The Pastry War
History has a way of smoothing the bumpy timeline that leads from “then” to now, and only bringing to the surface those events which made the biggest impact on the course of human development. Pity. A lot of interesting stuff gets covered over in the process of this. Take the Pastry War, for example. This was a minor footnote in the vast spreadsheet of historic events in the early years of this country’s development. Although it was seemingly inconsequential, news of this confectionery conflict ended up mentioned in an editorial in the February 2, 1839, issue of the Colored American newspaper, a weekly New York publication (1836-1842)....
