Why Jamestown Matters
If the colony had collapsed the English might not have been established as the major colonial power in North America
Winter 2008 | Volume 58, Issue 3
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EmailFew other places in America so richly symbolize both the good and bad of our shared past. Jamestown matters because it is about coming to terms with that past; a past at times painful and conflicted but which eventually laid the foundations of modern America. At Jamestown, Indians, the English, and Africans first encountered one another, lived and worked alongside one another, survived and persisted, and in so doing began the long drawn out process—often contentious, sometimes tragic, but ultimately successful—by which together they shaped a new world and forged a new people.
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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.
