Probity And Zeal
December 1988 | Volume 39, Issue 8
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Here is the upright and honorable public man of mid-nineteenth-century America. Rufus Choate (1799-1859), a prominent lawyer who served terms as a congressman and a senator as well as attorney general of Massachusetts, was a man without a moment to spare or lose. Here we can see his heavy coat trying to calm his necktie’s urgent flight and subdue the surge of his waistcoat; his emphatic, mobile tailoring betrays the wayward force of his thought. Lincoln wore his clothes like this; so did Poe and Emerson. The costume does general honor to propriety but perpetually bursts info small fits of fold and corner that express the volatile man within.
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Recently added:
- American Revolution Center
- National Museum of Civil War Medicine
- National Museum of the U.S. Navy
- Manassas National Battlefield
- Maryland State House
In association with the
American Association for State and Local History
Why do we need a national nonprofit membership society for American history?
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“Save America’s Treasures” has been totally eliminated—the largest Federal program supporting preservation of such treasures as the original Star Spangled Banner and George Washington’s tent.
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65% of Americans don’t know what happened at the Constitutional Convention, according to a recent survey by Newsweek.
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The “Teaching American History” grants—the largest Federal program supporting history education—have been completely eliminated.
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Visits to the Top 20 Civil War battlefields have dropped in half from 1970 to 2009 according to official National Park Service statistics.
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40% of Americans can’t identify whom we fought in World War II, according to a recent survey by Newsweek.
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A quarter of Americans believe Congress shares power over U.S. foreign policy with the United Nations, according to a recent Annenberg survey.
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“There is little that is more important for an American citizen to know than the history and traditions of his country,” John F. Kennedy wrote in American Heritage.
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The “We the People Program,” which touched some 30 million students and 90,000 teachers over 25 years, has been completely eliminated.
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Two-thirds of Americans could not correctly name Yorktown as the last major military action of the American Revolution, according to a recent national Gallup survey.
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The National Heritage Areas and Scenic Byways program, the only major Federal program encouraging visits to historic places, has been completely eliminated in Congressional committee.
