Roundup: Talking About History

Ronald Schechter : The Ghosts of Alfred Dreyfus

[Ronald Schechter is the Margaret L. Hamilton associate professor of history at the College of William and Mary and the author of "Obstinate Hebrews: Representations of Jews in France, 1715-1815" (University of California Press, 2003).] On July 12, France will celebrate the centennial of the acquittal of Alfred Dreyfus, the Jewish military officer whose false indictment on a charge of treason set off a political scandal in the country. In a certain light, it would

James Carroll: A Masterpiece Rumor of the Great War

The battle of the Somme was raging in northern France -- a clash of armies that would result in more than a million casualties. The Entente and the Central Powers faced each other from trenches arrayed along a stretch of No Man's Land in the river valley. Periodically, one side or the other would charge, but mainly it was British soldiers rushing out of the trenches, aiming at the great breakthrough of which the high command was always dreaming.... It so happened that, under the mud

Patricia O'Toole: T.R. failed in his brash bid to regain the White House, but his Bull Moose Party pushed ideas that would animate the century

When Theodore Roosevelt challenged William Howard Taft for the Republican presidential nomination in 1912, few cheered. Enemies accused him of monumental egotism, and most admirers, foreseeing his defeat, were worried that posterity would frown on his quest for an unprecedented third term. But as Roosevelt saw it, he had to involve himself. He had left the White House in 1909 with the expectation that Taft, his good friend and chosen successor, would continue on the progressive co

Nathan Newman: Ulysses Grant: ...Our Greatest President?

[Mr. Newman received a law degree from Yale and a PhD in sociology from Berkeley.] In 1854, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison led a crowd celebrating Independence Day by burning the Constitution, denouncing it as "A Convenant With Death and an Agreement with Hell." His worthy point was that the founding fathers of the nation had make a mockery of their own words with the stain of slavery and deserved scorn for the constitutional product of their labors. So as we c

Lisa Jardine: When War Disburses Art

[The theft of art during war has always taken place, says Lisa Jardine. But the recent plundering of historic remains in Iraq and Afghanistan threatens the permanent loss of the record of ancient civilisations.] I went to look at a painting at Christie's on Monday, by the early-20th-Century Austrian artist Egon Schiele. Wilted Sunflowers is a largish landscape - about a metre square. In the foreground are half-a-dozen tall, withered sunflower stems, silhouetted again

John Tierney: What If the South HAD Seceded?

On Independence Day, would we all be happier with even more independence? What if government of the people meant that the Red people in the South and the Blue people in the North had a border between them? This question used to be of interest mainly to Southerners mourning their Lost Cause, but nowadays Northerners have their own reason to lament. The South is gaining seats in Congress at their expense, and four of the last five presidents have come from the South.... I

Francois Furstenberg: The Founders' Founders

[François Furstenberg, an assistant professor of history at the University of Montreal, is the author of "In the Name of the Father: Washington's Legacy, Slavery and the Making of a Nation."] EACH year, dozens of new books feed an insatiable public appetite for stories about the men who made the American nation. While some writers and scholars denounce the elitism, racism and most of all the slaveholding of the nation's founders, others defend them and deplore the debunkin

Edwin G. Burrows: Devil's Island, New York

[Edwin G. Burrows, a history professor at Brooklyn College and the co-author of "Gotham: A History of New York to 1898," is the author of the forthcoming "The Prisoners of New York."] NEW YORKERS are a famously restless, impatient sort of people, focused more on where they're going than where they've been. That's a real pity where the American Revolution is concerned, because the city played a key role in the resistance to King George III that led up to the Decla

Roger Kimball: The Forgotten Founder

Who is the most unfairly neglected American Founding Father? You might think that none can be unfairly neglected, so many books about that distinguished coterie have been published lately. John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Washington--whom have I left out? It has been a literary festival of Founders these last few years, and a good thing, too. But there is one figure, I believe, who has yet to get his due, and that is John Witherspoon (172

Frederick Douglass: What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?

Frederick Douglass, at an Independence Day meeting sponsored by the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society in 1852, as reprinted by the Nation in 2005:This...is the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom.... It carries your minds back to the day, and to the act of your great deliverance; and to the signs, and to the wonders, associated with that act.... Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance.... The principles contained in [the Declaration of Independence] are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost....

Christopher Reed: Japan's Foreign Minister Taro Aso refuses to acknowledge his family firm's use of PoWs as forced labour

[Christopher Reed is a British freelance journalist based in Japan.] THE next time Japan's Foreign Minister Taro Aso visits Australia, there are a handful of blokes who would like to talk to him about the time they worked for his dad at the Aso family coalmine. But it would not be a cosy meeting. The former Aso workers are Australian prisoners of war who in 1945 were forced to endure slave conditions at one of the pits owned by Aso's family business, which dates back to the 1

Mary Beth Norton: History Under Construction in Florida

AS a historian, I love facts. I especially love facts about early America, the subject I have researched, taught and written about for more than 40 years. The Florida Legislature would seem to share my enthusiasm. An education law it recently enacted insists, "American history shall be viewed as factual, not as constructed" and "shall be viewed as knowable, teachable and testable." The statute places particular importance on the facts of the Declaration of Independence, which

R. J. Del Vecchio: Vietnam War Myths ... Response to Ron Briley

[R. J. Del Vecchio is a veteran activist and long-time student of the conflict in SE Asia, starting prior to joining the Marines and serving in the 1st Marine Division in 1968. He has been making presentations on the war as a guest lecturer at colleges and high schools since 1996, is active in several veteran’s organizations, and was a speaker at the 2004 Boston Conference on the Myths of Viet Nam. He is a co-author of “Whitewash/Blackwash: Myths of the Viet Nam War”, a teacher’s aid booklet com

Glenn W. LaFantasie: On the vast differences between the world of the Civil War and our own

[Glenn W. LaFantasie, the Frockt Family Professor of Civil War History at Western Kentucky University, is the author of Gettysburg Requiem: The Life and Lost Causes of Confederate Colonel William C. Oates.]

George F. Will: Gone with the Wind, Indeed

Confined to her bed in Atlanta by a broken ankle and arthritis, she was given a stack of blank paper by her husband, who said, "Write a book." Did she ever. The novel's first title became its last words, "Tomorrow is another day," and at first she named the protagonist Pansy. But Pansy became Scarlett, and the title of the book published 70 years ago this week became "Gone With the Wind." You might think that John Steinbeck, not Margaret Mi

Ralph Luker: Access to King's papers also key

[Ralph E. Luker of Atlanta co-edited the first two volumes of "The Papers of Martin Luther King Jr." He is now preparing the Vernon Johns Papers for publication.] Thirty-two million dollars and what do you get? Fifty years ago, Tennessee Ernie Ford scored a hit with his recording of "Sixteen Tons," originally recorded by Merle Travis. The song's lyrics said: "You load 16 tons and what do you get?" The answer was "Another d

Peter M. Whiteley: Hopi gift culture and its first encounter with the United States

[Peter M. Whiteley was co-curator of the exhibition “Totems to Turquoise: Native North American Jewelry Arts of the Northwest and Southwest,” which was featured at the American Museum of Natural History from October 30, 2004, to July 10, 2005. A curator in the Division of Anthropology at the Museum, Whiteley also teaches anthropology at Columbia University and at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His doctoral degree, from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, was bas

Rebecca Solnit: Of illegal immigration and bloodshed -- in 1846? Celebrated killings highlight dubious path to statehood in CA

[Rebecca Solnit is the author of "Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities" and "River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West."] The place where the teenage twins were murdered was beautiful, and the men who killed them and their uncle were to become among the most celebrated in the United States. But on that Sunday, June 28, 1846 -- 160 years ago -- the murder site just north of San Francisco was not in the United States. It

Karl Rove: Lessons from a Larger-than-Life President

Theodore Roosevelt is one of the most remarkable figures in America's story. Adventurous, brave, opinionated, a larger-than-life personality, he was a man of action, energy and motion. T.R. loved what he called "the literature of history"--and wanted to be a key actor in America's great drama. Roosevelt was not perfect by any means--but he was an extraordinary man by any reasonable measure. He was among our most consequential Presidents, changing America in deep and lastin

Richard Lacayo: TR's Lasting Impact

Presidents come and go, but monuments are always with us. There's a reason Theodore Roosevelt is the only 20th century President whose face is carved into Mount Rushmore, the only one who could hold his own with Washington, Lincoln and Jefferson. Roosevelt not only remade America, but he also charmed the pants off everybody while he did it. And just short of a century after he left the White House, in 1909, the collective memory of his strength and intellect and charisma still lingers. How many