America, 1908 by Jim Rasenberger

Author:Jim Rasenberger
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2007-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Wilbur at Hunaudières, August 1908. “I thought it would be a good thing to do a little something.”

By the end of the second week of August, Wilbur realized he would need a larger venue to continue his demonstrations, both to accommodate the growing crowds and to allow for longer and more challenging flights. He petitioned the French military to grant him use of Camp d’Auvours, an artillery testing ground east of Le Mans. The request was immediately granted. From this point on, Wilbur Wright would be denied nothing in France.

“You never saw anything like the complete reversal of position that took place,” he wrote to Orville. “The French have simply become wild.” Within days of his first flight at Le Mans, he had been rechristened with a French nickname (“The Birdman”), had become the subject of a hit French song (“Il Vole”), and had become the most cherished American curiosity to visit France since Benjamin Franklin. “I cannot even take a bath,” he wrote to his sister, “without having a hundred or two people peeking at me.”

Wilbur continued to stun spectators over the next several days. He threaded between trees, rose above the canopy to seventy feet, then slipped gently back to earth. He demonstrated a command of the air that had been, until this moment, unimaginable to those who saw it. On Thursday, August 13, he made his last flight at the Hunaudières racetrack, circling seven times and remaining aloft for eight minutes. And he was only just starting to fly.

Springfield

Many hours later, several turns of the globe to the west, the day that had begun so spectacularly in Le Mans, France, came to a close in the small American city of Springfield, Illinois. As midnight of August 13 approached, most of Springfield’s residents were asleep, thousands of Little Nemos lost in their respective Slumberlands. Perhaps they dreamt themselves flying over the city in an airship or shivering next to an American flag at the North Pole; or saw themselves standing in crisp uniform on the deck of a great white battleship, sailing toward an unknown fate in the Orient; or steering an automobile into a cheering throng of Parisians. Reality provided a surplus of fantastical images to furnish dreams in 1908. Unfortunately, it also provided ample fodder for nightmares.

Located near the center of Illinois, Springfield was the state’s capital. In most ways it was a typical northern industrial city, its economy fueled by the local coal mines and the railroads that crossed through the city. Other industries included shoe manufacturers, grist and flour mills, and the Illinois Watch Company, a supplier of precise time instruments for the railroads. Together, these industries supported a population of forty-seven thousand, including about three thousand African Americans.

Springfield’s most famous product, and greatest source of pride, was the sixteenth president of the United States. Abraham Lincoln had ridden into Springfield as a young man in 1837, all his worldly possessions crammed into the saddlebags hanging from his horse. In Springfield, he’d established himself as an attorney, launched his political career, married his wife, and raised his family.

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