Cultural Affairs
History Archive
AA08429
Ahlberg, Kristin BUILDING A MODEL PUBLIC HISTORY PROGRAM: THE OFFICE OF THE HISTORIAN AT THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE (Public Historian, vol. 30, no. 2, May 2008, pp. 9-28)
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The author, a Historian in the Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State, presents the evolution of a model public history program. The Office of the Historian in the U.S. Department of State has engaged in an expanding series of historical outreach programs aimed at both new and old audiences. The Foreign Relations of the United States series is still the major publication produced by this office and provides an accurate record of diplomatic correspondence and decisions for any given year. The production of this series has benefited from the application of new technologies as the Office of the Historian at the U.S. Department of State adapts to meet the challenges of new realities and emerge as a model public history program.
AA08354
Urschel, Donna CREATING THE UNITED STATES (Library of Congress Information Bulletin, vol. 67, no. 6, June 2008, pp. 95-102)
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“Creating the United States” is the title of a current exhibition at the Library of Congress on the founding of the U.S., as revealed by documents from the Library of Congress’ collection that chronicle the early years of the country’s formation. This exhibition of colonial-era documents is evidence of the insight and creativity of the founding fathers, as well as collaboration and much compromise. It demonstrates that the Declaration, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are living instruments that are central to the evolution of the United States. The search for a plan of national government and the creation of the Constitution was a slow, difficult process, as Americans moved from a patriarchal monarchy to citizen-leaders in a representative republic. Congress passed proposed amendments to the Constitution as one of its first orders of business. Viewed as unnecessary by many and a mere diversion by others, the first ten amendments, which became known as the Bill of Rights, became the bedrock of individual rights and liberties.
AA08324
Perlstein, Rick A LIBERAL SHOCK DOCTRINE (American Prospect, vol. 19, no. 9, September 2008, pp. 22-24, 26)
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The author, a senior fellow at the Campaign for America's Future, believes that progressive political change in American history is rarely incremental. History continues to teach us that presidents have to move quickly to enact progressive reforms before the opportunities escape them. With few exceptions, most of the reforms (such as Social Security, Medicare, desegregation) that have advanced our nation's status as a modern, liberalizing social democracy were pushed through in such circumstances. The post-Civil War reconstruction of the South, the Progressive Era remaking of democratic institutions, the New Deal, and the Great Society, were all blunt shocks that required immediate decision-making, a course of action that the White House’s most effective occupants have always understood. Franklin D. Roosevelt “hurled down executive orders and legislative proposals like thunderbolts” during his First Hundred Days, hardly slowing down for another four years; Lyndon Johnson, aided by sympathy generated by John F. Kennedy's death and the landslide of 1964, generated legislation at such a breakneck pace that even his aides were awestruck.
AA08291
Rossetto, Louis IN A LETTER TO HIS KIDS, WIRED’S FOUNDING EDITOR RECALLS THE DAWN OF THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION (Wired Magazine, vol. 16, no. 6, June 2008, pp. 172-175)
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Rossetto, cofounder of Wired Magazine, reflects on the occasion of the fifteenth anniversary of his magazine on the predictions for the Internet he made in 1993, and how things have actually turned out. Rossetto notes that he started Wired to chronicle the people, companies, and ideas driving the digital revolution –- but had only the vaguest notion of where it was headed. Major misses included “the end of history”, characterized by Francis Fukuyama’s famous prediction that history ended with the demise of the Soviet Union; Wired failed to see that extremist groups would use the Internet to propagate virulent ideology. Another misstep was believing that the Internet would lead to the end of politics; Rossetto notes, instead of using the Internet to rebuild civil society, special-interest groups used it to get into the “mud” of politics, resulting in “one of the most toxic and least productive eras of public discourse in our history.” Among the trends Rossetto believes they accurately predicted were what he calls the “Long Boom,” the unprecedented increase in material well-being for much of humanity; the spread of liberal democracy, globalization, and a technological revolution; and what has been termed the “One Machine”, a new planetary consciousness developing among humans using ever-more-powerful PCs and networks.
AA08088
Murray, Williamson WAR AND THE WEST (Orbis, vol. 52, no. 2, Spring 2008, pp. 348-356)
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Williamson, Professor Emeritus at Ohio State University, writes that the outline of human history over the last two thousand years is framed by armed conflict. The West now enjoys the product of several developments in political and social domains culminating in what can be called a Military Revolution. The creation of powerful states as the overarching social organization is an example of one such revolution, which supported a series of smaller innovations and changes in the way the West fought its wars. The author asserts history reveals the degree of political, social, economic and technological adaptation needed to minimize the consequences of failure. He believes that the study of history is necessary to insure that we do not have to fight wars more often, or at far higher cost in human terms.
AA08065
Henig, Gerald CIVIL WAR NURSE (American Legacy, vol. 14, no. 1, Spring 2008, pp. 9-10)
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The author profiles the little-known story of Susie King Taylor, born to a slave household in Georgia, who became a nurse for Union forces during the Civil War. Taylor is thought to be the first African-American woman in her profession to work on the war’s front lines, and went unpaid for her three years of work close to the battlefield.
AA08050
Gaines, James WASHINGTON AND LAFAYETTE (Smithsonian, vol. 38, no. 6, September 2007, pp. 82-92)
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When the bumptious, aristocratic nineteen-year-old Marquis de Lafayette was brought in as a new “major general” to the dour George Washington in July 1777, a greater contrast in personalities could not be imagined. Despite their differences, Washington and Lafayette quickly grew close, and became inseparable during wartime. Some historians write that they may have developed a father-son relationship, but the author notes that Washington and Lafayette shared one important characteristic: they lived in the world of a monarchy, in which status was conferred, not earned. Both men in their own ways, “had to win their own independence ... making their way from courtier-subjects to patriot-citizens” in which achievements are earned by one’s own effort. After American independence, relations between the two became strained; after returning to France, Lafayette advocated exporting American revolutionary principles with the “fervor of a convert”, while Washington urged his country never to take up arms except in self-defense. The author notes that the debate over the wisdom of exporting revolutionary ideals by force has an echo with the differences between France and America over the war in Iraq.
AA07430
Lieber, Keir THE NEW HISTORY OF WORLD WAR I AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS THEORY (International Security, Vol. 32, No. 2, Fall 2007 pp. 155-191)
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World War I, the "Great War," is thought by many to have marked the end of traditional Western civilization and the beginning of modernism. It has often been described by historians as a tragic mistake, arising from misapprehensions and poor communication. The author, professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame, asserts that the German leadership of the time didn't stumble into the war, but planned it rationally, knew it would last a long time, and assumed they would ultimately conquer Europe. A new trove of historical evidence, he writes, shows that Germans of the time were preoccupied with the goal of ruling Europe, and had decided a war was inevitable. In addition, they fully understood the nature of modern trench warfare, and knew that such a war would destroy European civilization for decades. In spite of doubts, Lieber notes, the German leadership went ahead and attacked Russia and France, covering up their responsibility with some political maneuvering while hoping England would remain neutral. Previous scholarship concluding Europe blindly blundered into World War I has influenced much international relations theory since, the author notes. A new interpretation of the war emphasizing the aggressive logic of the German general staff may lead to rethinking future causes of conflict.
AA07288
Ferling, John 100 DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD (Smithsonian, vol. 38, no. 4, July 2007, pp. 44-54)
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The author chronicles the career of General Nathanael Greene, the all-but-forgotten hero of the Revolutionary War, whose role in the October 1781 victory at Yorktown, Virginia, set in motion the negotiations that resulted in American independence.
AA07263
Soodalter, Ron CAPTAIN GORDON’S INFAMY (Smithsonian, vol. 38, no. 3, June 2007, pp. 58-65)
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When Captain Nathaniel Gordon set sail for Africa in April 1860, he undoubtedly knew that U.S. laws against the slave trade had been generally ignored. Gordon bought 897 Africans from traders on the Congo River, cut off their clothes with his knife and shoved them into the hold of his ship. En route to Cuba, he was stopped by the USS Mohican, part of a small U.S. fleet organized to seize slave ships. Gordon was sent to New York to stand trial for piracy under an 1820 law that mandated the death penalty for anyone serving on a U.S. ship that participated in the slave trade. The author notes that President James Buchanan “had declared he would never hang a slaver” – but unfortunately for Gordon, Abraham Lincoln was elected president in November 1860. Gordon’s first trial ended in a hung jury, even though a ship’s officer testified that Gordon “packed” the slaves “by spreading the limbs of the creatures apart and sitting them so close together that even a foot [of a passing sailor] could not be put upon the deck.” The captain was retried, found guilty and sentenced to death; President Lincoln refused to issue a pardon. Gordon took strychnine and nearly died, but doctors managed to get him on his feet to walk to the gallows. It was February 1862 and “the slave trade was dying,” writes Soodalter. “The country was making a sharp turn into a new era in which trafficking in humans would no longer find acceptance.” Gordon was the only person in U.S. history to be executed for trafficking in slaves.
AA07212
Bell, David A. CASUALTY OF WAR (New Republic, Vol. 236, No. 15, May 7, 2007, pp. 44—52)
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The author urges more government and private funding to promote the study of military history at the university level. While robust History Book Club sales and popular History Channel broadcasts show that military history is very popular with the public, many leading universities have nonetheless abandoned the subject. Many major universities, such as Harvard or Johns Hopkins, have a single military historian among its history faculty. Bell attributes this development to a broad shift away from narrative history toward a social science model grounded in a liberal, Enlightenment-era thinking that dismisses war as primitive, irrational, and alien to modern civilization. Also many historians -- as a group politically well to the Left of the general public -- condemn military history as inherently “conservative.” Even so, a broader, more rigorous intellectual knowledge of war is now a matter of civic interest.
AA06422
Davidson, Carla FOUR CENTURIES: HOW JAMESTOWN GOT US STARTED (American Heritage, vol. 57, no. 5, October 2006, pp. 29-31)
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In a country where “we’re not used to measuring history in great swaths of time”, the author notes that the 1607 founding of America’s first permanent English colony in Jamestown was already celebrated on its two hundredth anniversary, during Virginia’s Grand National Jubilee in 1807. In 1957, Queen Elizabeth II appeared at the 350th anniversary celebrations; now, Virginia is gearing up for the four-hundredth anniversary of the birth of English America in May of next year “in the presence, it is hoped, of the Queen.” Davidson describes the extensive renovations that have been carried out in the Jamestown area, including the discovery of the location of the settlement’s original 1607 fort.
AA06354
Huntington, Tom THE EVOLUTION OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (American Legacy, vol. 12, no. 3, Fall 2006, pp. 46-50)
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"Over his long life the founding father slowly changed from an unabashed slaveholder to a true abolitionist," contends Huntington, who traces the contradictions and ambivalence in Franklin's attitude toward slavery in this detailed article. Ironically, Franklin himself had been an indentured apprentice; however, he was a man of his time with an eighteenth-century man's prejudices. While he never actively freed his slaves, he became president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of the Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage in 1787, and, shortly before his death, wrote a satirical defense of slavery that pointedly exposed the injustice of Congress's refusal to accept an antislavery petition the society had presented.
AA06335
Kandell, Jonathan STEEPED IN HISTORY (Smithsonian Magazine, vol. 37, no. 6, September 2006, pp. 98-104)
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The scenic Finger Lakes region, a 4,692-square-mile section of New York State anchored by Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo on the north and Corning, Elmira, and Ithaca on the south, has inspired many prominent Americans, says Kandell in this account. Writer Mark Twain, women's rights pioneer Elizabeth Cacy Stanton, banker Frederick Ferris Thompson, and abolitionist Harriet Tubman are among those who called the Finger Lakes district home. The area was also home to the Seneca Indians, whose lives are depicted at the Ganondagan State Historic Site, and continues to be home to many Amish and Mennonite families, intent on preserving their traditional way of life. Other attractions described include Letchworth State Park, site of "The Grand Canyon of the East;" local wineries; the Corning Museum of Glass; and the Sonnenberg Gardens and Mansion.
AA06318
Pulley, Brett et al. FROM THE FIELDS, TO THE FACTORY, TO THE CEO'S DESK, AFRICAN AMERICA PIONEERS IN CORPORATE AMERICA (American Legacy, special "Trailblazers" issue, Summer 2006, pp. 10-26)
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This special supplement to American Legacy magazine, begins with the story of Richard D. Parsons, the head of Time Warner, Inc. and discusses the lives of the Afro-American trailblazers who went before him. William Perry, who helped Henry Ford get his start by helping Ford saw trees on Ford's wooded land and convert it into useful property. Later, when Perry developed a heart ailment, he asked Ford if he could find him a job that required little physical exertion. He became a machine inspector, and in 1914, was likely the first black person to fill a skilled job in corporate America. Also in 1914, Ford hired an Afro-American college graduate as a supervisor; word spread and many Afro-Americans migrated north to Detroit. In 1971 Otis Smith became General Motor's first African-American corporate officer and served as vice-president and general counsel. In 1953 the National Association of Market Developers, Inc. was formed to target ethnic markets. The year 1962 saw Harvey C. Russell become vice president of corporate planning at Pepsi. The series of articles in this supplement discusses the men and women who will take us into the twenty-first century, and is a "must read" for anyone interested in the Black contribution to the American corporate world.
AA06277
Scanlan, Laura Wolff ALEXANDER HAMILTON: THE MAN WHO MODERNIZED MONEY (Humanities, vol. 27, no. 1, January/February 2006, pp. 16-19)
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An exhibit currently traveling around the U.S. focuses on the life and legacy of Alexander Hamilton, one of the Founding Fathers and the first Secretary of the Treasury. While Hamilton is usually remembered as the one who died in a duel with Aaron Burr, the author notes that Hamilton had some of the most modern ideas of the founders -- the need for an independent press, a strong central government and treasury, a national banking system and a mixed economy. As the primary author of THE FEDERALIST essays, Hamilton persuaded a reluctant American public to adopt the Constitution. Growing up on St. Croix in the West Indies, he witnessed the brutality of slavery; he also realized the necessity of an economy based on manufacturing, not just farming, because on the islands, everything had to be imported. Notes the author, Hamilton "left an imprint on American institutions still present two centuries after his death."
AA06257
Sciolla, Angelina ALL ROADS LEAD THROUGH AMERICA: CELEBRATING 50 YEARS OF THE INTERSTATE HIGHWAY SYSTEM (AAA World, July/August 2006, pp. 62-68, including sidebars)
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A half-century after President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal Highway Act of 1956, thus launching one of the most ambitious infrastructure endeavors in U.S. history, the Interstate Highway System underscores how much America has changed -- much for the better, but not without a bit of nostalgia for the less complicated life of days long past. The 1956 legislation launched the construction of superhighways with wider lanes designed to accommodate higher speeds, with no intersections, traffic signals or rail crossings to interfere with the steady flow. Today, more than 46,000 miles of highway crisscross the nation, forming a system that includes 82 tunnels, some 14,000 interchanges and more than 55,000 bridges. Over the years, the establishment of this system has changed the tourism industry and vacation habits and led to the ubiquitous "weekend getaway" that has been embraced by the traveling public.
AA06157
Golway, Terry FIREFIGHTERS (American Heritage, vol. 56, no. 6, November/December 2005, pp. 36-49)
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Golway traces the four-hundred-year-old tradition of firefighting in America, beginning in the seventeenth century when all able-bodied males were obliged to fight fires. In the eighteenth century, growing cities formed volunteer fire departments, which gave way to paid, professional ones a century later. While not overlooking the controversies that have surrounded this overwhelmingly male and largely white profession, Golway focuses on the traditions and heroism that have marked firefighters throughout history. "September 11 was unprecedented, but a 1740s fireman would have recognized the selflessness shown that day," he asserts. Sidebars show some of the milestones in the history of fire-extinction technology and explain why Hollywood always gets it wrong.
AA06139
Dvorak, John SAN FRANCISCO THEN AND NOW (American Heritage, vol. 57, no. 2, April/May 2006, pp. 55-60)
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This year marks the 100th anniversary of the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco. The article describes how the city recovered from one of the greatest natural disasters to strike the U.S., and the potential earthquake threats that lie ahead. The author, who studied earthquakes for 16 years at the U.S. Geological Survey, continues to monitor potential and real-time quakes. San Francisco is his favorite city and he gives a wonderful written "tour" of the architectural survivors.
AA06102
Cole, Bruce; Roberts, Cokie WOMEN OF INFLUENCE: A CONVERSATION WITH COKIE ROBERTS (Humanities, vol. 27, no. 1, January/February 2006, pp. 6-9, 51-54)
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Cole, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, talked with news analyst Cokie Roberts about her recent book, FOUNDING MOTHERS, and the importance of women in U.S. political history. Comparing the recent advances of women in politics with the role women played in the early days of the Republic, Roberts also discussed the difficulties of locating the original letters and manuscripts that formed the basis of the book. In a related article, "A Life in Letters: The Story of John and Abigail Adams," Maggie Riechers writes about the influence of Abigail Adams on her husband, President John Adams, throughout their fifty-year marriage.
AA06049
Gibson, Christine A VERY LIVING PAST (American Legacy, vol. 11, no. 2, Summer 2005, pp. 34-42)
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Over the past several years, photographer Sarah Hoskins has been documenting African-American hamlets in the counties around Lexington, Kentucky, known as the Inner Bluegrass Region. Founded by newly-freed slaves after the Civil War, several dozen communities are believed to have once existed in this area; 29 of them remain, and many are threatened by suburban expansion around Lexington. Most are still populated with the fifth- and sixth-generation descendants of the original residents. The hamlets came about when former slaveowners gave, or sold at a low price, land to their former slaves; as recently as the early 1970s, many of them still worked on the same estates where their great-grandfathers had been slaves. Hoskins, who has taken about 11,000 pictures, notes that these villages had never before been the subject of a photographic survey, saying that "African-American history has been so neglected in this country ... and has been literally bulldozed over."
AA05303
Shenk, Joshua Wolf LINCOLN'S GREAT DEPRESSION (Atlantic Monthly, vol. 296, no. 3, October 2005, pp. 52-68)
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Abraham Lincoln's melancholy demeanor was familiar to everyone who knew him; he suffered throughout his life from what would now be called clinical depression, experiencing several major depressive attacks in his twenties and thirties, and frequently talking about suicide. Much new insight has been gained in recent years on Lincoln's life by researchers studying previously-ignored reminiscences of people who knew him. Despite his foreboding outlook on life, he was becoming an increasingly successful lawyer and politician. The author notes that if Lincoln were alive today, he would be considered as having a "character flaw", but in the nineteenth century, gloom was associated with genius -- a "fearful gift" with the capacity for depth and wisdom. Shenk notes that Lincoln's lifelong struggle to come to grips with his depression provided him with vital skills in confronting adversity, and with insight and conviction that made him a spellbinding public speaker. The greatness that Lincoln achieved in abolishing slavery and guiding the country through the chaos of the Civil War was not by overcoming his depression. Shenk writes that Lincoln's story is "not of transformation but integration ... his melancholy was all the more fuel for the fire of his great work."
AA05214
Morrill, Jim PROMISED LANDS (American Legacy, vol. 10, no. 3, Fall 2004, pp. 21-26)
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In the 1860s, members of the Tolbert family were among the many freed American slaves that fled persecution in post-Civil War South Carolina for the newly independent African nation of Liberia, a movement started by the American Colonization Society. To many of the freedmen, Liberia seemed like a "utopia", with a climate and fertile soil similar to South Carolina. However, after the violent 1980 coup led by Samuel Doe, thousands of Liberians, including Tolberts, fled Liberia for South Carolina -- from where their ancestors had left more than a century earlier. A recent reunion of the Tolbert family brought attention to the divide between African Liberians and those with American ancestry, and hopes of eventually returning to Liberia.
AA05165
Hirshey, Gerri HISTORY HAPPENED HERE (Parade, May 8, 2005, pp. 4-7)
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A growing number of community groups in cities and towns across the U.S. are banding together to save local landmarks -- battlefields, classic movie theaters, houses of famous persons, abandoned train stations - even early McDonald's fast-food restaurants, and even the bus that Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of, which now resides in the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. The realization that unrecognized historical sites are being destroyed has prompted a wide variety of groups and foundations to rescue them, and the author notes that it has "changed perceptions of what's worth saving."
AA05136
Stewart, Jeffrey C. FIFTY CIVIL RIGHTS MOMENTS AFTER ROSA PARKS: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE IGNORANT (Savoy, vol. 1, no. 1, February 2005, pp. 84-95)
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After ceasing publication in 2003, Savoy magazine is back. This premier issue features the 50th year since Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white man, sparking the birth of the contemporary Civil Rights Movement. Historian Jeffrey Stewart spotlights 50 good, bad and ignorant civil rights moments that have taken place since December 1955 -- ranging from the 1956 incident in which Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and his wife sat-in on seats in the "white" section of a bus terminal waiting room -- through the arrest of six black middle-school students for attacking three white students in what is billed as a "hate crime" in Jacksonville, Florida in August of 2004.