BackStory; Watch the Throne: America & Royalty

This is backstory, I'm Peter Onuf. The English are throwing her majesty the Queen, a lavish 90th birthday party this week. But the Brits aren't the only ones watching as one Fox business host points out. That birthday event is so big in America. I mean, it headlines virtually every news broadcast in America today. Despite all the media coverage, Americans have had a rocky relationship with royalty. Remember that revolution? Or the time members of Congress panicked after a Baltimore teenager married Napoleon's brother? Our eyes will be introduced to gorgeous scenes of royalty. And soon, Americans will become seduce and corrupted. After World War II, American leaders brought the Japanese emperor back down to Earth. There's a range for him to go to Disneyland. There was a very famous photograph, which showed him standing next to Mickey Mouse. America's royal dealings today on backstory. Major funding for backstory is provided by the ShiaCon Foundation,

the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, and the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations. From the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, this is backstory with the American History Guys. Welcome to the show. I'm Ed Ayers, here with Peter Oathoff. Hey Ed. And Brian Ballot. Hey there Ed. We're going to start off today in early 1939, as Great Britain hurtled towards war with Germany. The British King, George VI, realized his country needed a powerful ally, a fact not missed by America's president, Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt sensed that the war was coming on, and that a strong bond between American Britain would be essential. So he sent a letter to the King requesting that they come, made the invitation himself. This is writer Will Swift. He says in the months before the King and Queen arrived in June 1939, there's a tremendous uproar in the American press

and tremendous interest about this visit. Part of the excitement was what Swift calls the soap opera factor. King George VI had been all over American newspapers, having recently ascended to the throne after his elder brother, abdicated to Mary Wallace Simpson, an American divorcee. Americans were curious about the shy new king and his wife, Elizabeth. So they came to Washington, and they were greeted by Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. In the gala reception room of the magnificent Union station, the heads of the world's two greatest democracies, shakans, and history is made with reigning British operands for the first time in the capital of the United States. The royal couple drove in a procession to the White House, accompanied by the president and his wife. Outside the station, clouds wait to acclaim Roosevelt's and royalty, who receive a 21 gun salute. They're being treated like not only heads of state,

but almost cockering heroes. The cars and motorcycles proceed at a snail's pace, so that all may see the king and queen. 600,000 persons grave the heat to witness the most impressive welcome ever recorded capital visit. Swift says Washington High Society was in a tizzy over the royal visitors. There was a huge question among all the social women. Are you going to curtsy to the queen? And what would that mean? Would that mean deference to our role as former colonists? So there was both the attitude of wanting on one hand, some people wanted to look good to the royals as if we were won down. And others who were very upset that we were catering to them as if they were won up. Well, what's the answer? The answer is that some did, yes. And sort of a modified curtsy. It was decided that it would not be too humiliating to do a small curtsy. The curtsy's notwithstanding serious tensions laid just below the surface. In the 1930s, many Americans despised the English.

They viewed the Marquis as arrogant. It didn't help that King George's father was notoriously anti-American. And there were more practical reasons for skepticism. During the First World War, Britain had borrowed a tremendous amount of money from us and had not repaid its war debts. And so there was a tremendous resentment among many of the American people about the fact that they had not paid their debts and that so many American men had gone over and been killed, fighting a war that was essentially seen as a European war. Americans didn't want to get pulled into a second European war. And some were suspicious of the pomp of the royal visit. Was this a way that Roosevelt was going to try to draw the American people into an upcoming war in Europe? So they knew what Roosevelt was up to? Well, they suspected and he denied it completely. I bet. But many people still were concerned about that. In other words, a lot was riding on the royal's charm offensive,

which continued as the King and Queen visited FDR's family home in Hyde Park, New York. There, on the couple's last day in America, the Roosevelt hosted what is now an iconic moment in U.S. British relations. A picnic. Eleanor Roosevelt announced before the visit that she would be serving hot dogs at Hyde Park. And there was a huge uproar, people riding in letters, very embarrassed that we would serve hot dogs to the royals. Yes, the Roosevelt actually fed the British monarchs that most lowbrow of American foods, hot dogs. But for Roosevelt, the hot dogs became the great symbol of the equalization of the two countries. And if the King would eat a hot dog, then the two countries were no longer on separate tiers. And so, of course, the headline in the next day's New York Times was, King eats hot dogs, asks for more. And there was a lot of report about how he slathered the hot dog with mustard.

And that was also very Americanizing of him to do. A friendly and pleasant finale of an epic-making chapter in Anglo-American history. Swift says that the royal soft diplomacy paid off. George VI and Elizabeth were hardly the stuffy monarchs Americans expected. The King and Queen actually showed themselves to be very friendly and open kind of people, very much like Americans, ironically. And this, I think, helped to shift their attitudes toward royalty and toward Britain. When it comes to royalty, Americans attitudes have shifted a lot. So today, we're going to look at their complicated relationship with kings, queens, and courts. We'll hear how a 19th-century American marriage into European aristocracy prompted fears of the downfall of the Republic. And how General Douglas MacArthur used Emperor Hirohito to turn Japan into one of America's most dependable allies after World War II. We'll also examine the very unearistocratic origins of American beauty passions.

But first, we're going to return to the British and King George III. As reigning monarch at the time of the American Revolution, he doesn't fare too well in American history books. So it might surprise you to learn that when George III ascended the English throne in 1760, American colonists loved him. They were proud to be his subjects. Historian Barbara Clark Smith says the crown gave the colonists a sense of security and legal protection. The law is what people relied on to protect their rights of property, protect their rights to living peaceably day-to-day without interruption, either from criminals or from enemies, such as the French. And the king was in charge of that. King George was in charge, but he was thousands of miles away on the other side of the Atlantic. He appointed magistrates or judges to rule his absence.

But Smith says the royal magistrates had limited power, so colonists could choose to carry out or ignore the king's law. This is what's exciting to me is ordinary people in the colonial era, certainly ordinary free white men, participate in their government in some ways that we don't do today. Peter, am I hearing this right? Americans had more political rights under the king. That seems to undermine the entire premise of the American revolution or actually the American history. What's going on here? That's exactly what she is saying, Ed. She says all you have to do is look at where colonists actually encountered the king's rule. Probably the most important in some ways was in courts of law. People served on juries. And the jury was recognized as what John Adams called the democratic aspect of the courtroom. The judge represents the king. And the prosecution represents the king.

So Peter, if you committed a crime, it would be king versus oneth. Rex V. Oneth. Yeah. In our system, it's the people. The oneth. Barbara, this is getting to be very personal. What would I be looking for in a jury? I mean, that's the sole protection I have against the wrath of the king and the prosecution. The idea they had was everyone in the neighborhood will pretty much know whether it's likely that you did the thing we're accusing you of doing. Are you that kind of guy, right? And they'll also know who to believe when they testify because someone may come testify against you. But if I'm a local farmer, I might know that that person has had a grudge against you for a long time. So ordinary men would have the local knowledge to judge the likelihood of the case that the king was presenting against you. It's a kind of contest, then, in which the community decides whether to proceed, find me guilty and make me subject to punishments that are decreed under the law.

And I think in the ordinary course of a criminal trial, somebody's accused of theft or stranger comes through town and commits some crime. That the jury is going to agree with the judge. But once in a while, there are cases where the jury can disagree. And since the jury can disagree, that means the judge always has to be aware of that possibility. The people have to consent as members of the jury to the application of the law in any particular case. And what you're suggesting, Barbara, is that consent under royal government is actually immediate and real people feel it. And when they boast about having the rights of Englishmen, they boast of being subjects of King George III. They absolutely mean that being subjects of King George III with the right to trial by jury of their peers to take part in as jurors, that could be a real arena for participation.

They also participated one other place where the king was symbolically present. And that's in the public punishment of criminals. It was always possible at the last minute in executions for one of two things to happen. One was the governor might send a pardon for a felon who was about to be hanged. The other thing that could happen is that the crowd of people watching could interrupt the execution. They don't have an armed police. They don't want an armed police. So if there's very strong local feeling among a lot of people that this is unfair, then there's a chance that they will conduct what's called a rescue. And rescues are against the law technically.

But if you rescue someone and there's no one around to recognize you and arrest you and testify against you, it can turn out fine. Now that doesn't happen all that often, right? But if it happens just once in a while, everyone knows it's possible. One of the things that's come across to me, though, and I'm trying to get my mind around this is you could be a loyal subject of the king. But resist the officers of the law that you could you had a right to participate in the execution of law. And that meant that your voice was not still before the majesty of the law. Would you say it's an accurate statement? That's accurate so long as we bear in mind that this is not a kind of individual liberal right? So, you know, Peter, if you're the only one who thinks that things are unfair and you shout out in the middle of the courtroom or something, you're in contempt of court, right? It's not that you as an individual have this right to dissent.

It's that you as one of the community, one of this thing, this group they call the people have the right. It's not a great situation if you're in the minority. It's an okay situation if the whole town or enough of the town or enough of the group, the county, the city agrees. Then you and your neighbors as a group can exert some power and you can resist the king's law. Often explaining that you are loyal to the king, right? Because the king wants the law executed. That's his job and he loves his subjects. And if this doesn't seem to be justice, must be a problem. Must be the sheriff is wrong. Must be the judge is corrupt. Must be the governor has gone amuck. And they need us to bring them back to what the king really wants, which is justice. So, there were ways of participating in politics or ways of making your idea of what's right and fair felt in your society.

That were available to subjects of King George III. That would not be available to citizens of the United States after the revolution. Oh, this is getting very disturbing. I thought we had a revolution to get rid of the despotic king and to govern ourselves. And now you've planted this little bomb that says maybe there was more participation, more self-government before the revolution. What do you lose when you go off on your own and say, hey, we don't need the king. We can be our own king. Well, I'm not arguing that there was a net loss of freedom, right? I mean, obviously there's freedom gained in the revolution. What happens is we give up the right to consent or not consent to the execution of the law. You see that in the 1780s in Shae's rebellion in Massachusetts. You see it with the whiskey rebels in 1790s in Pennsylvania.

These are groups that are acting in pretty traditional ways for subjects of the king. But they end up being told, no, you can't do that anymore. You can't withhold consent. You can't control courtrooms. The thing you have to do is go and vote. And they're told that by people like Samuel Adams. He's a big revolutionary or George Washington for that matter, who's president, saying you don't get to take part in adjudicating things after the law is passed. You don't like the law change who you vote for at the next election. What people then began to work for was to make the vote enough as they realized that it's now all about voting. Then you need something in place to make sure that that really counts. Yeah. We're still working on that. We're still struggling with that question of whether the vote is enough. By Reclark Smith is a curator at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History

and author of the freedoms we lost consent and resistance in revolutionary America. Earlier, we heard from Will Swift, author of the Roosevelt's and the Royals, Franklin and Eleanor, the king and queen of England and the friendship that changed history. Of course, the United States has never had a monarch, but that doesn't mean Americans are immune to the charms of aristocracy. Take the story of Elizabeth Patterson, a wealthy American's socialite. In 1803, she met Napoleon's youngest brother, Jerome Bonaparte, at a ball in Baltimore. It was reportedly love at first sight for both of the two teenagers. He was 19. She was 18. After a whirlwind courtship, Elizabeth and Jerome tied the knot. Oh, they were the talk of the town when they got married.

Everyone invited them to dinners, to parties, to sufferers, to dances. This is historian Charlene Boyer-Lewis. She says Patterson hoped that her marriage would transform her into something distinctly on American and aristocrat, and perhaps even someday a queen. But Napoleon was furious when he found out that his younger brother had married an untitled American. When the lovebirds arrived in Europe in 1805, Napoleon banished the pregnant Elizabeth from his empire and married Jerome off to a German princess. Despite her very public humiliation at the hands of Francis Imperial family, Patterson Bonaparte had no intention of relinquishing her new aristocratic ties. She returned to the U.S. with her infant son, and a plan to work her way into Napoleon's good graces. She knows she has a male Bonaparte, so she knows she has something incredibly valuable because this is the time period when Napoleon cannot have any children.

There's only one nephew, and he's kind of sickly. And so Elizabeth calculates, as long as I have a male Bonaparte, they're going to still want me. So she does not at all act like a rejected woman who had the scandalous past. Instead, she decks herself out in all of the European clothing she bought while she was in Lisbon, which includes jeweled tiaras and diamond and ruby perfume cases. And she goes to every single party that she gets invited to. So she flaunts her status, flaunts her connection to the emperor, and Americans love it. And everybody knows the full deal. Everybody knows the full story. It was written up in all of the newspapers. I found a copy of a Russellville Kentucky newspaper who had written up the whole story. So everybody in the United States, even in the most remote corners, knew this whole story. So she's married. Doesn't this sort of make her less charming and interesting to in the American scene, which is basically a huge marriage market. It is a huge marriage market.

But no, she's incredibly alluring because of that Bonaparte cachet. She does seek a divorce from the Maryland legislature once Napoleon's empire is starting to crumble. But even before she gets the divorce, because Napoleon had divorced her, she is considered available. And so she's courted by many men. She gets five or six marriage proposals. She rejects every single one of them. She's seriously, however, considers one from a secretary to the British legation, Sir Oakley. And that's what galvanizes Napoleon to start a correspondence between the two of them. Because Napoleon doesn't want his potential heir, her son, to have a stepfather who's British. So she writes Napoleon, takes advantage of that and says, well, if you offer me an annuity, which would be like a pension, and you pay for my son's schooling, and you give me a title, then I won't accept any marriage proposals. And Napoleon agrees, and he gives her $12,000 a year.

He's going to pay for her son's education. And he says, I'm thinking about making you the Duchess of Oldenburg. Wow. She was very sad. She has some nerve, didn't she? She sure does. I was Napoleon. Well, she's probably above. She was very short too. She was very petite. Oh, OK. She was very petite. But anyway, I'm sure Americans go, hey, good for you, girl. We're all set now, right? Well, it's not exactly, hey, good for you, girl. There are many, many, many Americans who are incredibly attracted by her. And a lot of it is because she wears these very thin dresses where you can see her body through them. So that's part of the reason why she gets invited to parties. But the other part and why swarms of boys follow her carriage around, because they want to see her and see what she's dressed in. But the other part is they are captivated by her because they don't know what her future will be. But in 1809, the end of 1809 in the beginning of 1810, rumors start to swirl around about this $12,000 annuity, about this potential title.

And so it was one thing to have kind of this captivating woman, who's, you know, a cosmopolitan linked to Bonaparte in their midst. It was another thing to think about having somebody with a title, she being a Duchess and her son being a prince, living in their midst. And that kind of changes the way Americans start to think about her. So what could they do about that? Well, they're concerned, right? Napoleon is conquering Europe. Napoleon is establishing his siblings, taking over kingdoms and putting in his siblings. So this is not as crazy as it seems to be. This is not crazy at all. So once the rumors go around that Napoleon's really connecting with Elizabeth and his potential heir, the concern is that Napoleon's going to use Elizabeth's son to establish an empire in the United States. That Elizabeth's son, who's only four years old at the time,

will potentially become, as one congressman called him, the Emperor of the West. Other congressmen, Timothy Pickering, a Federalist of Massachusetts, believes that what Napoleon's going to do is set up a court, a palace, right there in the United States, perhaps in Baltimore. And Elizabeth and her princely son will live in it. And so Pickering writes, there's going to be this palace whose in splendor and opulence is going to make the president's mansion look like nothing. And then he says, our eyes will be introduced to gorgeous scenes of royalty. And soon Americans will become seduced and corrupted by these charms and will choose a king over a president, a monarchy over a republic. So we have to do something. Now that's a very strange language. Watch out, we're going to like this too much. That's right. That's right. It's going to be too beautiful. We're not going to be able to control ourselves. And there's still not sure this republic's going to work

because people can be seduced by gorgeous scenes of royalty. Yeah, we're still in the first 20 years of the whole other country, right? Exactly. So what are they proposed to do about this? So they propose several members of Congress. They propose the title of nobility amendment, which would have become the 13th amendment that no citizen of the United States can receive a title or an annuity from an emperor or a king or a prince. And so you would have to give up your US citizenship and you could never hold office. So here they're clearly thinking about her son, right? Yeah. What's his name, by the way? Of course, it's Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte. Okay. That's right. That's right. His nickname is Bo. And so his nickname is Bo. And so the plan is that they will have this amendment that will neutralize the threat of Elizabeth and her son, Bo. And it sweeps through the Senate. It sweeps through the House. And it's sent out to the states for ratification.

And everyone thinks it's going to become the 13th amendment. But then it falls to states short. And it never becomes the 13th amendment. So this is a lot for a young woman still in her 20s. Not to mention a young boy in his four to go through all this. So what's he think about all this? Is he sort of comes aware of what's going on in the world? He says, give me my kingdom. No. Her son, Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte, much to his mother's dismay, loves the United States, loves being a small-lar Republican and doesn't want really anything to do with the whole aristocracy and nobility stuff. Wow. He's sent over to visit his father when he's 14, 15 years old and he hates every moment of it. He just thinks it's a vapid, kind of too luxurious lifestyle and he wants nothing to do with it. So he tells his mother this and he says, no. I'm going back to the United States. He takes a pledge of American citizenship

and he says, I want nothing to do with this. I don't want to be an aristocrat. And she is so infuriated with him. And she thinks the work of her life has just come to naught because he's decided to be a patriotic American instead of an aristocrat. Oh, she never becomes titles, right? She never gets the title. Even though she was offered several marriage proposals by titled men, she never wants to give up being independent. She wants to remain an independent woman. I argue in my book that she wants to keep the name Bonaparte, that the name Bonaparte was her key, right? Her way in her value, her cachet. And so she never wanted to remarry, never wanted to have more children and wanted to stay in the spotlight, which she pretty much does until she's about 50. Wow. Yeah. So when you added all up Charlene, what lessons do we draw from this story? I think there are several lessons here. One that Americans have always had an ambivalent attitude about royalty, about aristocracy from the very beginning. Yes, they threw off a monarchy.

Yes, they thought Republican simplicity was the way to go. But aristocratic luxury was still seductive to them. It still had a place. Another lesson I think we learn is Americans have loved celebrities from the beginning of this country, too. Right. So even in an era without mass media, without mass culture, the celebrity who has that cachet and much of it is being an aristocrat, right? Or the trappings of aristocracy, the trappings of royalty and nobility. Americans like that. I think it gets at these paradoxes of this Republican nation struggling with their monarchical past, with their love of luxury, and she's kind of a lightning rod for all of that. Well, bless her heart, but I'm glad she failed. It sounds like it's a good trial for early America to look this in the face and decide, you know, I think we like our own way better. Yep. I do believe that celebrities today are the Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte of 1803. I mean, all the trappings of aristocracy

without the threat of Napoleon taking over the country. I think celebrities today wish they were as good as Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte. She had it all. She totally had it all. She keeps a more way chandelier in a pretty cabinet at the decade she says just like Marie Antoinette. Charlene Boyer-Lewis is a historian at Kalamazoo College. She's the author of Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte, an American aristocrat in the early Republic. So Elizabeth Bonaparte's infatuation with Napoleon's sort of the biggest gun in the world. It's a fascinating story, but a couple things, it wasn't really royalty. And of course, we have high standards here on backstory with only talking about real royalty. And it was also a long time ago. And yet we still seem fascinated with royalty. I just wonder what's changed and what's remained constant

over that period between then. Well, and you may be looking at me, but I want you to shift your gaze. Okay. To Emily Charnock. Emily is a research fellow at Selwyn College, Cambridge University. But Emily is also an astute scholar on American political history. She is a subject of the Queen, isn't she? Emily, welcome to backstory. Thank you. It's great to be here. So what do you think, Emily? How would you explain the continuity and change of our fascination with royals? Well, I think royalty is always fascinating on some level for glamour, for celebrity, and so forth. I would say in the British case, you have, on the one hand, the threat of British monarchy sort of goes down over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries. At the same time that the royals themselves become a little more exciting and scandalous, you know, Queen Victoria, who's a, you know, moniker in the 19th century, for most of the 19th century, is widowed pretty early in her life, but she wears black. She's not exactly a great copy

for a newspaper publisher. But, you know, flash forward to the 20th century, and you've got some incredible scandals, some incredibly glamorous figures, and, you know, this is a sort of newspaper dream. What are some of the stories that generate so much excitement in the former colonies? Well, probably the biggest one is the affair between King Edward VIII and Wallace Simpson, who just happens to be an American, which I didn't imagine. And a woman too, right? Wallace, it's not to be taken for granted. And a woman. But, yeah, just, you know, generating so much interest in an excitement on the American side of the pond, a young King, a bachelor, comes to the throne in 1936. He wants to marry this American woman who happens to be divorced, and this is a huge scandal, and the British establishment just really doesn't want to let it happen. And ultimately, he abdicates the throne for the woman he loves. I mean, this is so romantic, and like a Hollywood movie, you know? Beautiful. So there's a huge amount of attention

in the US press on that story, and it continues. And they are a very famous couple for the rest of their lives. Now, we share scandals across the Atlantic in the popular press. That didn't really happen at this point. Did it, Emily? I mean, Americans were obsessed with the story. How about the Brits? Well, you know, they were sort of a gentleman's agreement in the British media at that time that there were certain things about the royals that one did not report on. And the British press aren't allowed to cover it at all. They're gacked. So the Americans are in on the secret and the British public isn't. Well, they have things have changed. Yeah. Yeah. So the British public were in the dark. Emily, how did the Wallace Simpson affair the abdication? How did that change American attitudes about British royalty up till now? Or did it? Well, I think it expanded a sort of more massive session. So, you know, that story shows that British royals can sell newspapers

and you subsequently have Princess Diana, who really fuels the modern American obsession with British royalty. I want to go back to 1953, back when I was pretty young and you hardly existed, guys. And that was when Queen Elizabeth was crowned queen, the coronation. And there was an American obsession with this. So it's not just scandal. It's the pageantry. It's just reveling in royalty. And it's as a thing in itself. There's no threat. It's just wonderful. Well, in some ways, I mean, that the current Queen is this incredible symbol of endurance, of history, you know, and she comes to the throne when Harry Truman is president. You know, I think what she reflects is the changing nature of the British monarchy in the 20th century. The idea that to stay on top when other monarchies have been toppled, you have to be popular. And one of the ways to do that is to create a sort of media apparatus around the royal family

to show them, at least in their best moments, as an ideal family. And Queen Elizabeth has been that. She's this great figurehead for the nation. Well, Emily, I'm glad that you're still wearing one of those really, really fancy hats to talk to us on backstory today. Oh, I was happening to that. It was that or a tiara. I couldn't decide. Emily Charnock is a research fellow at the University of Cambridge. Emily Charnock is a lot more to say about the Wallace Simpson affair for an extended version of our conversation. Visit our website at backstoryradio.org. In 1893, Chicago hosted the World's Columbian Exposition, a highly publicized world's fair commemorating the arrival of Columbus in the Americas. The sixth month event was designed to showcase Chicago as a cosmopolitan city. The fair also put the spotlight on Spain's colonial history,

especially when the country's glamorous princess, the Infanta Eulalia showed up. In its book about the 1893 World's Fair, the Devil in the White City, writer Eric Larson dedicates a few briefly pages to this royal visit. We asked actor Adam Brock to read from it. As you'll hear, Eulalia's trip is a case study in mixed signals between an aristocrat hungry for some no frills, American fun, and city leaders determined to give her the royal treatment. The Infanta was 29, and in the words of a State Department official rather handsome, graceful, and bright. She had arrived two days earlier by train from New York, been transported immediately to the Palmer House, and lodged there in its most lavish suite. Chicago's boosters saw her visit as the first real opportunity to demonstrate the city's new refinement, and to prove to the world, or at least to New York, that Chicago was as adept at receiving royalty as it was at turning pig bristles into paint brushes. The first warning that things might not go as planned

should perhaps have been evident in a wire service report cabled from New York, alerting the nation to the scandalous news that the young woman smoked cigarettes. In the afternoon of her first day in Chicago, Tuesday, June 6, the Infanta had slipped out of her hotel in Cognito, accompanied by her lady in waiting, and an aide appointed by President Cleveland. She delighted in moving about the city, unrecognized by Chicago's residents. Nothing could be more entertaining, in fact, than to walk among the moving crowds of people who were engaged in reading about me in the newspapers, looking at a picture which looked more or less like me, she wrote. She visited Jackson Park for the first time on Thursday, June 8. Mayor Harrison was her escort. Crowds of strangers applauded as she passed for no other reason than her royal heritage. Newspapers called her the Queen of the Fair and put her visit on the front page.

To her, however, it was all very tiresome. She envied the freedom she saw exhibited by Chicago's women. I realized with some bitterness she wrote to her mother, that if progress ever reaches Spain, it will be too late for me to enjoy it. By the next morning, Friday, she felt she had completed her official duties and was ready to begin enjoying herself. Chicago's society, however, was just getting warmed up. The Infanta was royalty, and by God she would get the royal treatment. That night, the Infanta was scheduled to attend a reception hosted by Bertha Palmer at the Palmer Mansion on Lake Shore Drive. In preparation, Mrs. Palmer had ordered a throne built on a raised platform. Struck by the similarity between her hostess' name and the name of the hotel in which she was staying, the Infanta made inquiries. Upon discovering that Bertha Palmer was the wife

of the hotel's owner, she inflicted a social lasceration that Chicago would never forget or forgive. She declared that under no circumstances would she be received by an innkeeper's wife. Diplomacy prevailed, however, and she agreed to attend. She stayed at the function for all of one hour, then bolted. The next day, she skipped an official lunch at the administration building. That night, she arrived one hour late for a concert at the Ferris Festival Hall that had been arranged solely in her honor. The hall was filled to capacity with members of Chicago's leading families. She stayed five minutes. Resentment began to stain the continuing news coverage of her visit. On Saturday, June 10, the Tribune sniffed. Her Highness has a way of discarding programs and following independently the bent of her inclination.

The city's papers made repeated reference to her penchant for acting in accord with her own sweet will. In fact, the Infanta was coming to like Chicago. Shortly before her departure set for Wednesday, June 14, she wrote to her mother, I'm going to leave Chicago with real regret. Chicago did not regret her leaving. If she had happened to pick up a copy of the Chicago Tribune that Wednesday morning, she would have found an embittered editorial that stated in part, royalty at best is a troublesome customer for Republicans to deal with. It was their custom to come late and go away early, leaving behind them the general regret that they had not come still later and gone away still earlier, or better still perhaps, that they had not come at all. That's actor Adam Brock,

reading from Eric Larson's that devil in the white city, a saga of magic and murder at the fair that changed America. Larson's latest book is Dead Wake, the last crossing of Elucidantium. Music Hi podcast listeners. Hamilton the musical just nabbed a record 16 Tony nominations. This is great news for us since we're working on an episode about the life and legacy of Broadway's most popular historic figure. And this is where you come in. We want to hear from teachers across the country about how Hamilton is changing the way you teach history for better or for worse. Do your students work Hamilton references into conversations or sing the lyrics and class discussion? Do you spend time in class defending Thomas Jefferson or even Aaron Burr? Head to our website backstoryready.org to share your stories.

We're looking forward to hearing from you. Listeners have been leaving lots of great questions on our website on Facebook page. And we've invited Stephanie from Houston, Texas to ask hers. Stephanie, welcome to Backstory. Thanks. So what do you got for us? Well, I'm curious. When I was a kid in Oklahoma, my mom wanted to be to be Miss America. And so I'm wondering about pageants. Are pageants a match? Yeah. Of our fascination with royalty and our all-American desire for competition? So the question is, are beauty pageants mashups of our obsession with court life, with royalty? And our answer is, in just a moment, it will be announced. Well, on the envelope, please. Yes. On the surface. Clearly there's some similarities, Stephanie. I mean, we do crown queens, homecoming queens,

beauty queens. So one of the sources is very high class, if you will. It's debutants, and what we're known as promenades, and these were generally upper middle class, or even elites, that would get together and have dances, and those dances would kind of showcase the good breeding and training of largely these women. But a very different source is just what we might call the state fair, the county fair. I mean, mispotato, miss pork, they are literally identified with commodities. And of course, you know the criticism of pageants in the 1960s and 1970s was treating women as though they were commodities. So the history here is not exactly royal, but it is definitely

one of ranking and coming up with the queen, the best, the highest, which of course denotes royalty. Yeah. And I think you're right about the commodity because what the commodity needs that kind of aura of class. That's right. That is the aura of the court. And even a genealogy there, right? Just as those cows and those pigs, they're bread to be the best, right? Yeah. I'm uncomfortable with this, right? I'm uncomfortable too. I warned you. This is how the sausage is made. I'm even more uncomfortable with it now. Stephanie, if you haven't figured it out, it's the nice one among the three of us. Well, and I'm so nice that I'd be curious to hear Stephanie's story before I weigh in. Were you participant in beauty contest or anything? Just guess. Well, I was. I'll talk to you today about the city auditorium.

This was in small town or Fairview And my claim to fame was that at the time I was 14 years old, and I beat out all of the seniors in high school, so What was your secret? Well, it was, I think, mostly the talent portion, and I could play the piano pretty well back then. And what did the term queen need to you as a 14-year-old in Oklahoma? What did it feel like being a queen, Stephanie? Well, I got my picture in the paper. Not only in the Fairview paper, but in the Enid paper, which was the big town next door. That's where I saw that. And Stephanie, you just underscored another connection between these beauty pageants and royalty, and that's celebrity. So you're in the newspaper in both Fairview and Enid. And then what happened? Well, during the fair, I got to skip school for four days, I think. But I got to hand out ribbons to all those owners of the pigs and cows that you were talking about. There you go.

The connection's pretty clear. Yeah, I think so. So seriously, Stephanie, this is raises profound questions. You were a queen for four days? Is that right? Well, actually, for a whole year until the next year. A whole year? Yeah, four days would I think. But you actively reigned in there. You didn't manage to accomplish it for a whole year. I was actually Miss Fairview, 1978. Now you're just bragging, I'm sorry. Well, you were queen toys. Wait, wait, I'll tell you something to the end of the story. So being Miss Fairview meant that all the other little towns in Northwest Oklahoma met together to have a the Miss Cinderella pageant. And I made it into the top eight finalists of the Miss Cinderella pageant. And on finalist night, when we all had to do our, our talent again, I forgot my song in the middle of it. the middle of it. Oh my goodness. That was the worst. Oh man. But you know, I think it takes a big heart, almost like a queen, to share your story with America this way. And we appreciate you sharing it with us. Sure. Thanks Stephanie. Thank you so much. It was

nice to talk to you all. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. We want to take a moment to apologize for a misstatement on last week's episode about gambling in America. It ends up we know our history, but sometimes we stumble with current events. On some stations, you may have heard us incorrectly state that the Kentucky Derby was held on Sunday, May 8th. In fact, it was held on the first Saturday in May. We had a few too many mint tulips last week and we regret the error. We're going to end the show today where we started in the World War II era. If you were an American at that time, you would have seen a lot of propaganda about the country's three great enemies. Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, an emperor hero hero of Japan. Each man was portrayed as menacing, especially

hero hero. Because he had this complete and absolute control over his people. This is historian Carol Gluck. She says that hero hero was presented as something more. Americans were told that the Japanese believed he was descended from the gods. For whom everyone would sacrifice his or her life in whose name Japanese soldiers would rather die than surrender and a divine power of powers. They didn't make that up because that's the way Japanese, the Japanese government portrayed him to the Japanese people. Gluck says the most prominent example is a propaganda film produced by famed director Frank Capra called Know Your Enemy Japan. Here are Hito's portrayed as an amalgamation of political figures. In trust to one man, the powers of the President of the United States, the Prime Minister of

Great Britain, the Premier of Soviet Russia, and religious leaders. Add to them the powers of the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, then top it all with the divine authority of our own son of God. And you will begin to understand what hero Hito means to the Japanese. Why they call him the God Emperor. This film was never shown. By the time Capra finished it, the war was over. But Gluck says the movie gives a clear picture of how Americans perceived Hito. Whatever takes place in Japan, it is he, the God Emperor that causes it. He makes Japanese soldiers conquer the world. And that is the image that Americans came away with at the end of the war, that he had led the Japanese into war and they followed him without a thought. In reality, Hito's monarchical power wasn't so absolute. Says historian Noriko Kawamura.

I won't call him a puppet because he had some ways to influence top decisions, but the political leaders and the military leaders made him to be the divine ruler. His real role Kawamura says was to legitimize military orders. Once he sanctioned the decision, that decision would become almost sacred. Kawamura says his true power is still a matter of historical debate. But hero Hito wasn't technically calling the shots, even if he was officially commander in chief. But all that changed in September of 1945. The battleship Missouri becomes the scene of an unforgettable ceremony marking the complete and formal surrender of Japan. After the war, the victorious Allied powers drew up a list of Japanese military leaders

to be tried for war crimes. As commander in chief, many Allied leaders believe that Hito should have been one of them. But even before the war had ended, officials in Washington had recommended that the Japanese Emperor continue on the throne. It was one man's job to carry out that recommendation. The fate of Hito was determined by General Douglas MacArthur, who led the Allied occupation of Japan, which was for all intents and purposes an American occupation. In a controversial move, MacArthur took Hito off the list of war criminals. MacArthur agreed with planners in Washington who thought that keeping the Emperor on his throne would be more useful. I think General MacArthur was using the existing system in Japan. Once Emperor supported General's decisions, then that could be accepted by the Japanese people without serious resistance.

When MacArthur was a man with a mission, he was going to democratize Japan. He was going to Christianize Japan. He was going to make Japan a beacon for peace in the post-war world. And MacArthur felt that the occupation would be more effective if the Emperor was in place if he were democratized and transformed. So it was pragmatic. It was pragmatic. MacArthur's occupying forces gave Hito a makeover with the help of an American PR campaign. And it began almost immediately. They had him interact with his subjects, which he had never done when he was a godlike figure. And he was very ill at ease. He had nothing to say. And so he kept saying the same thing over and over again. Someone would say something to him and he would say, Assault, which means is that so? And after a while there were jokes about his being Mr. Assault, because that's all he could say. So can I stop you right there, Carol? How did the Emperor feel about all of this? Ah, good question. We don't really know. But from the sources that we have, it seems

that the thing he most didn't want to happen at the end of the war was for the Imperial institution to disappear. In the new Japanese constitution, which the Americans wrote, he did keep his throne. But here Hito became a constitutional monarch in the new democracy. Emperor became, quote unquote, the symbol of the state and the unity of the people. He was no longer divine. He was no longer the head of state. He was no longer commander in chief. He was the symbol of the people. So Americans were literally transforming the nature of the monarchy in the new constitution? The Americans transformed the nature of the Imperial institution. Absolutely. American occupying forces also played up the fact that here Hito was a marine biologist. They wanted him to appear more peaceful. A far cry from the tyrant he had been in the

American imagination. By the time of his first state visit to the United States in 1975, most Americans, or at least those born after the war, knew very little about him. There was this very famous photograph, which was all over the Japanese papers, and actually the American papers too, which showed him standing next to Mickey Mouse. And a lot of young people at that time didn't even know who the emperor was. They only recognized Mickey Mouse. I think that says more about the American educational system than attitudes towards royalty, Carol. Well, I don't think so. I think it says something more about how the image of Japan had been changing. By then, the democratic country had become one of America's most stalwart allies. But the choice to keep Hito on the throne wasn't with our consequence. Millions of Japanese soldiers went to war and died in his name. The Allied powers, including China, and even some Japanese wanted him held accountable. Here are Hito, who died in 1989, never acknowledged his own role in the conflict.

Just as he was guided by his military advisors before the war, and by General MacArthur after the war, here are Hito's hands were tied. Calamura says his later attempts to apologize were stymied by the Japanese government. And he never did. And I think he lived with that heavy feeling until he passed away. It's that shows the nature of his throne. He could not speak his own mind publicly as he wanted. And I think it stayed that way till the end of his reign. Noriko Calamura helped us tell that story. She's a historian at Washington State University, and the author of Emperor Hira Hito in the Pacific War. We also had help from Columbia University historian Carol Gluck. Her book on the Emperor is called Shoah, the Japan of Hira Hito.

That's going to do it for today, but tell us what you thought of the show and send us your questions for our upcoming episodes on the history of political incorrectness and the Alexander Hamilton phenomenon. You'll find us at backstoryrido.org or send an email to backstoryatvrginia.edu. We're also on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and backstory radio. Whatever you do, don't be a stranger. Backstories produced by Andrew Parsons, Bridgim McCarthy, Nina Ernest, Kelly Jones, and Imlegadic. Jamal Milner is our technical director. Diana Williams is our digital editor and Melissa Gismondi helps with research. Special thanks this week to Eric Larson, Adam Brock, and Bob Parsons. Backstories produced at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. Major support is provided by the ShiaCon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities,

the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, and the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations. Additional funding is provided by the Tomato Fund, cultivating fresh ideas in the arts, the humanities, and the environment, and by history channel. History made every day. Brian Ballot is professor of history at the University of Virginia and the Dorothy Compton Professor at the Miller Center of Public Affairs. Peter Onaf is professor of history Emeritus at UVA and senior research fellow at Monticello. Ed Ayers is professor of the humanities and president Emeritus at the University of Richmond. Backstory was created by Andrew Wyndham for the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. Backstory is distributed by PRX, the public radio exchange.