Roundup: Talking About History

Barrett Brown: Neoconfederate civil war revisionism

[Barrett Brown is a contributor to Vanity Fair, the Huffington Post and Skeptical Inquirer, and is author of Flock of Dodos: Behind Modern Creationism, Intelligent Design and the Easter Bunny.] Since moving back to my home state of Texas, I have found myself living about 400m from a statue commemorating a man who was the moving force behind a military and political uprising that led to the deaths of several hundred thousand US soldiers; an uprising that was prompted by the lawful el

Rupert Cornwell: After 150 years, the Civil War Still Divides the United States

[Rupert Cornwell writes for The Independent.] "A joyous night of music, dancing, food and drink" is probably not how most people would choose to mark an event setting the stage for a conflict that lasted four years, cost 620,000 lives, and ended in annihilating defeat. But when it comes to the American Civil War, South Carolina is not ordinary. It was the state where passions ran highest then, and where the flame of the "Lost Cause" is most tenderly

Conrad Black: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Times

[Conrad Black is the author of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom and Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full.] It ill behooves the New York Times to become quite so sanctimonious about the latest Nixon tapes, which reveal some comments by the former president and Henry Kissinger about Israel, Russia, the Jews, and other groups. The Times comes to the subject of Nixon and Kissinger, and to the status of Israel and the Jews in the world, with hands that have rarely been clean fo

Jim Dalton: The Man Behind the Gerrymander

[Jim Dalton is a founding board member of the Salem History Society and is a professor of music theory and music education at The Boston Conservatory.] Storms of criticism at once descended upon the Constitution. "Fraudulent usurpation!" exclaimed Gerry, who had refused to sign it. "A monster" out of the "thick veil of secrecy," declaimed a Pennsylvania newspaper. – from History of the United States" by Charles Austin Beard, Mary Ritter Beard

Nick Pearce: Is the UK Coalition government truly radical?

[Nick Pearce is Director of the Institute for Public Policy Research.] I was surprised to hear Steve Richards, whose journalism I admire greatly, declare on the Today programme that the Coalition government was a radical administration on par with the 1945 Attlee and 1979 Thatcher governments. For one thing, the Owl of Minerva spreads her wings at dusk, not dawn. It is impossible to judge prospectively whether a government is truly radical. What matters is the legacy it leaves behin

Michael Gerson: Even Henry Kissinger learned the limits of foreign policy realism

[Michael Gerson is a nationally syndicated columnist who appears twice weekly in the Washington Post.] Early in his service as President Nixon's national security adviser, Henry Kissinger paid a visit to his homeland. The West German government suggested to the press that Kissinger intended to visit some relatives. "What the hell are they putting out?" Kissinger vented to his aides. "My relatives are soap." Blunt, and true. Kissinger had left Germany

Eric Foner: The American civil war still being fought

[Eric Foner, a member of The Nation's editorial board, is DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University and editor of Our Lincoln, a collection of essays recently published by W. W. Norton and author of Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction.] One hundred fifty years ago, on 20 December 1860, the South Carolina secession convention officially dissolved the state's connection with the American Union. The secession of South Carolina set in motion a cri

Thomas Schwartz: Lincoln the Scrooge?

[Thomas Schwartz is Illinois State Historian.] The memorable holiday character of Ebenezer Scrooge from Charles Dickens’s 1843 classic A Christmas Carol brought into popular usage the phrase “Bah! Humbug!” Scrooge went beyond ignoring the holiday. He believed it to be a conspiracy of slackers to get a day off from work. “A poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket every twenty-fifth of December,” exclaimed Scrooge. Ultimately, Scrooge’s problem was his inability to embrace the spir

Markha Valenta: Saint Nicholas: The Hard Politics of Soft Myths

[Markha Valenta holds appointments in the departments of history at the University of Amsterdam and of culture studies at the University of Tilburg. Her current work concerns the politics of religious diversity in relation to global urbanism, multiculturalism and secular democracy.] May I tell you the story of Saint Nicholas´s yearly visit to Holland, but at a slant? A slant that takes account of real history to open up a space for real myth. Which is to say: for the politics of tra

Manisha Sinha: South Carolina's Secession at 150

[Manisha Sinha is Associate Professor of Afro-American Studies and History at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and author of The Counterrrevolution of Slavery (2000).] On December 20, 1860 South Carolina seceded from the American Union because of the election of an antislavery president, Abraham Lincoln, setting into motion the creation of the southern Confederacy and the start of the Civil War. Remarkably, on the 150th or sesquicentennial anniversary of South Carolina's sec

Jill Lepore: Paul Revere’s Ride Against Slavery

[Jill Lepore is a professor of history at Harvard and the author, most recently, of “The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party’s Revolution and the Battle Over American History.”] HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW published his best-known poem, “Paul Revere’s Ride,” 150 years ago tomorrow — the same day that South Carolina seceded from the United States. “Listen, my children, and you shall hear/ Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.” Before Longfellow published those lines, Rever

Timothy Snyder: The Holocaust We Don’t See: Lanzmann’s Shoah Revisited

[Timothy Snyder is Professor of History at Yale. His new book, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, was published this month. (October 2010).] Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah, opening this month in New York twenty-five years after its original release, is one of the great works of art of the twentieth century. As it begins, Simon Srebnik, a Polish Jew who was one of two survivors of Chełmno, returns to the death facility at Lanzmann’s request, and sings a song of his boyho

Masha Lipman: The Third Wave of Russian De-Stalinization

[Masha Lipman is the editor of Pro et Contra journal, published by the Moscow Carnegie Center.] "The Katyn crime was committed on direct order by Stalin and other Soviet leaders." This line, from a formal statement issued by the Russian parliament on Nov. 26, marks an important breakthrough. The execution in 1940 of about 22,000 Poles by the Soviet security police may be a well-recorded and broadly known historical fact, but it is the first time the Duma officially recogni

Kevin J. Madigan: Two Popes, One Holocaust

[Kevin J. Madigan is the Winn Professor of ­Ecclesiastical History at Harvard Divinity School and the co-author, with Jon D. Levenson, of Resurrection: The Power of God for Christians and Jews, published by Yale University Press.] During the first four years of his pontificate, Pope Benedict XVI put the beatification proceedings of the controversial World War II–era pope, Pius XII, in abeyance. It was, Benedict announced, a time for “reflection”—not yet the time to grant sainthood.

Walter Russell Mead: Can The L-word Be Saved?

[Walter Russell Mead is Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World. He blogs at The-American-Interest.com.] Politically speaking, America may be the most confused country in the world. Millions of people in this country are conservatives and even reactionaries who think they are liberals; we have millions more liberals and radicals who call themselves conservative.

Neil Clark: Kosovo and the myth of liberal intervention

[Neil Clark is a writer specialising in east European and Balkan affairs.] 'The United States of America and the Kosovo Liberation Army stand for the same human values and principles ... Fighting for the KLA is fighting for human rights and American values." So declared the neocon US senator (and current foe of WikiLeaks) Joseph Lieberman back in 1999 at the height of the US-led military intervention against Slobodan Miloševic's Yugoslavia. It would be interesting

Kathryn Jean Lopez: Sarah Palin vs. the Kennedy Legacy

[Kathryn Jean Lopez is editor-at-large of National Review Online and a nationally syndicated columnist.] One of the more unhinged criticisms of Sarah Palin flirts with accusing her of anti-Catholicism. “Is Sarah Palin anti-Catholic after attacks on JFK, Nancy Pelosi’s religious beliefs?” a writer for the Irish Voice asked by way of critiquing Palin’s new book, America by Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag. Instead of grief, the former vice-presidential nominee and

Fouad Ajami: Richard Holbrooke ... Kennedy Democrat

[Mr. Ajami is a professor at The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.] Richard Holbrooke, who died this week at age 69, loved epigraphs. They are strewn all over his writings—poems and passages from Euripides, W.H. Auden, Matthew Arnold, T.S. Eliot, the diplomatist and historian Harold Nicolson. An epigraph from Herman Melville turns up early in Holbrooke's remarkable chronicle of his ex

Kate Kelly: The Political Cartoonist Who Introduced Santa

[Kate Kelly is author of Election Day: An American Holiday, an American History as well as a six-volume history of medicine.] The "most powerful and influential political cartoonist that America has ever known" is the way historians Eric Foner and John A. Garraty describe Thomas Nast (1840-1902). His political commentary was influential in his day, but Nast also lives on because he created iconic drawings that are still with us today--including Santa Claus. In

Jonathan Jones: Ovid's Impotence Shows Why We Can't let Pompeii Fall

[Jonathan Jones writes on art for the Guardian and was on the jury for the 2009 Turner prize.] When it comes to writing about sex, ancient Romans do it in togas while feeding each other grapes. I've recently been reading Ovid's poems the Amores, published a few years BC, and still able to capture modern readers. There is definitely something very special about Ovid's erotic poetry. He may be an old writer, but at times he is a new man.... ...But only in Pompeii can you