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Lincoln Takes Charge
The North sustained its most tragic single defeat in the Civil War on December 13, 1862, when waves of blue infantry under General Ambrose E. Burnside, in assault after assault, were flung back from the heights behind Fredericksburg, Virginia. The total battle casualties of the Union Army reached nearly thirteen thousand; never were men left in bloody windrows by a more senseless and futile...
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The Battle Of Fredericksburg
In spite of his imposing appearance and courageous fighting record. Major General Ambrose K. Burnside (left) was a well-meaning incompetent who led the Union Army of the Potomac to its crudest defeat. On December 13, 1862, after a costly crossing of the Rappahannock River at Fredericksburg, Virginia, he ordered a frontal assault on Lee’s Confederate army, which was securely dug in along the low,...
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In Defense Of The Bald Eagle
 The bald eage is in trouble. Big trouble. Not only is his physical existence threatened, but historians are attacking his status as the proud and soaring symbol of the Republic. Naturalists report that there are fewer than a thousand pairs of this native species left in the entire country. The guns of hunters, the inroads of civilization, and the ingestion of DDT in dead fish are...
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The Law To Make Free Enterprise Free
Ever since the Civil War there has been a continuous conflict between two opposing ideals in American economic thinking. The first of them says that business management, if relieved from the rigors of cutthroat competition, will be fair and benevolent. The age of competition is over, the theory continues, and great corporations with the power to dominate prices benefit the economy. In the field...
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All The King’s Horses… And All The King’s Men
Lexington and Concord may argue for another hundred years about where the shot heard round the world was actually fired, but to the town of Salem, over on the Massachusetts coast, the question will remain largely academic. The point of the discussion, after all, is where the War of Independence began, and Salem has her own claims to the honor. It was at Salem’s North River Bridge, two months...
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A Man To Match The Mountains
David Thompson was a short, stocky man with snub nose and hair “cut square” across his forehead in a way that made him resemble John Bunyan. That is all we know about his looks. Until recently, historians knew little about who David Thompson was or what he did, and even today, few people recognize his name. Among those familiar with his exploits, however, he is now deemed one of the most...
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A Soviet View Of Six Great Americans
Much can be learned about a country from its attitude toward history. Some nations revere the past, some seem indifferent, while others try to tamper with it. For the temptation that besets a tyrant is continually to rewrite the historical record. He not only insists on being infallible, he wants always to have been infallible. If he should change his mind, history must be revised accordingly—...
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WASHINGTON, George (1732-1799), prominent American statesman of the era of the American British colonies’ struggle for their independence; commander in chief of the colonial troops; President of the United States in 1789-97. The son of a large Virginia plantation owner, Washington engaged in land speculation and amassed a huge fortune. On the eve of and during the Seven Years’ War (1756-63),...
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Most of the particular judgments of the Soviet Encyclopedia could be found in the writings of American historians, though not so easily in current American historical writings and though not necessarily with the same emphasis. But of course they are so arranged as to seem—to Western eyes—“true but not the truth.” And some of them are badly awry. For example: Mass extermination of Indians ....
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JEFFERSON, Thomas (1743-1826). Jefferson was the most outstanding American philosopher of the eighteenth century, the ideologist of the bourgeoisdemocratic tendency during the War of Independence of North America, 1775-83 ( q.v. ) and President of the U.S.A., 1801-09. He came from the circles of the land-owning aristocracy of Virginia, and received a broad education. In 1769 he was elected...
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It is understandable that Jefferson should receive relatively sympathetic treatment at the hands of Soviet encyclopedists. Here is the man who said at the time of Shays’ Rebellion: “God forbid that we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion…The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” But he coupled these observations with the...
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TWAIN, Mark (pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne Clemens; 1835-1910), a great American writer and publicist, was born in Florida, Missouri, of a family of provincial judges. Having worked as a typesetter, soldier, boat-pilot on the Mississippi, reporter, and gold prospector in Nevada, Twain’s literary activity began after the Civil War of 1861-65, under conditions of growing capitalist...
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The principal feature of this article is its determination to make the facts of history and biography fit into a neat pattern. The pattern is that of the class struggle, conceived in very simple fashion as the struggle of the virtuous masses against the wicked bourgeoisie . As a result, the tone is highly moralistic. Mark Twain would not be so widely read in Russia if his work did not lend...
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ROOSEVELT, Theodore (1858-1919), American statesman, President of the United States in 1901-09, belonged to the Republican party. He was Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 1897-98, and Governor of New York in 1899-1900. In 1901 he became Vice President of the United States and, after the assassination of President McKinley in September 1901, President of the United States. In 1904 he was...
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The Russians’ description of Theodore Roosevelt proves once again that you don’t have to resort to outright lies to be a good prevaricator. There are few factual errors in their story, but they achieve their objective of picturing him as a typical capitalist warmonger by selection and omission, not by direct falsification. Shrewdly, they concentrate their fire on Roosevelt’s attitude toward big...
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ROCKEFELLER , family of mightiest financial magnates in the U.S. John Davison Rockefeller (1839-1937), its founder, established the Standard Oil Trust ( q.v. ) which soon monopolized the petroleum industry in the United States. Through all sorts of speculative machinations J. D. Rockefeller amassed the largest fortune in the U.S. and in the whole world. In 1911 his son, John Davison, Jr. (b....
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The grandiosity, the slapdash lines, and the raw black-white-and-red colors give this study of the Rockefellers all the effectiveness of a Toulouse-Lautrec poster. It is entirely sound except that it shows little comprehension of what the Rockefellers really did; no understanding of big-business organization in the United States; and no grasp of the regulatory activities of American government...
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ROOSEVELT, Franklin (born 1882)—President of the U.S.A. From 1907—an active Democratic [party] leader. Became a member of the New York State Senate in 1910; Assistant to the Secretary of the Navy, 1913-21; Governor of the State of New York, 1928-32. Became President of the U.S.A. in 1933. Roosevelt was the spokesman of those strata of the American bourgeoisie which, under the conditions of...
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ROOSEVELT, Franklin (born 1882)—outstanding American statesman. From 1907—an active Democratic [party] leader. Became a member of the New York State Senate in 1910; Assistant to the Secretary of the Navy, 1913-21; Governor of the State of New York, 1928-32. Became President of the U.S.A. in 1933. Having become President under conditions of a severe economic crisis that had greatly affected...
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In early 1954, the subscribers to the Large Soviet Encyclopedia received a letter from its publishers, which ‘“recommended” that certain pages in Volume II be removed, “with scissors or razor blade,” and that in their place “the enclosed pages containing a new text” be inserted. The pages to be removed contained a biography of “the great son of the Georgian people,” Lavrentii P. Beria (who in...
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The Great White City
When the plans for the World’s Columbian Exposition were spread before him, banker Lyman J. Gage greeted them with disbelief. “Oh, gentlemen,” he said, “this is a dream. Yon have my good wishes. I hope the dream can be realized.” The occasion—one the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens called “the greatest meeting of artists since the fifteenth century”was a day-long session in the architectural...
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What Was That, A Shot?
Sir,—In obedience to your Excellency’s commands, I marched on the evening of the 18th inst. with the corps of grenadiers and light infantry for Concord, to execute your Excellency’s orders with respect to destroying all ammunition, artillery, tents, &c, collected there....I think it proper to observe, that when I had got some miles on the march from Boston, I detached six light infantry...
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Reading, Writing, And History
Dire and Diabolical The Reformer The Manipulator
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Dire And Diabolical
It is a theory of democracy that a free society will produce men fitted for leadership when leadership is needed. It does this sometimes in unlikely ways. No one could have foreseen, for instance, that frontier Illinois would bring forward an Abraham Lincoln, or that the narrow Knickerbocker society of New York would send up a Theodore Roosevelt, at the precise moment when such men were wanted...
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The Reformer
Between the career of Stimson and that of Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts there is a striking contrast. One was a man of immense solidity, moving slowly to his tragic moment of decision, aware that what seemed to be a choice for good might also be a choice for undying evil; the other was all flame and arrogance, sure of his own wisdom, plagued by no doubts, plunging ahead with the...
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The Manipulator
Neither the profound sense of reaching forward into the unknown nor the bitterness of unbridled passion attaches to the career of Judge David Davis of Illinois; yet this man’s life, too, is worth examining, even in the context set by the examination of the lives of Secretary Stimson and Senator Sumner. For Judge Davis had a great deal to do with the purely political decision that made Abraham...
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The Controversial Commoner
When McKeighan died [William McKeighan, Nebraska free-silverite], Bryan came down to the sun-scorched, dried-up, blown-away little village of Red Cloud to speak at his funeral. There, with an audience of some few hundreds of bronzed farmers who believed in him as their deliverer, the man who could lead them out of the bondage of debt, who could stay the drought and strike water from the rock, I...
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Wilson On Democracy
What is democracy that it should be possible, nay natural, to some nations, impossible as yet to others? Why has it been a cordial and a tonic to little Switzerland and to big America, while it has been as yet only a quick intoxicant or a slow poison to France and Spain, a mere maddening draught to the South American states? Why has England approached democratic institutions by slow and steady...
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Reading, Writing, And History
Pioneers at Sea The Racing Machines The Shanghai Passage
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Pioneers At Sea
The story of America, we frequently remind ourselves, is the story of the conquest of a continent. It begins at Jamestown, at Plymouth, or wherever one chooses, and goes through forests, mountains, and prairies all the way to the sunset; and it shows a restless, acquisitive, and usually indomitable breed of men converting an immense stretch of land to the uses of a large, energetic, and...
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The Racing Machines
The climactic years of sail were spectacular all along the line. In addition to devising transatlantic vessels which for a time held their own with steam, American designers and traders brought out the Cape Horn clippers, the inexpressibly beautiful ships that set unimaginable speed records and captured men’s imaginations as no other form of transportation has ever done. The clippers were...
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The Shanghai Passage
It remains to make one more point which is essential to any attempt to understand the heyday and the long decline of the American sailing ship. It was a time which was very hard on the ships themselves, but it was infinitely harder on the men who sailed them. The foremast hands who took those winged racers so far and so fast were driven much more mercilessly than the ships they manned. The...
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The Parson And The Bluestocking
 When we scan the newspapers of New England for the year 1847 we are inclined to marvel at what failed to constitute a scandal in those pre-atomic times. Inserted among notices of mortgage sales and advertisements for elixirs guaranteed to cure everything from the croup to a dropped womb, we come upon such stirring accounts as that of Eliza McCormick, a servant girl who masqueraded as a bank...
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A Civil War Proposal
Toward the end of the Civil War a Connecticut captain with the felicitous name of Valentine laid urgent siege to a lady’s heart. Lacking the time (or perhaps the money) to have his photograph taken for the cartes de visite then the rage, he substituted a sketch of himself—shown below mounted over a portion of the letter ill-treated by time. What happened to the marital hopes of the rest of the...
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Faces From The Past-V
“My lamp is nearly burned out,” he admitted, “and the last glimmer has come.” For the past two years not a day had passed when he was free of pain; one lung was gone, the other diseased; he was tormented alternately by dropsy and diarrhea, racked by chills and fever. He sat quietly in the armchair, saving himself, a wasted figure in an old-fashioned, snuff-colored coat with high stiff collar....
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The Old Showman’s Last Triumph
No one ever accused Phineas Taylor Barnum of being modest. For more than fifty years this self-acknowledged “prince of humbugs” so thoroughly fooled, fleeced, and entertained the American public that the name Barnum itself became as famous as the artists and oddities he put on display. Jenny Lind, General Tom Thumb, the Bearded Lady, the Siamese Twins, Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy, Jumbo the Elephant...
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The Water War
 Beyond the Missouri River, water has been almost a sacred commodity—accorded the same passionate respect that it received in the Bible lands. There is an old saying in the West: “Steal my horse, carry off my wife, but don’t touch my water.” Ever since the American frontier reached the great bend of the Missouri, water—or the lack of it—has been the chief determinant of western development....
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The Sunny Master Of Sunnyside
 ”I seek only to blow a flute accompaniment in the national concert, and leave others to play the fiddle and the French horn.” So wrote Washington Irving early in his long career:I have attempted no lofty theme, nor sought to look wise and learned, which appears to be very much the fashion among our American writers, at present. I have preferred addressing myself to the feelings and fancy of...
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Bryan: The Progressives: Part I
Americans are a proud, ambitious, and hopeful people; they are easily riled when life does not measure up to their expectations, and quick to express their displeasure. Only one “era of good feelings” is recorded in our history; it was short, merely superficially calm, and quickly followed by the broils and battles of the Age of Jackson. On the other hand, fundamental conflicts of interest and...
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An Illustrated Washington Irving Miscellany
One of the qualities that has given Washington Irving a lasting reputation in American literature is his extraordinary ability to paint a picture with words, to evoke the sights and sounds and smells of spirited battles, peaceful landscapes, and the colorful legends of the past. His pages abound in passages of almost irresistible appeal to the artist. “You opened to me.” the British painter C...
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Knickerbocker’s History Of New York
When in 1809 Irving published a satiric history of Dutch New York, he adopted the pseudonym “Diedrich Knickerbocker,” described in press notices as “a small elderly gentleman, dressed in an old black coat and cocked hat” who had strangely disappeared, leaving behind a very curious manuscript. Irving, whose authorship was known almost immediately, hoped that his popular spoof would long be “...
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Jack Jouett’s Ride
If you mean to be a historical figure, it is a good idea to get in touch with a leading literary figure—a Longfellow, a Homer, a Virgil. Paul Revere, Odysseus, Aeneas—they all took this precaution. Poor Captain Jack Jouett didn’t. And as a result this six-foot-four, two-hundred-pound giant from Virginia, who saved the leaders of the American Revolution from a disheartening and possibly disastrous...
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Captain Cook’s American
If a judicious fate had deliberately selected one American as the first of his countrymen to see Alaska and Hawaii, our future forty-ninth and fiftieth states—to represent America to them, and them to America—it could hardly have chosen better than in John Ledyard of Connecticut. He was a man who seemed to have bred into his very bones an intuitive grasp of those American ideals which his friend...
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The Great Deception
Pure communism has been tried a few times in America by various Utopian communities, all of which eventually failed. Pure Marxism later attracted, relatively speaking, only a modest body of adherents. And the American Communist party, which was neither purely communist in the old sense nor true to the Marxist ideology, would seem—by the surface statistics, at least—to have been of no great...
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“I Kneel Only To God And Woman”
It was midsummer, and by the calendar of the Foreign Dogs of the West, the year 1859. Word came to the royal Chinese officials at Peking that an American barbarian chieftain, John E. Ward, was at the coast awaiting arrangements to proceed to the capital. He bore a letter from his Emperor, James Buchanan, addressed to the Divine Son of Heaven, and he was also ready to exchange ratified copies of...
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Penn’s City: American Athens
Until he journeyed to Philadelphia in 1774 to attend the meetings of the First Continental Congress, John Adams had never been out of his native New England. He had even been thinking of quietly retiring to his Braintree farm when the explosive atmosphere in and about Boston (watchful redcoats camped on the Common that summer) thrust him from his own beleaguered part of the world into the main...
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Reading, Writing, And History
Where the Buck Stops Failure of a President The Meaning of Victory
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Where The Buck Stops
When Harry Truman was President of the United States, he kept on his desk a little sign which announced: “The Buck Stops Here.” This was his salty way of acknowledging the constitutional provision which makes the President the commander in chief of the country’s armed forces and hence vests in him the terrible responsibility for making the life-or-death decisions that have to be made in time...
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Failure Of A President
One American President usually gets omitted from the list of chief executives who have led their countrymen in time of war. Jefferson Davis was also a war President; and if he was not President of the United States, he was at least President of an American nation whose constitution, as far as war powers were concerned, was almost identical with that of the United States. Is it possible to shed...
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The Meaning Of Victory
Meanwhile, there was Lincoln, who—perhaps more than any other President—saw the full potentialities of a President’s wartime powers and used them up to the hilt. What about him? What came of his essay in understanding and exercising the enormous authority which the Constitution gives to a chief executive in time of war? A great deal came of it, including a complete transformation of...
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