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Welcome to stuff you missed in History Class, A production of I Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry. And I'm Tracy Wilson.

So if you live in or have visited Greenville or Charleston, South Carolina, odds are pretty good that you maybe have seen a historical marker here, there that honors Joell Point set or visited one of the many places that bear his name.

He was a statesman who was connected to some really important moments in our nation's history. But he was, of course, also human. And not all of his actions really look so noble upon closer inspection. It's very, very interesting reading histories that involve him because some of the ones written closer to when he lived are very ebullient. And as we get farther and farther out on the timeline, people start to see the bigger picture and how he impacted things.

And they get a little more, oops, there are some problems here. Not so great. Right Point Set is also credited with introducing the holiday plant named after him the poinsettia into the US from Mexico. So this is a bit of a holiday episode and it's actually kind of a case of two parts biography. And then the last part will be holiday horticulture. And because of that holiday connection, we should also mention that this episode is sponsored by FedEx, who asked to sponsor one of our holiday episodes this year.

So Joel Roberts points. It was born into a wealthy family in Charleston, South Carolina, on March 2nd, 1779. He was a descendant of Pierpoint Set and Sara Fusaro, who had established the family in the colonial southern what would be the U.S. in the 16th 80s. So even though he was born when the United States was still in its infancy as an independent nation, the point that family had been there for quite a while before that.

Yeah, they were well-established, wealthy, known in the community already. And as a note on place of birth, in case you go digging, I did find one family genealogy right up that mentioned that point set was actually born in London and then naturalized. That doesn't seem to be the case. Most official sources list Charleston as his place of birth, although it does appear that the family traveled to London when Joel was still very, very tiny. And I think that's part of the confusion in any disparate accounts.

You might see.

His father was Dr. Alysha Point set and Dr Points, that was one of his son's earliest teachers. Joel's family's wealth enabled him to get really a lot of education after his private tutoring as a young boy, he went on to Greenfield, Connecticut, where he was educated by the Reverend Dr Timothy Dwight, The Forth, who would eventually become president of Yale College.

And Joel, being born in the South, found the climate in Connecticut to be unpleasant. One biography that I looked at written in the late 1980s indicates that he was often ill because of the cold weather in Connecticut. So after two years there, he returned home to the warmer southern temps and next he went on to St. Paul's School outside of London, which was run by one of its sets relatives. During this time, he studied classics and languages and became really multi fluent in a lot of languages.

He spoke German, French, Spanish and Italian. He also picked up a bit of Russian as well.

Next, he moved on some medical school in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Although once again, the weather and the effort of his studies led to some difficulties with his health, he took a sojourn to Portugal and then finally landed at a military school in Woolwich, England was kind of seems like he was a little bit unfocused, but he really responded to the military school and he decided that that would be his life's career.

That did not go over well with his dad, Dr Point said, did not want his son to be a soldier. And after some back and forth, it was decided that Joel would go back home to South Carolina and study law. And that lasted for a year before Point Set decided that that was also a path that was simply not for him when he was finished with formal education points that traveled the globe for seven years, primarily in Europe and Western Asia.

Two years into these travels, his father died and left him a significant fortune that left him in this enviable situation of really having no urgency for choosing his life's vocation, his wealth and his linguistic skills made him a source of fascination wherever he traveled. And he was able to meet heads of state and basically hang out with the highest rungs of society on his journeys, points that did eventually return to the US.

And though he thought he would finally pursue a military career in 1810, he was given an appointment as a special agent in Chile and Argentina. Working for President. Madison in this work was investigative in nature. He was kind of undercover. He was to study the revolutionary endeavours.

In those places and in other South American countries, as they made moves to gain independence from Spain, part of the reason that point that was given this job was because he was well known at the time for his extensive studies abroad. Most people believe that he had an unsurpassed knowledge of European politics, especially as it related to intentions regarding the expansion of landholdings in North America. Additionally, his lengthy travels after he left school had, as we mentioned, introduced him to a lot of leaders and a variety of countries.

They all spoke pretty well of him. For example, Tsar Alexander of Russia is said to have told John Quincy Adams that points that should be the U.S. ambassador to Russia.

This appointment and mission to South America came at a time when Spain's colonies had grown frustrated with being governed from Europe by Napoleon's brother, Joseph Bonaparte, who Napoleon had installed as the king of Spain. The U.S. was also embroiled in the tensions that would lead up to the War of 1812 with England. Europe was carefully watching what was happening in North and Central America, and Madison wanted an expert on all of these moving parts to figure out the best way through it and hopefully a way to bolster U.S. territory holdings in the process, points that supported the revolutionary efforts in Chile and Argentina, both from his own personal perspective and at Madison's direction.

The U.S. wanted to establish trade agreements with the provisional governments of the revolutionaries there. One of the goals was to exert some influence on them before the British could. The British also had relationships with these revolutionary governments and their very lucrative ports.

So it was unsurprising, based on various things we've talked about with U.S. foreign policy, that like the US was trying to get there before anybody else.

Yeah, it's kind of like, you know, a precursor to scramble for Africa just happening in South America. It's a lot of the same playbook in Chile. Point set became more and more embroiled in the politics. They're even fighting alongside insurgent forces and encouraging them to make some pretty bold moves in their efforts, which ultimately failed when the leaders of the movement were captured. Point set got to make his way back to the United States in eighteen, sixteen points.

That returns to Charleston and was voted in as a member of the state House of Representatives before he even got home. So he had that job waiting for him when he got back to the state and then later he was re-elected for a second term.

In 1819, he became the president of the South Carolina Board of Public Works. And it was during his time in this role that he oversaw some pretty significant infrastructure developments for South Carolina. So modern day South Carolina's secondary state road 42 actually began as a point set project running from Charleston into North Carolina and creating one major thoroughfare to replace the need to use several connecting smaller roads to make that same route. In 1820, he became a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and was made part of the Foreign Affairs Committee because of his background in eighteen twenty two points.

That was given a mission to travel to Mexico at the behest of President James Monroe to assess the potential for a diplomatic relationship between the two nations out of this travel, he published the book Notes on Mexico in 1824.

Notes on Mexico contains some really racist rhetoric. This is actually pretty unsurprising. Point Set was a slave owner. He definitely believed that a hierarchy based on race helped maintain order.

And he wrote in his book about Mexico that the fledgling country was able to function on its own. He thought it could govern itself, but also thought that it would do that in the best possible way if the white Mexicans maintained seats of power from eighteen twenty five to eighteen to twenty nine points.

That was the first U.S. minister to Mexico appointed by John Quincy Adams. This is a little bit funny because it came from a president that points that had campaigned against particularly hard.

He had been a staunch supporter of Andrew Jackson in the 1824 election. Andrew Jackson had been offered the Mexico Minister Post, but had turned it down, has had a number of other people before. They got to a point set on the list.

Yeah, he's, you know, often lauded as this first minister to Mexico. But it's like, well, but he was like fourth choice we are going to talk about. Joel Points sets time in Mexico, which is a mixed bag, to be sure.

But before we get into that, let's take a little sponsor break.

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Catch for premiere episode starting Friday, November 6th, featuring the inductions of the Beatles, Stevie Nicks, the Eagles and NWA Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction vault available now with new episodes every Friday on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. While Joel points that was in Mexico, he became so well known that his name became a new word, poinsettia smoe. To be clear, this is not a word with a good connotation.

It is pejorative. It means someone who is a snooty buttinsky, who involves themselves in the affairs of others and presumes to know better as an outsider than anyone involved in a situation. And he got that name because he inserted himself into the goings on of politics in Mexico to the point that the Mexican government had kind of just had it with him and he really just stepped in it right out of the gate.

And the time that he was there point that was a member of the Freemasons. And immediately after he started his position as minister plenipotentiary, several lodges asked for assistance in getting a charter as a Group of York right lodges. He did help them secure that charter in Mexico. At this time, Freemasonry was akin to political parties and New York right lodges were reformist. The Scottish right lodges were more conservative. And as the man who was operating as a U.S. agent in Mexico and helping the York Right lodges, which also happened to align more closely with U.S. ideals at the time and attending their meetings really points that was making a very strong political statement.

OK, come back to the Freemasonry issue in a moment. Oh, yes.

So one of point sets directive's in this job was to try to get Mexico to agree to an alteration of the terms of the Adams only Treaty of 1819. That was the treaty between the U.S. and Spain that established new boundary lines for each country's claims on land in North America. In the treaty, which is sometimes also called the transcontinental treaty, and sometimes even the purchase of Florida. Spain ceded Florida and gave up the Oregon country in an exchange Spain gained control over.

Texas is a very simplified version and of course, the US wanted some of that land that it had given over to Spain and the treaty wanted to get that land back. Once the Mexican War of Independence had ended and Mexico had signed the Declaration of Independence of the Mexican Empire in September of eighteen twenty one, that offered an opportunity to rework this whole deal, this time with Mexico. In 1827, as part of his dogged efforts to gain more land for the U.S., point set was given authority to make an offer of one million dollars to Mexico for a tract of land bounded by the Rio Grande de North to the Arkansas River.

Lucas' Allemande, Mexico's secretary of foreign affairs, turned this offer down in eighteen twenty eight points that signed a treaty with Mexico to accept the eighteen nineteen boundary line that had been negotiated with Spain is valid under the Mexican government, although that treaty wasn't ratified by Mexico for several years to point set, that seemed like a pretty minor setback. And because Anglo Americans were moving into Texas already, he thought that the issue could be revisited down the road with a case made that U.S. citizens were already living in this disputed area.

This did ultimately work out, although it did take a while, right.

There's that whole Republic of Texas claiming independence and then becoming annexed as part of the US.

And part of it was that there were Anglo people living there at the time.

So a growing power base for the Alkinos. Those were members of the great lodges in each election throughout point sets, time in Mexico led to a suspicion that there was some shady and seditious work going on in these societies. And because he had helped the Great Lodges point set was implicated in this suspicion points that claimed via a pamphlet that he did not really understand that this was the case and that he thought that the lodges he helped were just interested in the usual humanitarian work of the Freemasons.

He went on to say that he had chosen to withdraw from participating in the meetings when he realized that what was happening with the Lodge was that it was furthering the political interests of its members.

And this is really kind of an interesting case to make for his innocence in the matter, because in claiming that he didn't mean to tip the balance of power in the country where he was assigned because he did not know that the lodges were political, he's kind of admitting that he probably didn't really understand his job. It's like I didn't know. But aren't you the expert in Mexico and European relations?

Well, I accidentally didn't know what I was doing in my job, but at the same time, he was telling a very different story to his bosses in the U.S. He actually had written that the work that he was doing with the Freemasons had been the best way to counter British influence in Mexico.

In 1827, Vice President Nicolas Bravo, in connection with a planned rebellion, put together a four part pronouncement known as the Plan de Montano. In it, Bravo stated that secret societies should be. Inhibited by law, he was himself a mason of the Scottish Right Lodge also proclaimed that the president's ministers should be ejected and replaced and that the country's constitution of 1824 should be enforced and that Joell points that should be booted out of the country. Please let me never be so bad at a job that an entire country wants to have me removed in 1828, after a long period of tension and part of this rebellion that we we mentioned this was connected to and the violence that came with it.

General Vincent Guerrero was elected president of Mexico. Guerrero was a York right Freemason and point set was happy with this election outcome. But Guerrero, even though point set was kind of an ally of his, also recognized the Jol Points set was a problematic and destabilising figure in the country. By 1829, everyone was so irritated with points set in that whole situation that Guerrero pressured the U.S. government to recall him, which President Andrew Jackson did, and the man who had been referred to as, quote, a sagacious and hypocritical foreign minister as zealous for the prosperity of his own country as inimical to ours was sent home.

Things actually got even worse with the new minister of Mexico, who was Anthony Butler.

But that is outside the scope of this episode, possibly a future one in 1830, as part of a Freemason's ceremony in which he was being honored, points that stated, quote, I have been most unjustly accused of extending our order and our principles into a neighboring country with a view of converting them into an engine of political influence. I solemnly aver that this accusation is false and unfounded, and that of masonry has anywhere been converted to any other purposes than that for which it was instituted.

I have in no way contributed to such perversion of its principles. After this point Said became a major player in the Unionist Party in South Carolina in 1830, he was once again elected to the state House of Representatives. The nullification crisis was brewing during his time in office, in which John C.. Calhoun was leading a call for the state to nullify the federal tariffs of 1828 in 1832, which in very simple terms favored northern economic stability and heavily taxed Southern goods, points that worked to keep South Carolina and the Union keeping Andrew Jackson posted on all the developments as they unfolded.

Jackson made a proclamation to South Carolina in December of 1832 as Calhoun and his supporters were hoping to get other states to join in their rejection of the tariffs. Jackson's missive made clear that what they were trying to do was treason.

Ultimately, of course, the union remained intact. And in 1837, Point Set was named as secretary of war by President Martin Van Buren, in part as a reward for his work during the nullification crisis. In his position on the president's cabinet point set was instrumental in the forced migration of thousands of Native Americans from their lands under the Indian Removal Act in 1840 points.

That was one of the founders of the National Institute for the Promotion of Science. This organization was renamed the National Institution, and under that moniker it became the caretaker of artifacts and collections that were part of a vision that point that had of the United States developing museums that were equal to any elsewhere in the world. This collection.