lohan "comeback" film Labor Pains on the ABC Family channel.
Television credits include The Bold and the Beautiful, 24, Star Trek: Enterprise, NYPD Blue, ER, Charmed, Without A Trace among others. He most recently appeared in CBS's Criminal Minds, ABC's Castle and Fox's Raising Hope.
D.C. Douglas' voice over career encompasses video games, television and radio commercials, film and voice-matching celebrities like Val Kilmer and Kevin Spacey. He was part of the first wave of "internet age" voice over artists at the beginning of the 21st century who built and worked from home studios.
Voice over credits include The Master in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer video game, Albert Wesker in Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles, Resident Evil 5 and Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds, Raven in Tekken 6, AWACS Ghost Eye in Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation, Commandant Alexei in Tales of Vesperia, Legion in Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3, Grimoire Noir in Nier, as well as several national campaigns (including the GEICO Celebrity campaign from 2006–2008, the McDonald's Be The Sizzle campaign from 2009–2010, and Radio Shack's Holiday Hero campaign in 2010).
Douglas is the voice of Chase in The Hub's Transformers: Rescue Bots.
In addition to his commercial and video game voice over work, he also does many voice overs for the non-profit progressive research and information center Media Matters for America.[7]
In April, 2010, Douglas came under fire from the Tea Party movement for a phone call he made to Freedomworks in which he left an inflammatory voice mail. A day later GEICO dropped him from the new "shocking news" series of internet commercials that were in post-production.[8] This led to some debate in the voice over community about whether announcers were public figures.[9] Douglas responded by producing a mock Tea Party PSA for YouTube that was subsequently broadcast on Joy Behar's HLN show with Douglas as a guest.[10]
The experience spurred Douglas to continue creating short political videos, the majority of which are satirical. Most viewed were his Burn A Koran Day video (posted by The Huffington Post[11]) and his Why #OccupyWallStreet? video (aired on MSNBC's The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell[12] and posted on the MoveOn.org[13] and Daily Kos[14] websites).
In November, 2011, D.C. Douglas tweeted out a quote from a Tower Heist Q & A at the ArcLight Hollywood where Brett Ratner made a disparaging remark about homosexuals. The Hollywood Reporter subsequently reported Douglas' tweet as the beginning of a controversy which led to Ratner stepping down from the 2012 Oscars. [15]
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Name | Douglas, D.C. |
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Date of birth | February 2, 1966 |
Place of birth | Berkeley, California, U.S. |
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