OCTOBER 1st - No Proxy



On this day in 1864, John Summerfield Staples, a young man hailing from Stroudsburg, PA, met with President Abraham Lincoln, finalizing an agreement to serve in the Civil War in the President’s stead. Staples supposedly shook hands with Lincoln twice, was given a $500 re-enlistment bonus and 60 bucks of Honest Abe’s own money. Staples served for the next year until he was honorably discharged after contracting Typhoid Fever, the same disease for which he was discharged after his first go round in the war. Apparently all this was done in order to help build morale, revitalize army recruitment, and to appease some protests. Now, I’m not calling out President Lincoln here. I'm all about some Honest Abe. Love me some “four score” and what not. However, I fail to see exactly how this would pump anyone up. It would kind of just annoy me that he was able to have a war proxy. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure John S. Staples was quite honored to fight for President Lincoln, possibly more-so if he could have known what a rightfully-revered place Lincoln holds in our nation’s history. And Staples got a nice little chunk of change for re-enlisting. But I seriously doubt that anybody who was on the fence about joining the effort was inspired by Lincoln having a young man fight for him. While I’m a little hesitant at the execution, I do think Abe may have been on to something with the whole proxy thing. I mean how awesome would it be to hire a proxy to go to work for you? Have a really boring conference in Poughkeepsie and you would rather go to Vegas? Proxy. Your significant other wants to go to the ballet or the game and you would rather sit on your ass and binge-watch Orange is the New Black? Proxy. I realize now that I've really just described the plot of the movie masterpiece that is Multiplicity except replacing clones with proxies. But masterpieces deserve to be copied. Of course if President Lincoln had it to do over, I'm guessing that he might have wanted a proxy to see a certain play in his stead. But then you're getting into my whole issue with the war proxy thing. It's probably a bad business plan to have people start dying for you. So maybe everybody should just handle his/her own responsibilities. Just to keep people safe.

This day has been Marked.

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