25 at 250: America's homegrown diamonds and Civil War mail-in ballots

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I think we imagine we invented everything in the 21st century,

but these are very old stories.

The first case of mass mail-in voting in the United States was, when do you think?

I would not have guessed all the way back in 1864.

Today is Friday, March 6th, and this is here and now anytime from NPR and WVR.

I'm Chris Vantley.

Do you know you can dig for diamonds in a state park in Arkansas?

If you get really lucky, you could turn up one of the largest diamonds ever discovered in the US.

It's happened before.

This stone completely covers the width of my ring finger when I put it on.

We'll have that story in a few minutes, but we're saving all the best diamond finding spots

for ourselves. Today on the show, we are continuing our series 25 at 250.

Every other week, leading up to July 4th, which will mark 250 years since the founding of the

United States, we're popping into the archives of the Smithsonian to take a look at 25 objects

that help tell the story of America.

And something you learn by looking through history is that things that seem new are actually

variations on old stories. Take voting by mail. After the 2020 pandemic, Republicans stoked

skepticism of mail-in ballots, claiming without evidence that there was widespread fraud.

But it's not a new controversy. The US first rolled out mail-in ballots on a large scale during

the Civil War. And there was a similar backlash, says Dan Piazza at the National Postal Museum.

He spoke to Robin Young.

Dan, old, yellowing mail with elaborate cursive handwriting is one of my favorite things.

Welcome back. Thank you for having me. Curse of handwriting itself is something of an artifact

that's disappearing. There was some voting remotely before the Civil War, but give us context here.

First of all, Lincoln was president. His party was the Republican party. They were waging war

against slavery, the Democrats in southern states fighting to preserve slavery, or as they put it

preserve states, right? But Lincoln didn't think that he was going to win.

The 1864 presidential election was a very bitterly contested one. Lincoln, as you say, was the

Republican, the incumbent. The election is coming in the middle of a war that's dragged on for three

years at this point. The Northern Democrats had nominated George McClellan, whom Lincoln had fired

several years earlier as commander of the Northern armies. And so there was a lot of not just

political bad blood between the parties, but there was personal bad blood between the candidates.

You had a large chunk of the electorate in 1864. That's free white males over the age of 21,

right? Who are away from their home district in the field in the Civil War and various state

legislatures start passing acts to allow these soldiers to vote in the field? And no one knows

how this military vote is going to go, whether it's going to go for Lincoln or for McClellan.

And both sides feel the other is trying to stuff the ballot box and influence the outcome of

the election. It's interesting these historical vignettes. We kind of, I think we imagine we invented

everything in the 21st century, but these are very old stories. You have an envelope on display

at the National Postal Museum. It's a tally sheet sent from a field hospital in Atlanta,

recording the votes of soldiers from a county in Ohio. So talk about how it worked on the ground.

Well, it worked a number of different ways. In most cases, the elections were conducted in the

camps by officers of the Army unit, but this wasn't male in voting as we think of it today in

that individual ballots being mailed back. These are kind of many elections being held in the Army

camps and then the results being tallyed by the officers and sent back to the county boards of

election. Well, one of the claims of fraud at the time is we said the Democratic Southern states

had succeeded, but there were those who leaned democratic, you know, fighting on the battlefield,

you know, maybe from northern states, for instance. And the claim was that their votes were suppressed

for different reasons, including this sense that their opinions were suppressed. So even if the ballots

went in the field, they would feel like they couldn't vote against the Republicans. Was that largely

one of the claims of fraud at the time? Well, that was definitely a claim at the time and added

to that the fact that it's the soldiers, officers who are counting and tallying the votes so they

know how the men under their commander voting, right? And the candidate for president, one of the

candidates for president is their active current commander in chief. So some may have felt pressure

to to vote that way. Well, thank goodness today we have privacy in our voting. Right. Talk more about

this artifact, you know, this as I said, it's kind of yellowing and the other artifacts that you

have there that reflect this time. What's it like to see them? Well, they're really little windows

into the past. And, you know, I think that letters and mail because of their scale, because of

their size, because of the personal handwriting and that's often found on them, you can have a very

personal and intimate experience with letters and mail that I think makes the makes the historical

story come alive. Well, and is it fair to say that this, you know, tally sheet, this yellowing tally

sheet represents a key moment in the civil war when maybe Lincoln might have lost if not for

those paper ballots in the field of soldiers. Right. I mean, it's a it's a constant reminder that

we know how the story ends, but we have to keep reminding ourselves that they didn't,

they didn't know what the outcome was going to be. We can look it up now and say, of course,

of course, Lincoln won the 1864 election by a large margin, but no one knew that that was going

to be the outcome at the time, sort of restoring that, that sense of suspense at the outcome and

being able to put ourselves in their shoes and understand that they didn't know how it was going

to turn out. We do, of course, but they didn't know. Yeah. Dan Piazza, chief curator of

flattily, which is what? The study of stamps and mail. I love it. Be still my heart at the Smithsonian

National Postal Museum. Thank you so much. My pleasure. Nice chatting with you.

The National Postal Museum is actually pretty cool. If you're in DC, I recommend you go check it out

sometime. Coming up next, the story of America's biggest and best homegrown

diamonds. Scott Tongue gets out his jeweler's loop after the break.

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The United States does not have a rich diamond mining history, but an exhibit at the Smithsonian

proves that some of the world's most dazzling gems are indeed homegrown. Here to tell us about

two of the biggest diamonds ever found in the US is Gabriella Farfan, curator of gems and minerals

at the National Museum of Natural History. It's part of our look at 25 objects that tell the story

of America as we approach the country's 250th birthday. Gabriella, welcome to the program.

Hello, Scott. It's nice to be here. Good to have you. Radio is a little hard because we can't

see these amazing diamonds, but we're here to talk about two in particular ask you to describe

them for us. First of all, the Uncle Sam diamond, I understand, is the largest

uncut diamond ever found in this country? What's the story?

So just over 100 years ago in July of 1924, the Uncle Sam diamond was discovered by Mr.

Wesley Oli Basham, who was a minor in the Arkansas diamond corporation, and it was a whopping

40.23 carats. Now, that's a pretty large diamond. I think about your average engagement ring.

So this is indeed the largest diamond ever found in the United States, including all the diamonds

that have been found since. Now, I display, describe a little bit what it looks like because it

doesn't have that that gem cut for a ring, right? So every time you take a crystal and an artist

and a gem cutter has to essentially polish all of its facets and turn it into a gem that you would

wear in a piece of jewelry, it gets them a lot smaller. And so the Uncle Sam diamond was actually

cut twice. The first time it was cut into a 14.34 carat parallelogram, which is a bit of a wonky

shape. And so it was later re-cut into a more elegant elongated emerald cut. And this type of

cut is ideal for showcasing just how flawless this particular diamond is. Tell us a little bit more

about this source location, this mineral deposit in Arkansas, yeah? Absolutely. So the crater of

diamonds is a very famous mine in Arkansas. It's one of only two diamond mines in the United States

that have produced commercial diamonds. And this particular mine is my favorites since I actually

got to dig there myself and you can actually dig there today. It's a state park run by Arkansas

and you can actually roll up and dig for diamonds yourself. All right, let's talk now about the

Freedom Diamond gigantic and more than 16 carats as I understand it. Not found until the 1990s,

first again, describe this for us. Absolutely. So the Freedom Diamond is currently the largest

faceted or cut diamond from the United States from Kelsey Mine, Colorado, which is the second

diamond mine that I describe. And this diamond is also very beautiful. It has a slight undertone

of yellow, and it's actually set into a ring flanked by two other diamonds. So it's actually fun

to wear. Wow. How do you put 16 carats on a ring into some perspective? Let's just say that

this stone completely covers the width of my ring finger when I put it on and probably extends

beyond the width of my ring finger. So it's a very large stone. It would make a statement.

You know, we know about the American Gold Rush, 1948. Gold was discovered in California at

Sutter's Mill, sparked this economic gold rush. And yet as you and your Smithsonian team tell us,

these places where these diamonds were found, eventually the mines were closed. They were not

profitable. Why not? Mining is very difficult work. And unlike the gold rush where it was kind of

free for all and everyone could come, these were commercially run mines. And it's much more

difficult to source diamonds out of Kimberlite or Lamprowite, which are the rocks that these

diamonds are in versus going through a stream bed and finding a negative gold. Which means there

may still be a lot of diamonds sitting there in this country. Oh, probably. And you can actually

dig for them yourself at Crater of Diamond State Park, but you'll find it's very difficult to

actually find one. You know, these precious gemstones, they often fall into the hands of collectors

with millions of dollars. How did they come into the hands on the Smithsonian these two gems?

One of the wonderful things about the National Gem Collection is that it is built entirely by

donations. And so the Uncle Sam Diamonds was gifted to the collection in 2019 by Dr. Peter Buck.

And about one month later, Robert E. and Kathy G. Mao decided to gift the Freedom Diamond. So

suddenly, this meant that we had two of the most important American diamonds in the National

Gem Collection, which clearly warranted a new exhibit for these great American diamonds. And so we

decided to put them on exhibit and pair them with two crystals from their respective mines.

And I'm just curious, do you know the story? Why did either of these persons decide to gift

these diamonds to the Smithsonian? Why? Giving something to the Smithsonian is a truly special act

because it means that it belongs to everyone. And so especially with these American treasures,

I think people seem value in having these belong to the American public and to the world.

We've been talking to Gabriella Farfan, Curator of Gems and Minerals at the Smithsonian Natural

History Museum. Gabriella, thank you for joining us. Thank you very much for having me Scott.

I know she said it's very unlikely to find a diamond in the rough at that park in Arkansas,

but I don't know. I feel like I'm overdue for some good luck. I'm going to go digging,

and no disrespect, but I'm probably not going to get my fines to the Smithsonian.

We've got to take one more short break and we'll be right back in a minute.

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Terms and conditions apply. Check out our whole 25 at 250 series of objects that tell the story

of America through the archives of the Smithsonian Institution at hereinnow.org.

Where you'll also find news of the day, lots of conversations about just about everything under

the sun. And if you want something completely different, everyone knows a picky eater.

Most kids are picky, as many parents know, but did you know American kids weren't always picky

eaters. In fact, children in the 19th century ate all kinds of different foods. Helen Zoe

Vite wrote a whole book about it called Picky. How American children became the fussyest eaters

in history. And she talked about it with Indira Lakshmanan.

So you write that American kids in the 19th century ate foods that would be considered odd today.

Kids in 1830s Boston spent pocket money on oysters and vinegar. Edith Wharton loved to eat

turtle Mark Twain wrote about eating succatash squirrel and rabbit. Why were kids back then eating

foods we think of as strange today? Well, for a couple of reasons. One, American diets in general

were just much more diverse. People ate many more species of plants and animals, the eight

many more animal parts. There was no refrigeration. And what that meant is that to preserve food,

Americans were fermenting it, smoking it, salting it, creating these preserved condiments.

And so Americans were just having this incredible diversity of taste. At the same time,

kids were eating same meals as their parents. There was really no such thing as kids food versus

adult food at this time. And part of that was just logistical. It would have been so hard

for most people to produce alternative foods without refrigerators or shelf stable foods.

So from a very, very young age, American children learned to eat the same diverse intensely

flavorful meals as their parents. Well, some of the changes we've seen have developed for positive

reasons, less manual labor, less hunger, more refrigerators. But you write about a chain of events

from misguided recommendations that kids should eat only bland and mushy foods to the rise of

processed foods in the mid 20th century. Explain how the invention of the supermarket cart,

combined with the idea that food should be fun, fueled this demand for salty and sugary kids foods.

Yeah, one thing we don't think about today as an invention is the supermarket. But it's really new

in historical terms. And right away when these mega grocery stores started opening in the 1940s and

1950s, they came with this brand new thing called the shopping cart that had a special compartment

for young children to sit facing their parents, usually their mother. One thing that I read and

that I that I realized in the historical sources is that shopping in the past had mainly been

an adult centered activity. However, in this new model of the supermarket, kids are facing their

parents. And instead, it's become this self-service model where consumers are getting the food

themselves from the shelves. And the advertising is built into the packaging. And they start aiming

packaging colors, marketing schemes at kids directly.

There's lots more to that story. And you can hear it all right now at here and now.org.

But that's it for the show today. Here and now any time comes from NPR and WBWR Boston.

Today's stories were produced by Will Walkie and edited by Cat Welch.

Michael Scato edited the podcast, technical direction from Caleb Green and James Trout.

Our theme music is by Mike Miscato, Max Liebman, and me Chris Bentley. Our digital producers are

Allison Hagen and Grace Griffin. Here and now is executive producer. That would be Alan Price.

Thanks for listening. We'll be back with you soon.

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