History
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“Bloodshed, Bedlam and Squalor and Worse”: Washington, D.C. in the Words of Donald Trump
I one asked a historian friend what he thought the “Again” referred to in “MAGA.” He replied, “It means they want to be children again, opening up presents in the living room.” Good point. I want that, too. But I also know that it was not perfect—that there was addiction, that we wanted money, that Continue reading
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Was the Civil War “For” What It Was “About”? Part Two.
What dire offence from am’rous causes springs,What mighty contests rise from trivial things. –Alexander Pope A few years ago, I was waiting to go into the prison with a group of other volunteers, and overheard some men from a local Bible study group discussing the idea of reparations for slavery. They seemed to think the Continue reading
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Was the Civil War “For” What It Was “About”? Part One.
What dire offence from am’rous causes springs,What mighty contests rise from trivial things. –Alexander Pope One of my colleagues currently has a student who claimed in class that the Civil War “was not about slavery.” That’s a popular argument with Lost Causers. But is it true? It seems like a good time to revisit the Continue reading
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“The Infinitely Divided Star-Dust,” Part One: Pettifogging
“Shakespeare couldn’t have written Shakespeare’s words, for the reason that the man who wrote them was limitlessly familiar with the laws, and the law-courts, and law-proceedings, and lawyer-talk, and lawyer-ways—and if Shakespeare was possessed of the infinitely divided star-dust that constituted this vast wealth, HOW did he get it, and WHERE and WHEN?” -Mark Twain, Continue reading
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Gettysburg Photoblogging: Day One
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep,And miles to go before I sleep. ON THE MORNING OF JULY 1,1863, Brigadier General John Reynolds, in command of the First Corps, uttered his final orders–“Forward, men! Forward for God’s sake, and drive those fellows out of Continue reading
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“Nothing Was Right, Except the Courage”: How Effective Was the Militia, Really?
I WAS BORN AND RAISED IN MINUTEMAN COUNTRY, and those guys were everywhere: at parades, at town celebrations, at Fenway Park. Our town newspaper was The Billerica Minuteman. I often rode my bike through Lexington and Arlington on The Minuteman Trail. And, yes, I made many visits to Concord to swim in Walden Pond, and Continue reading
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Visitor from a “Foreign Country”: The Curious Case of John W. Haley
“Now and then the haze of the dead years thins out and shows us a few of these young men and we are left with long thoughts.” –Bruce Catton, Gettysburg: The Final Fury We are often exhorted, when encountering problematic words and actions from people in the 19th Century, to keep in mind the adage Continue reading
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