Apostrophe Day

It's Presidents' Day. Or maybe Presidents Day. Or maybe even President's Day. There is no consensus on which is proper. The major problem is that this holiday's common name is not it's official name. The Federal Holiday is "Washington's Birthday":




Let's break this down

Presidents' Day: A day of all the Presidents

President's Day: A day of each individual President

Presidents Day: A day about Presidents

My calendar went with "Presidents' Day." I'm sort of partial to President's Day. I don't really want to celebrate all the Presidents. There have been a lot of shitty or forgettable Presidents. I'm glad to celebrate the Presidencies of Washington or Jefferson or Lincoln or FDR. However, Buchanan's or Harding's Presidency I don't want to celebrate. Those guys don't deserve a holiday.

I'm actually more partial to calling it "Washington's Birthday." He is worthy of a holiday even if it doesn't actually fall on his birthday. You don't really get more significant in American History than George Washington. His role was never of being the architect, like Jefferson, but he was the biggest/best player we had in early American History. He commanded the army that fought for and gained independence and oversaw the creation of our 2nd (and ultimately successful) attempt at governing ourselves.

I'm not big on moral relativism*. I believe that some things are just wrong regardless of culture or time. So, whenever anyone looks at almost any of the Founders including Washington there is this terrible cloud of slavery. They were smart guys who knew that owning black people was the exact opposite of all the liberty stuff they were preaching.

I'm not sure if a straight up or down vote on banning slavery would've had majority support at the Constitutional convention. Probably not, but it would probably have been close. However, the Union was not strong enough to survive that. I don't think the most of the founders were gleeful about keeping slavery around. The former colonies couldn't afford to fragment at that point. If they had, it would've been too easy for the British to take back each smaller country.

So, they punted and put some terrible things into the Constitution. Seventy years later the states fight a bloody and terrible war to settle the issue for good. It's a terrible mark on American history, but I think of the terrible marks that we have it's the most permissible.

Thanks for reading an please comment

-Michael
*but here I go anyway.

P.S. Would you want more posts about history? My own life is so terribly, terribly boring and I need stuff to write about.