Roundup: Talking About History
This is where we excerpt articles about history that appear in the media. Among the subjects included on this page are: anniversaries of historical events, legacies of presidents, cutting-edge research, and historical disputes.
SOURCE: NYT Magazine (12-30-07)
In the small Southern town that produced Harry Dent, the future Nixon White House political aide, Dent’s great-uncle John (The Baptist) Prickett edited the newspaper. One day, an outraged reader called Prickett a “Republican S.O.B.” Prickett, who like everyone else in South Carolina was a Democrat, laid him flat with a punch. The baffled reader, upon recovering, asked what was the matter with calling him an S.O.B. “But you called me a Republican S.O.B.,” Prickett answered — and thereby hangs the tale of why Harry Shuler Dent is such an important figure in American history. He was the behind-the-scenes player who did the most to turn the South from a region that despised Republicans into a Republican bastion.
For most of the post-Civil-War era, the Grand Old Party survived in the Southern popular imagination as the Yankee enemy, eager to conspire with newly enfranchised slaves to overturn the entire “Southern way of life.” In 1957, Republican congressmen were instrumental...
For most of the post-Civil-War era, the Grand Old Party survived in the Southern popular imagination as the Yankee enemy, eager to conspire with newly enfranchised slaves to overturn the entire “Southern way of life.” In 1957, Republican congressmen were instrumental...
Monday, December 31, 2007 - 20:04
Comments
SOURCE: Sent to HNN by Sam Husseini (12-31-07)
[Shahid Mahmood grew up in Pakistan. He was the editorial cartoonist for the
national newspaper in Pakistan, Dawn. His work has appeared in numerous
International publications. Shahid's work was viewed by world leaders at the
1997 APEC Conference, enjoyed by John F. Kennedy Jr., and managed to
continuously enrage Benazir Bhutto. Shahid is internationally syndicated with the
New York Times Syndicate and has work archived at the Museum of
Contemporary History in Paris. His web page is: http://drawnconclusions.com .]
"There was a dream that was Rome. You could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish, it was so fragile." - Marcus Aurelius
There was also a dream that was Benazir Bhutto. Picture - a young, seemingly articulate attractive woman defying a military, which had sent her father to the gallows. Educated at Harvard and Oxford, she spent years in house arrest and exile before becoming the youngest person, and the first woman, to head the...
Monday, December 31, 2007 - 16:41
SOURCE: NYT (12-27-07)
[Kenneth T. Jackson, a professor of history at Columbia, is the editor in chief of The Encyclopedia of New York City.]
THREE hundred and fifty years ago today, religious freedom was born on this continent. Yes, 350 years. Religious tolerance did not begin with the Bill of Rights or with Jefferson’s Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom in 1786. With due respect to Roger Williams and his early experiment with “liberty of conscience” in Rhode Island, this republic really owes its enduring strength to a fragile, scorched and little-known document that was signed by some 30 ordinary citizens on Dec. 27, 1657.
It is fitting that the Flushing Remonstrance should be associated with Dutch settlements, because they were the most tolerant in the New World. The Netherlands had enshrined freedom of conscience in 1579, when it clearly established that “no one shall be persecuted or investigated because of his religion.” And when the Dutch West India Company set up a trading...
THREE hundred and fifty years ago today, religious freedom was born on this continent. Yes, 350 years. Religious tolerance did not begin with the Bill of Rights or with Jefferson’s Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom in 1786. With due respect to Roger Williams and his early experiment with “liberty of conscience” in Rhode Island, this republic really owes its enduring strength to a fragile, scorched and little-known document that was signed by some 30 ordinary citizens on Dec. 27, 1657.
It is fitting that the Flushing Remonstrance should be associated with Dutch settlements, because they were the most tolerant in the New World. The Netherlands had enshrined freedom of conscience in 1579, when it clearly established that “no one shall be persecuted or investigated because of his religion.” And when the Dutch West India Company set up a trading...
Sunday, December 30, 2007 - 19:51
SOURCE: AlterNet (12-27-07)
[Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is The Latino Challenge to Black America: Towards a Conversation between African-Americans and Hispanics (Middle Passage Press and Hispanic Economics New York).]
No shot GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul tossed out yet another juicy zinger this time on "Meet the Press" when he said that Lincoln was a bad guy for fighting the civil war. Paul's solution: simply shell out some cash, buy the slaves, and set them free. One would like to believe that Paul is just jerking off the press and the public with his shoot from the lip, loose brained, solutions on everything from taxes to ending the Iraq war. And that his dig at Lincoln for fighting the Civil War is the latest in the train of dumb wit Paulisms.
But the Civil War and the Lincoln jibe needs a response for two reasons. The first is for its idiot read of history.
Lincoln as an Illinois Congressman in 1849 proposed a...
No shot GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul tossed out yet another juicy zinger this time on "Meet the Press" when he said that Lincoln was a bad guy for fighting the civil war. Paul's solution: simply shell out some cash, buy the slaves, and set them free. One would like to believe that Paul is just jerking off the press and the public with his shoot from the lip, loose brained, solutions on everything from taxes to ending the Iraq war. And that his dig at Lincoln for fighting the Civil War is the latest in the train of dumb wit Paulisms.
But the Civil War and the Lincoln jibe needs a response for two reasons. The first is for its idiot read of history.
Lincoln as an Illinois Congressman in 1849 proposed a...
Sunday, December 30, 2007 - 19:07
SOURCE: NYT (12-30-07)
[Eric Foner is a professor of history at Columbia University.]
WE Americans live in a society awash in historical celebrations. The last few years have witnessed commemorations of the bicentennial of the Louisiana Purchase (2003) and the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II (2005). Looming on the horizon are the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth (2009) and the sesquicentennial of the outbreak of the Civil War (2011). But one significant milestone has gone strangely unnoticed: the 200th anniversary of Jan. 1, 1808, when the importation of slaves into the United States was prohibited.
This neglect stands in striking contrast to the many scholarly and public events in Britain that marked the 2007 bicentennial of that country’s banning of the slave trade. There were historical conferences, museum exhibits, even a high-budget film, “Amazing Grace,” about William Wilberforce, the leader of the parliamentary crusade that resulted in abolition.
...
WE Americans live in a society awash in historical celebrations. The last few years have witnessed commemorations of the bicentennial of the Louisiana Purchase (2003) and the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II (2005). Looming on the horizon are the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth (2009) and the sesquicentennial of the outbreak of the Civil War (2011). But one significant milestone has gone strangely unnoticed: the 200th anniversary of Jan. 1, 1808, when the importation of slaves into the United States was prohibited.
This neglect stands in striking contrast to the many scholarly and public events in Britain that marked the 2007 bicentennial of that country’s banning of the slave trade. There were historical conferences, museum exhibits, even a high-budget film, “Amazing Grace,” about William Wilberforce, the leader of the parliamentary crusade that resulted in abolition.
...
Sunday, December 30, 2007 - 18:58
SOURCE: Huffington Post (Blog) (12-29-07)
[Tim Giago is a member of the Oglala Lakota Tribe. He was born on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota on July 12, 1934. Giago was the founder of the Lakota Times in 1981. The newspaper withstood firebombs, had its windows shot out with shotguns on three separate occasions.]
I wonder if Tom Brokaw knew what was happening on the nine Indian reservations in his home state of South Dakota in 1968. I seriously doubt it.
On December 29, 1968, as they have done for many years, the Lakota people were gathered around the mass grave at Wounded Knee to pray. And on December 29, 1990, they would gather to mourn the 100th anniversary of the massacre of their people.
To the non-Indians of South Dakota and the rest of America, December 29, 1990 was another day. But to the Lakota people, December 29 was a day they commemorated every year since 1890. It was a day when nearly 300 of their relatives were shot to death in cold blood by the enlisted men and...
I wonder if Tom Brokaw knew what was happening on the nine Indian reservations in his home state of South Dakota in 1968. I seriously doubt it.
On December 29, 1968, as they have done for many years, the Lakota people were gathered around the mass grave at Wounded Knee to pray. And on December 29, 1990, they would gather to mourn the 100th anniversary of the massacre of their people.
To the non-Indians of South Dakota and the rest of America, December 29, 1990 was another day. But to the Lakota people, December 29 was a day they commemorated every year since 1890. It was a day when nearly 300 of their relatives were shot to death in cold blood by the enlisted men and...
Sunday, December 30, 2007 - 17:25
SOURCE: London Review of Books (1-3-08)
[Thomas Sugrue, Kahn Professor of History and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, is the author of a history of civil rights in 20th-century America, due in 2008.]
... Among historians and pundits, it is a cliché that the American New Right emerged in reaction to the excesses of 1960s leftists and the liberal politicians who enabled them. Liberalism unravelled when student protesters rallied for Ho Chi Minh, Black Power radicals put whitey ‘up against the wall, motherfucker!’, counterculturalists bared their bodies, gyrated to psychedelic music and dropped acid, and man-hating feminists undermined the traditional family, while out of control federal spending subsidised unemployment and rewarded ungrateful blacks for rioting. Conservatives of all stripes looked back wistfully to the 1950s as the zenith of American greatness (leftists offered a mirror image of the story, renouncing post-World War Two America as conformist, conservative and corporate). Not Goldwater. ‘...
Sunday, December 30, 2007 - 15:33
SOURCE: Salon (12-19-07)
Transcendentalism is the best-known American-bred philosophy,
despite the fact that most well-educated Americans have no clear idea what it
is. This haziness is nothing new -- even in Transcendentalism's heyday in the
mid-19th century, people complained that it was hard to get a handle on. Was it
even a philosophy at all, or just a crackpot religion? Hard to say, partly
because Transcendentalism's leaders were notorious for writing and talking in
lofty abstractions; the Boston Post complained that the prose of Bronson Alcott
(educational reformer, leading Transcendentalist and father of Louisa May)"resembled a train of 15 railroad cars with one passenger." Then there was the
habit among the most prominent Transcendentalists of denying that they were
Transcendentalists at all, or that Transcendentalism, per se, existed -- at the
same time that other members of the movement quarreled about what the term
really meant.
Philip Gura's"American Transcendentalism" is partly an elucidation...
Saturday, December 29, 2007 - 15:32
SOURCE: Japan Focus (12-16-07)
[Nishino Rumiko is Director, Women’s Active Museum on War and Peace, Tokyo.]
[Japan Focus Editor:] This is the second article of a three part series introducing historical museums in
I. The “Comfort Women” Issue...
Friday, December 21, 2007 - 20:42
SOURCE: NYT (12-21-07)
The Capitol’s mammoth new visitors’ center is a work in progress bedeviled by cost overruns and mounting delay. The $621 million project is not expected to be ready for tourists until next fall. But the House and Senate have set an encouraging standard, emphasizing the center’s educational mission by naming the main welcoming chamber Emancipation Hall. This honors long-forgotten African-American slaves forced to help build the original Capitol in the 18th and 19th centuries.
This is an overdue exercise of historical candor. Researchers found slaves were rented as Capitol labor by the federal government for $5 a month — the proceeds directly pocketed by local slave owners. “Negro hires” was the term used in the construction of what early on was called, no irony recorded, the “Temple of Liberty.” The slaves worked six days a week, 12 hours a day, quarrying stone, sawing timber and hauling supplies.
Until now, all they earned for this back-breaking labor was...
This is an overdue exercise of historical candor. Researchers found slaves were rented as Capitol labor by the federal government for $5 a month — the proceeds directly pocketed by local slave owners. “Negro hires” was the term used in the construction of what early on was called, no irony recorded, the “Temple of Liberty.” The slaves worked six days a week, 12 hours a day, quarrying stone, sawing timber and hauling supplies.
Until now, all they earned for this back-breaking labor was...
Friday, December 21, 2007 - 15:13
SOURCE: History Today (1-1-08)
[Ian J. Bickerton is a research fellow at the School of History, University of New South Wales. Kenneth J. Hagan is Professor and Museum Director Emeritus at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis. He currently teaches US military strategy at the Naval War College, Monterey.]
In his highly influential book On War (published posthumously in 1832), the military theorist Carl von Clausewitz asserted, ‘war is simply the continuation of policy – or politics – by (or with) other means.’ He argued that war could not be divorced from political life; its object was to impose one’s will on the enemy by destroying his power to resist. To Clausewitz, war was a rational and legitimate means of furthering national interests even though he fully recognized its inherently violent and bloody nature, and the uncertainty of its outcome. He knew that states sometimes acted foolishly or recklessly, and he solemnly advised that:
No one starts a war – or rather, no one in his senses...
In his highly influential book On War (published posthumously in 1832), the military theorist Carl von Clausewitz asserted, ‘war is simply the continuation of policy – or politics – by (or with) other means.’ He argued that war could not be divorced from political life; its object was to impose one’s will on the enemy by destroying his power to resist. To Clausewitz, war was a rational and legitimate means of furthering national interests even though he fully recognized its inherently violent and bloody nature, and the uncertainty of its outcome. He knew that states sometimes acted foolishly or recklessly, and he solemnly advised that:
No one starts a war – or rather, no one in his senses...
Friday, December 21, 2007 - 12:59
SOURCE: Salon (12-19-07)
Transcendentalism is the best-known American-bred philosophy, despite the fact that most well-educated Americans have no clear idea what it is. This haziness is nothing new -- even in Transcendentalism's heyday in the mid-19th century, people complained that it was hard to get a handle on. Was it even a philosophy at all, or just a crackpot religion? Hard to say, partly because Transcendentalism's leaders were notorious for writing and talking in lofty abstractions; the Boston Post complained that the prose of Bronson Alcott (educational reformer, leading Transcendentalist and father of Louisa May) "resembled a train of 15 railroad cars with one passenger." Then there was the habit among the most prominent Transcendentalists of denying that they were Transcendentalists at all, or that Transcendentalism, per se, existed -- at the same time that other members of the movement quarreled about what the term really meant.
Philip Gura's "American Transcendentalism...
Philip Gura's "American Transcendentalism...
Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - 20:34
SOURCE: Newsweek (12-24-07)
... The recently published first volume of her papers, "The Human Rights Years, 1945–48," with a foreword by Hillary Clinton, provides important clues. It begins when Franklin Roosevelt died, and ends with the passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in which Eleanor played a crucial part. In allowing us to study her own words, in letters, speeches, columns and diary entries, a different portrait of the much-lionized woman emerges—one of a pragmatic, savvy politician. While she is remembered as a saintly, long-suffering figure, we can forget she was an indefatigable, disciplined activist—as historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote, a "tough and salty old lady"—who resisted stereotyping when she was alive, and constantly protested she was not interested in power while vigorously pursuing it.
The comparisons to Hillary Clinton are obvious—both had unfaithful husbands, and both were smart, unconventional First Ladies. To consider Eleanor simply...
The comparisons to Hillary Clinton are obvious—both had unfaithful husbands, and both were smart, unconventional First Ladies. To consider Eleanor simply...
Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - 20:29
SOURCE: Slate (12-18-07)
Last year, a surprise best seller hit the British book market: a romp through Latin grammar, by a London journalist called Harry Mount. In Britain, the book was called Amo, Amas, Amat ... and All That, after the first verb (to love) encountered in elementary Latin class. But in the American edition, the title has become Carpe Diem. The phrase was coined by Horace in Odes 1. 11, a poem that recommends instant kicks (bad strained wine, quickie sex), since time is fleeting and the future unknowable. In American culture, however, the phrase has taken on a life of its own; in Robin Williams' famous speech from Dead Poets Society, seizing the day has something to do with self-fulfilment and the realization of the American dream.
The change of title tells us a lot about the different cultural positions of Latin in British and American society. Most educated British people can, it seems, be expected to know a smattering of "school-boy" Latin. The term is revealing, since under...
The change of title tells us a lot about the different cultural positions of Latin in British and American society. Most educated British people can, it seems, be expected to know a smattering of "school-boy" Latin. The term is revealing, since under...
Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - 17:13
SOURCE: WaPo (12-12-07)
[Mr. Gerson was President Bush's chief speech writer.]
For many conservatives, the birthday of the movement is Nov. 1, 1790 -- the publication date of Edmund Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution in France." Burke described how utopian idealism could lead to the guillotine, just as it later led to the gulag. He rejected the democracy of the mob and argued that social reform, when necessary, should be gradual, cautious and rooted in the habits and traditions of the community.
Some of Burke's contemporaries took these arguments further. "I am one of those who think it very desirable to have no reform," declared the Duke of Wellington. "I told you years ago that the people are rotten to the core." And this affection was returned. Wellington took to carrying an umbrella tipped with a spike to protect himself from protesters.
But there is another strain of conservatism with a birthday three years earlier than Burke's "...
For many conservatives, the birthday of the movement is Nov. 1, 1790 -- the publication date of Edmund Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution in France." Burke described how utopian idealism could lead to the guillotine, just as it later led to the gulag. He rejected the democracy of the mob and argued that social reform, when necessary, should be gradual, cautious and rooted in the habits and traditions of the community.
Some of Burke's contemporaries took these arguments further. "I am one of those who think it very desirable to have no reform," declared the Duke of Wellington. "I told you years ago that the people are rotten to the core." And this affection was returned. Wellington took to carrying an umbrella tipped with a spike to protect himself from protesters.
But there is another strain of conservatism with a birthday three years earlier than Burke's "...
Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - 01:40
SOURCE: Smithsonian Magazine (12-1-07)
"They shall make an ark of acacia wood," God commanded Moses in the Book of Exodus, after delivering the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. And so the Israelites built an ark, or chest, gilding it inside and out. And into this chest Moses placed stone tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments, as given to him on Mount Sinai.
Thus the ark “was worshipped by the Israelites as the embodiment of God Himself,” writes Graham Hancock in The Sign and the Seal. "Biblical and other archaic sources speak of the Ark blazing with fire and light...stopping rivers, blasting whole armies." (Steven Spielberg's 1981 film Raiders of the Lost Ark provides a special-effects approximation.) According to the First Book of Kings, King Solomon built the First Temple in Jerusalem to house the ark. It was venerated there during Solomon's reign (c. 970-930 B.C.) and beyond.
Then it vanished. Much of Jewish tradition holds that it disappeared before or while the...
Thus the ark “was worshipped by the Israelites as the embodiment of God Himself,” writes Graham Hancock in The Sign and the Seal. "Biblical and other archaic sources speak of the Ark blazing with fire and light...stopping rivers, blasting whole armies." (Steven Spielberg's 1981 film Raiders of the Lost Ark provides a special-effects approximation.) According to the First Book of Kings, King Solomon built the First Temple in Jerusalem to house the ark. It was venerated there during Solomon's reign (c. 970-930 B.C.) and beyond.
Then it vanished. Much of Jewish tradition holds that it disappeared before or while the...
Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - 01:38
SOURCE: International Herald Tribune (12-17-07)
[Eamonn Fingleton is the author of "In the Jaws of the Dragon: America's Fate in an Era of Chinese Hegemony," which will be published in March.]
For observers of Sino-Japanese relations the big news in the past week has been that there has been no news. Although last Thursday marked the 70th anniversary of the beginning of the notorious Nanking massacre, political activists in both Japan and China have been notable - so far at least - for their restraint.
Given that the massacre, which began on Dec. 13, 1937, and continued for six weeks, was one of the worst atrocities in military history, the Chinese people would be forgiven for expressing their feelings in less muted terms. On conservative estimates, at least 150,000 people were annihilated in what was then the Chinese capital of Nanking (the city now known as Nanjing) and in many cases their deaths took place in circumstances of almost unbelievable cruelty and depravity.
Although it may...
For observers of Sino-Japanese relations the big news in the past week has been that there has been no news. Although last Thursday marked the 70th anniversary of the beginning of the notorious Nanking massacre, political activists in both Japan and China have been notable - so far at least - for their restraint.
Given that the massacre, which began on Dec. 13, 1937, and continued for six weeks, was one of the worst atrocities in military history, the Chinese people would be forgiven for expressing their feelings in less muted terms. On conservative estimates, at least 150,000 people were annihilated in what was then the Chinese capital of Nanking (the city now known as Nanjing) and in many cases their deaths took place in circumstances of almost unbelievable cruelty and depravity.
Although it may...
Tuesday, December 18, 2007 - 21:47
SOURCE: WSJ (12-18-07)
[Mr. Stephens is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. His column appears in the Journal Tuesdays.]
On Dec. 16, 1907, the 16 battleships of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet sailed from Hampton Roads, Va., on a 43,000-mile journey around the world. The occasion was immediately understood as Teddy Roosevelt's way of declaring that the United States, already an economic superpower, was also a military one. Unnoticed by most Americans, this past Sunday marked its centennial.
There is an enduring, bipartisan strain in American politics (think Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich) that wishes to forgo the military role. As wonderfully recounted by Jim Rasenberger in "America 1908," the voyage of the Great White Fleet, as it was popularly known, was energetically opposed by members of Congress, who sought to cut off its funding when it was halfway around the world. Sound familiar? Mark Twain considered the venture as further evidence that TR was "...
On Dec. 16, 1907, the 16 battleships of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet sailed from Hampton Roads, Va., on a 43,000-mile journey around the world. The occasion was immediately understood as Teddy Roosevelt's way of declaring that the United States, already an economic superpower, was also a military one. Unnoticed by most Americans, this past Sunday marked its centennial.
There is an enduring, bipartisan strain in American politics (think Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich) that wishes to forgo the military role. As wonderfully recounted by Jim Rasenberger in "America 1908," the voyage of the Great White Fleet, as it was popularly known, was energetically opposed by members of Congress, who sought to cut off its funding when it was halfway around the world. Sound familiar? Mark Twain considered the venture as further evidence that TR was "...
Tuesday, December 18, 2007 - 21:12
SOURCE: FrontpageMag.com (12-17-07)
[Jason Maoz is the senior editor of The Jewish Press. Jason Maoz can be reached at jmaoz@jewishpress.com.]
Dennis Prager, the sometimes controversial, always thought-provoking radio host and syndicated columnist, wrote a column last week on the legacy the baby boom generation has bequeathed to younger Americans.
“We live in the age of group apologies,” wrote Prager. “I would like to add one. The baby boomer generation needs to apologize to America, especially its young generation, for many sins.”
One of those sins, according to Prager, is the mindless pacifism espoused by Sixties-era liberals and leftists and passed down to their ideological heirs – a pacifism neatly summarized by the popular 1960’s slogan “Make love, not war.”
“Our parents,” Prager continued, “had liberated the world from immeasurably cruel and murderous regimes in Germany and Japan – solely thanks to waging war...
Dennis Prager, the sometimes controversial, always thought-provoking radio host and syndicated columnist, wrote a column last week on the legacy the baby boom generation has bequeathed to younger Americans.
“We live in the age of group apologies,” wrote Prager. “I would like to add one. The baby boomer generation needs to apologize to America, especially its young generation, for many sins.”
One of those sins, according to Prager, is the mindless pacifism espoused by Sixties-era liberals and leftists and passed down to their ideological heirs – a pacifism neatly summarized by the popular 1960’s slogan “Make love, not war.”
“Our parents,” Prager continued, “had liberated the world from immeasurably cruel and murderous regimes in Germany and Japan – solely thanks to waging war...
Monday, December 17, 2007 - 21:26
SOURCE: Media Matters (Liberal media watchdog group) (12-12-07)
Summary: On Hannity & Colmes, Karl Rove referenced a question posed by Tim Russert to Hillary Clinton during the October 30 Democratic presidential debate, in which Russert stated:"[T]here was a letter written by President Clinton specifically asking that any communication between you and the president not be made available to the public until 2012. Would you lift the ban?" In fact, President Clinton did not ask that such communications"not be made available"; he listed them as documents to be" considered for withholding."
On the December 11 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, Newsweekcontributor Karl Rove asserted that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY)"gets asked by Russert about the secret documents that she and President Clinton have attempted to hide...
Thursday, December 13, 2007 - 21:33
