Roundup: Talking About History

Margaret Washington: The Unheralded Black Women Who Railed Against Slavery

[Margaret Washington is a Professor of History, Cornell University.] During the period leading up to the Civil War, black women all over the North comprised a stalwart but now largely forgotten abolitionist army. In myriad ways, these race-conscious women worked to bring immediate emancipation to the South. Antislavery Northern black women felt the sting of oppression personally. Like the slaves, they too were victims of color prejudice; some had been born in Northern bondage; othe

Joshua Wolf Shenk: Lincoln's Great Depression

[Joshua Wolf Shenk is the author of the forthcoming book Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness (Houghton Mifflin), from which this article is adapted.] When Abraham Lincoln came to the stage of the 1860 state Republican convention in Decatur, Illinois, the crowd roared in approval. Men threw hats and canes into the air, shaking the hall so much that the awning over the stage collapsed; according to an early account, "the roof was litera

David Greenberg: The Legend of the Scopes Trial (Science didn't really win.)

[David Greenberg writes the "History Lesson" column for Slate and teaches at Rutgers University. He is the author of Nixon's Shadow: The History of an Image.] This has been the summer of "intelligent design." In August, President Bush endorsed this revamped version of creationism, and this week a Pew Forum poll found that fewer than half of Americans accept Darwin's theory of evolution. This widespread rejection of seemingly established truths has shocked many ob

James Taranto: George W. Bush is "average," but far from ordinary.

Ask someone to describe the presidency of George W. Bush, and "average" is not a word you're likely to hear. Mr. Bush's detractors treat him with a level of vituperation unseen since the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt; some even blame him for bad weather. His admirers don't go so far as to credit him when the sun shines, but their affection for him is palpable. So it may come as a surprise that in a new survey of scholars ranking the presidents, Mr. Bush finishes almost exa

David G. Savage: Roe's Ruling: More Than Its Author Intended

In mid-1971, the Supreme Court agreed for the first time to hear a constitutional challenge to the long-standing state laws limiting abortion. Its decision to do so reverberates today. At that time, Texas and 30 other states had laws, dating from the 19th century, that made an abortion a crime unless it was performed to save the mother's life. Georgia, like California, had revised its laws in the late 1960s to permit abortion in specific circumstances: if the mother's h

Martha Groves: Maintaining Will Rogers' Legacy

When he died, the nation mourned. Flags flew at half-staff. Movie screens went dark. Radio broadcasters observed 30 minutes of silence. Under a scorching sun in Glendale, 50,000 people filed past his casket. In an era of hip-hop and reality TV, it is difficult to grasp the hold this man had on Americans. He was the most beloved person of his day, the country's first multimedia star. Damon Runyon wrote in tribute that he was "America's most complete human document.

Stephen Castle: Remembering The Cold War In Europe

It is almost half a century since Winston Churchill declared in dramatic style that an 'Iron Curtain' had fallen across Europe. Stretching from the Arctic to the Black Sea, the barbed wire and watchtowers erected during the Cold War came to symbolise the brutal post-war division of the Continent. But what was once sinister is now merely intriguing. An ambitious plan is underway to turn the 4,500-mile stretch that was once the dividing line between East and West into a t

Philip Authier: Historians Dispute Former Canadian P.M. Mulroney's Self Assessment

It is one of the biggest claims Brian Mulroney makes in Peter C. Newman's book - that he was pretty much the greatest prime minister since Sir. John A. Macdonald. Analysts and historians, it seems, beg to differ. Concordia University historian Graeme Decarie said he was flabbergasted Mulroney would even suggest he was one of the top leaders in Canada. "This suggests a serious ego problem," Decarie said. "Even if he was a great prime minister,

Troy Lennon: The Hazards Of Sounding A Retreat

This has been a year of significant withdrawals. Israel has finally pulled its last troops from the occupied Palestinian territory of the Gaza Strip. The Israelis had held the territory since occupying it in 1967. ... The withdrawal of occupation troops does not always equate to a happy ending. It's hard to disagree that the presence of an occupation force in someone else's land is not the natural order of things but often when troops pull up stakes, they leave behind them a legacy

Randy Dotinga: Wartime Memoirs By Women In Vogue

In the 1950s, few people in the United States or Europe paid attention to a German woman's memoir of civilians fighting off starvation, sexual assault, and sudden death during the Russian occupation of Berlin. Readers might have blanched at the descriptions of soldiers routinely raping helpless women left in the city at the end of World War II. Perhaps no one wanted to think about German suffering. Or maybe the author's wry personality lacked appeal at the time. Now, mo

Valli Herman: Gulf Coast Conservators Fear Cultural Treasures Lost

It may have been just a stack of old vinyl albums, travel brochures, ticket stubs or even restaurant menus that were stashed away, forgotten, in a cabinet. Though their importance pales in comparison to lost lives and homes, the destruction of such relatively trivial items in the Katrina disaster means key artifacts of identity, history and culture of the region are gone forever. Flooded New Orleans has conservationists and collectors in despair about what history might have washed

Barbara Demick: South Koreans Clash Over A 1957 Statue Of McArthur

Gen. Douglas MacArthur can't be seen around these parts without his bodyguards. The old soldier stands high on a bluff here looking out to sea, binoculars slung around his neck and an officer's cap perched jauntily on his head. In a cordon in front of him are several burly riot policemen, their shields raised in defensive posture. At least a dozen other officers, some in plainclothes with wires dangling in their ears, are fanned out around the flowerbeds, on the lookout for trouble.

Paul Vallely: Britain's Trafalgar Square: A History Of Celebrations

What a mixed bag they are, British heroes. But then, I suppose, we Britons are a rum bunch ourselves. On Tuesday, it was Freddie Flintoff and the England cricketers, being cheered wildly by huge crowds (including a reveller in full cricket whites, and pads, in a Trafalgar Square fountain). A sea of St George's flags waved. And choruses of 'Jerusalem' and 'Land of Hope and Glory' echoed all round the heart of the capital. Yesterday, in that same pigeon-infested venue, it was a hero o

Rebecca Traister: History Is Being Flooded, too

[Rebecca Traister is a staff writer for Salon Life.] On Thursday Sept. 8, Shelly Henley Kelly, the immediate past president of the Society of Southwest Archivists composed a letter to the editors of major newspapers. "Imagine that Washington D.C. is struck by a CAT 5 hurricane and the National Archives has been damaged and/or flooded," Kelly, an archivist at the University of Houston-Clear Lake, wrote. "Archivists and conservators are trained to have a

Nick Squires: Former "Jackaroo" Renounces Rightful King of England Claim

Queen Elizabeth can breathe easy. A former jackaroo identified by historians as the rightful king of England has renounced once and for all any claim to the British crown by taking Australian citizenship. Michael Abney-Hastings, 63, was stunned when he learned last year that a kink in the line of royal succession during the 15th century meant he should be sitting on the throne rather than Queen Elizabeth. The discovery was made by a team of British historians backed by

Martin C. Evans: History of Slavery In New York

For years, Mary K. Carter felt that New York's two-century history as a slave state was treated as an embarrassing secret, mostly ignored in school curriculums. "Many people are surprised when you talk about slavery's existence in New York," said Carter, a Freeport resident and retired middle-school teacher in the Rockville Centre school district. "They're surprised because it's taught as something that happened in the South." So when the education d

Douglas Bell: Tall Buildings, Tall Targets, Tall Ambitions

In the days leading up to and following 9/11, I found myself reporting from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. ... As it happened, I was staying on the highest floor in the tallest building in the Arab world, the Emirates Tower. As the horror unfolded throughout the late afternoon, I sat with a British engineer living in Oman taking a shaky drink in a bar on one of the hotel's upper floors. "You know where we are, don't you?" he asked rhetorically while surveying the city below. "

Wayne Crawford: Tasmania Recalls Only Australian PM, Lyons, and 1932

The only Tasmanian ever to become Prime Minister, Joseph Aloysius Lyons, presided over a year which changed Australia as perhaps no other -- 1932. It was a fateful year of momentous events which included the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the birth of the Australian Broadcasting Commission, the mysterious death of the legendary racehorse Phar Lap, the dismissal of the New South Wales Premier Jack Lang by Governor Philip Game, and the start of Test cricket's infamous Bodyline

William Lyons: National Museum Of Scotland To Display Unseen Collections

The National Museum of Scotland is preparing to permanently throw open its doors to let the public discover its unseen collection. Regarded by historians and scholars as one of the finest in the world, the collection is presently housed in a series of warehouses on the outskirts of Edinburgh. It contains more than three million objects and specimens from across the globe which, because of a lack of space, cannot be displayed in the museum. These range from a Formula One

Dennis Roddy: Hysteria 101: History Of 9/11

History is an asymmetrical mess. The past foretells the future; the future arrives and, often enough, exposes the past as an amiable fraud. The history of Sept. 11, 2001, was explained, for instance, on Dec. 29, 1913 when William A. Dunning stood before the annual meeting of the American Historical Association and caught hold of a luminous ray of truth. "If the lesson of the past is sought as a guide to any policy," Dunning said, "the lesson that is learn