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The Lost Opportunity
Lee had the game in his hand. McClellan’s army was penned in between the James and the Chickahominy, and on the map—and if Lee’s army had been what it was a year later—Lee had it in his power to destroy him. He could hang on McClellan’s rear, send his advance around to block his retreat, hit him in the flank as he moved, and win a shattering, conclusive victory. He saw it, planned it, ordered...
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Apple Pie Without Apples
Unlike the ladies of the abundant Pennsylvania Dutch country (see “Fill Yourself Up, Clean Your Plate,” beginning on page 56), the army wives who followed their officer husbands to the American frontier in the nineteenth century faced difficult problems of supply with respect to niceties of the culinary art. There was always plenty of beef—beef, beef, and more beef. But many vegetables as well...
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When Gentlemen Prepared For War
Few recall now those Plattsburg training camps of 1915 and 1916 where, during the dog days of late summer, several thousand sweaty, earnest businessmen-volunteers in unaccustomed khaki learned the manual of arms and how to form fours at a sleepy army post on the shores of Lake Champlain. The memory of their amateur soldiering—existing still in the minds of a few elderly men—has been obscured...
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Faces From The Past’xiv
Seventy-one years after the murders, doubt persists, and if you were to ask, “Was she guilty?” the chances are a good twenty-to-one that the answer would be affirmative. The law may protect a defendant from double jeopardy, but it cannot prevent the public from passing judgment. What might be called the public’s “case” against the rather plain young woman began long before the Commonwealth of...
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The Ordeal Of William Penn
If he had never come across the Great Sea, it he had never founded his peaceful commonwealth, we would still be in debt to William Penn. At twenty-six, with all his better-known achievements before him, he performed an enduring service to ihe liberties of the English-speaking world. It was London in 1670, ten years after the overthrow of Cromwell’s Puritans and the Restoration of the Stuarts. A...
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The Trumpeter Of Doomsday
On October 22, 1844, thousands of Americans in widely scattered localities left their homes tor what, they were perfectly convinced, would be the last time. Their leaders had meticulously corrected an earlier prediction that 1843 would be the final year. Now they were ready. Many of them had given away or abandoned their property; some had let their crops go to ruin. They went in...
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Farewell To The Ferry
Like closing enemy pincers on a battle map, the unfinished steel of a new bridge across the Hudson River brackets the ferryboat Orange as she steams toward Newburgh from Beacon, New York, in the year-old photo above. The scene was due to be repeated for a few months more—with Dutchess or Beacon , as often as not, cast in the role of the encircled victim. Then, early last November the...
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The Operator And The Emperors
E arly in 1863 there appeared in the cozy circle of Confederate agents and sympathizers in Paris a southern gentleman whose looks were fully as distinguished as his reputation. Erect and tall—he stood six feet two—with a massive head crowned by a backswept plume of iron-gray hair, he had aquiline features, a penetrating glance, and a hard, resolute mouth. He carried himself with an air of...
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The Last Days And Valiant Death Of Nathan Hale
Ever since he was executed by the British on the morning of September 22, 1776, the death of Nathan Hale has been recognized as one of the great moments of American patriotism. Some years ago the late George Dudley Seymour gathered all the contemporary descriptions of the young hero’s career that he could find, and had them privately printed in a Documentary Life of Nathan Hale . In the...
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Plessy V. Ferguson
 In the spring of 1885, Charles Dudley Warner, Mark Twain’s friend, neighbor, and onetime collaborator from Hartford, Connecticut, visited the International Exposition at New Orleans.  In the spring of 1885, Charles Dudley Warner, Mark Twain’s friend, neighbor, and onetime collaborator from Hartford, Connecticut, visited the International Exposition at New Orleans. He was astonished to...
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“fill Yourself Up, Clean Your Plate”
At the close of the nineteenLh century Rudyard Kipling saw southeastern Pennsylvania as a land of I “little houses and bursting big barns, fat cattle, fat women, and all as peaceful as Heaven might be if they farmed there.” This is the home of the Pennsylvania Dutch, and even today, when the face of rural America elsewhere has changed drastically in appearance, the Pennsylvania Dutch region...
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The City Of The Living God
To that small group of Spaniards who early in November, 1519, first glimpsed the city of Mexico (or Tenochtitlán, as the Indians also called it), the sight must have been unforgettable. “It is like the enchantments they tell of in the legend of Amadis!” one exclaimed. “Are not the things we see a dream?” Here was no scattering of primitive native huts but a magnificent city of stone rising...
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Maximilian In Mexico
Maximilian and Carlola—the faces of the Austrian archduke and his wife, the Belgian princess, seem to belong to the romantic leads of a light opera about some mythical Middle European principality. But because they allowed themselves to become the tools of a dictator’s grab for empire, their story turned out to be Graustark with a cruel twist. The attempt to place Maximilian on the throne of...
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Letters To The Editors
IN MEMORIAM, J.F.K. IN MEMORIAM, J.F.K. VICE VS. VIRTUE WAS PREVOST IDLE? WAS PREVOST IDLE? WASHINGTON AT VALLEY FORCE SNOBS AND TYRANTS
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In Memoriam, J.f.k.
In your December issue you enclosed a tribute to the late President Kennedy—a poem of Emily Dickinson’s written in 1865. … Both my husband and myself feel that the eight-line poem expressed better how most of us felt than all the millions of words that were written about Mr. Kennedy’s death.
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In Memoriam, J.f.k.
At first I was astonished that The Magazine of History had chosen so personal an expression of grief as Emily Dickinson’s poem. But I soon saw it was a perfect choice, for one of the most incredible features of this terrible and incredible business is that so many of us feel so personal a sorrow for a man we never laid eyes on.
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Vice Vs. Virtue
I am writing to protest the insolence of the author of “Vice vs. Virtue, A Puritan Remembrancer,” in the December, 1963, A MERICAN H ERITAGE . The question is not “… how could … people, … many of them our own forebears, have taken such things so literally and seriously?” The issue is, how could people in only a few decades degenerate to the point of openly ridiculing truth and righteousness...
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Was Prevost Idle?
War-of-1892 buffs hereabouts have greatly enjoyed Mr. C. S. Forester’s excellent article on the Plattsburg campaign in the [December] issue of A MERICAN H ERITAGE . But we think that the evidence contained in the enclosed selection from a British soldier’s campaign diary may lead Mr. Forester to modify or withdraw his statement that, on the day of the attack on Plattsburg “Prevost stayed...
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Was Prevost Idle?
Mr. Forester replies: I have said that “Prevost stayed idle in his lines” and I see no reason to modify this statement. A divisional general pushed a reconnaissance across the Saranac, presumably to make certain that the Americans were still in their lines; it cannot have been more than a reconnaissance when the casualty list totalled no more than thirtyseven. The two brigades mentioned...
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Washington At Valley Forge
On page 101 of the Oct. ’63 issue of A MERICAN H ERITAGE you characterize as apocryphal the story of Washington praying in the woods at Valley Forge. Please inform me of reading matter that supports the view you present. I am inclined to agree with you, but I’d like to have some basis for asserting it to pupils. The best summation of the evidence is in George Washington and...
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Snobs And Tyrants
Your handsomely got-up October issue contains at least two articles in which the Republicans, as usual, come off as snobs, tyrants, inept little men. … Why not a nice little article about the character and habits of “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald? Or Tammany Hall? … We published an article on Boston’s Mayor James Curley (“The Last of the Bosses”) in our June, 1959, issue. One on “Honey Fitz”...
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The Sound Of Bells
There is no documentary proof that the Liberty Bell actually rang to announce the Declaration of Independence in July of 1776. But if it did not, it must have seemed strange to the citizens of Philadelphia. The Liberty Bell, like all other town bells, was there for a reason. Bells and bell-ringing were an important part of everyone’s life two centuries ago, indispensable chroniclers of each...
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The Surrender Of Red Cloud
When news of the destruction of Big Foot’s band at Wounded Knee reached the Pine Ridge Reservation, the Sioux under Red Cloud—after Sitting Bull the most influential of the Dakota chiefs—immediately fled into the Bad Lands. What follows is an excerpt from the memoirs of Lieutenant Charles W. Taylor, who commanded a company of Indian scouts during the final negotiations. Additional troops...
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The Case Of The General’s Dog
The Battle of Germantown, on October 4, 1777, was a confusing affair. Washington’s troops struck a surprise blow at the Philadelphia suburb, overrunning the enemy outposts at dawn before sleepy British grenadiers could figure out what was happening. In the morning mist two units of the heavy American attacking force mutually mistook identities and wasted a good deal of ammunition on each other...
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Ten Nights In A Bar Room
It is in man that the spark of divinity rests. But the beasts of the forest and the cattle of the fields, YES, the dogs in their kennels and the hogs at their troughs, do not destroy the muscles of their bodies and the tissues of their brain with THE BOTTLE.” From torchlit platforms in countless American towns and villages, the warning was pounded home relentlessly throughout the nineteenth...
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“ten Nights” In Slides
The scene of T. S. Arthur’s gloomy sermon is the rural hamlet of Cedarville, where, during ten nights scattered over a decade, an anonymous travelling man observes the cancerous ravages of the saloon on an innocent community. Stopping for the First Night at the Sickle and Sheaf tavern, he is impressed by his neat lodgings and his friendly landlord, Simon Slade. But this seeming idyl is marred...
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“There Are No Indians Left Now But Me”
Sitting Bull, Chief of the Lakota SiouxIf Sitting Bull had not put his faith in a miracle, in the fateful winter of 1890, the American struggle with the Dakota Sioux—the last big Indian “war”—might have faded into a peaceful if pathetic accommodation between conqueror and conquered. But a miracle seemed the only refuge for the great old chief in that bitter season of a bitter year; and he thought...
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Mr. Hardy Lee, His Yacht.
When in 1857 a young Boston doctor published his refreshing volume of two dozen lithographs detailing the eventful nautical (and romantic) career of Mr. Hardy Lee, he probably did not realize that he was making a contribution of incalculable value to the pictorial history of American yachting. Nor did the fortunate recipients of the privately printed book (who, of course, knew the identity of the...
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“The Thundering Water”
 Right from the beginning Niagara Falls has been the big showpiece. Once the United States had begun, visitors who wanted to see what the country was like went to Niagara first of all, and probably they were quite right. This stupendous cataract is beautiful, romantic, overpowering, and somehow rather frightening; it can charm you and it can also kill you, and if its Rimy mists are...
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“We Are All Descended From Grandfathers!”
In this country there are no classes in the British sense of that word, no impassable barriers of caste.… Our society resembles rather the waves of the ocean, whose every drop may move freely among its fellows, and may rise toward the light until it flashes on the crest of the highest wave.—James A. Garfield, 1873 <!--break-->In this country there are no classes in the British sense of...
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Summer Sunday
The grim and vivid account which follows may strike some of our readers as a frightful fantasy. Unfortunately it all took place, detail for detail, in the year 1911. Since we believe, as this magazine regularly testifies, that the good in our past generously outweighs the bad, we never shrink from chronicling cruelty and rascality. Yet we might hesitate, even so, to print this unusually ugly...
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The First Flag-raising On Iwo Jima
Iwo Jima was a gray silhouette in the dawn of February 19, 1945, when we got our first look at it. The naval guns that would support our landing had started to thunder, and the target areas teemed with red perforations. From the deck of our transport we forty-six men of the 3rd Platoon of Company E, 2nd Battalion, 28th Marines, scanned the island apprehensively. We knew that its seven and a half...
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A Yankee Barbarian At The Shogun’s Court
In 1853 an American named Townsend Harris, a merchant who was spending most of his time that year between Hong Kong and Shanghai, pricked up his ears at the news that his government was planning to force a way into Japan. Harris was no longer young, and his business in the Far East had lately been so bad that he had been forced to sell his trading vessel. Consequently, he felt the strain of...
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Whaling Wife
“She was a small woman, weighing less than a hundred pounds, and she could stand erect under her husband’s outstretched arm without touching it.” So the editor of this previously unpublished journal describes its author, his grandmother, Eliza Azelia Williams. Its lively pages contain her account of a thirty-eight-month voyage, from 1858 to 1861, on the whaler Florida with her husband,...
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Reading, Writing, And History
Perhaps the most compelling words in American history are the simple words, “ the West .” From the earliest days, they have been the magnet; they have also been somewhat magical, because they evoke not merely the land where the sun goes down but also the vision of illimitable horizons—the place where there is a crack between the rim of the land and the bowl of the blue sky, through which...
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Epilogue
Late Sunday night, officials began arriving from West Chester, the county seat of Chester County, in which Coatesville was located. Soon the arrests came. In all, twelve men from Coatesville or neighboring areas were indicted for murder in varying degrees. Police Chief Charles E. Umsted and Officer Stanley Howe were indicted for involuntary manslaughter. The governor of Pennsylvania, John K....
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Letters To The Editors
REMEMBERING THE MAINE WIVES AND SWEETHEARTS DAYS OF GLORY A REMARKABLE BAMBOOZLER NOT PURELY SOCIAL BROWN IS GREEN GUNTER’S CHAIN A CORRECTION
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Remembering The Maine
Having read “The Great White Fleet” [in the February issue] I strolled down to the local hobby shop and bought a plastic model kit for the Oregon, Olympia and the Maine . I have no quarrel with the Oregon or the Olympia but when I got to the Maine, I made a revolting discovery —it was the same ship and kit as the Olympia except that one smokestack was moved.… Now as you are...
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Wives And Sweethearts
Being a veteran of the “Great White Fleet,” I read your article on its famous cruise with great interest, and I congratulate you on it. My wife was also interested… she and I met on that cruise, first at Monterey and later at San Francisco, which was her home. …The picture of officers drinking a toast was apparently a Junior Officers’ Mess, the more elderly gentleman on the left being the...
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Days Of Glory
As an octogenarian I cannot help telling you how much I enjoyed your article on the Overland Limited [December, 1963].… I am a railroad engineer’s daughter and all my family were railroad people.… More than once, until his death in 1906, my father was taken off his regular run to haul Theodore Roosevelt’s special train. Mr. Roosevelt always came forward to shake hands with the crew at the end...
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A Remarkable Bamboozler
I note on page 112 of the December 1963 AMERICAN HERITAGE a broadside referring to Bishop Talbot’s visit to Wallace, Idaho. Regrettably I must inform you that you have been taken in by a forgery committed by that remarkable old bamboozler and pioneer printer, Thomas J. Easterwood of Dundee, Oregon, whose papers it has fallen my lot to administer until they are made available for public use in...
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Not Purely Social
I have just received the February, 1964, issue of A MERICAN H ERITAGE , and note with much interest the cover illustration which reproduces a water-color drawing by the Russian Paul Svinin. The caption which describes this illustration contains references which are not strictly factual, however. The First Troop Philadelphia City Cavalry has two existences; and all of its “gatherings” are not...
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Brown Is Green
I am green with envy at the [February] cover illustration which I did not know existed, though I have Svinin’s book. Bravo to you for smoking it out and getting it into the light of day. Mrs. Brown is one of the foremost collectors of military pictures in America.
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Gunter’s Chain
In the February, 1964, issue, I was particularly interested in the Mason and Swindler article on the Mason and Dixon Line. On page 29 the following sentence appears: “Horizontal measurements were taken with a Gunter’s chain of sixty-six links on level ground.…” Perhaps the authors will be interested to know that the Gunter’s chain had one hundred links, even though it was only sixty-six feet...
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A Correction
The bibliographical paragraph at the end of Francis Biddle’s “The Ordeal of William Penn,” in our April issue, gives the publication date of Catherine Owens Peare’s biography of Penn as 1907. The book was in fact published by the J. B. Lippincott Company in 19^, and we regret the error.
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The Man On Horseback
The eagle on the great seal of the United States holds both an olive branch and a rather uglylooking bunch of arrows—but the eagle’s head is turned toward the symbol of peace. This is fair enough: everything considered, our history warrants our reputation as a peace-loving nation. Yet ten of the thirty-six men we have chosen to be Chief Executive have been generals.∗ ∗Washington, Jackson,...
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Books About The Presidency
BIOGRAPHIES OF THE PRESIDENTS (Generally, only one modern, authoritative biography is listed for each President. Often this has necessitated a quite arbitrary selection from among many excellent volumes. In a few cases, where the standard “life” is a multivolume work or when there is no clearly dominant interpretation, two books have been included.) GEORGE WASHINGTON: Douglas S. Freeman...
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The President’s Day
In studying the growing complexity of the Presidency in its 175-year history, it occurred to us that simply contrasting an ordinary day in Washington’s administration with one in Lyndon Johnson’s might tell far more than a lengthy article. Consequently we took the average day in 1790, which is described directly below in Washington’s own words and annotated at right. We then sent this material...
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The Speech That Toppled A President
Below appears in shortened form the text of a rough-and-tumble, wickedly clever speech delivered in the House of Representatives against the candidacy of Martin Van Buren to succeed himself as President of the United States. It fixed the image of the urbane President as a social swell, a British toady with monarchical longings, a man who had lost touch with the American people, who ate foods...
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“if It Wasn’t For The Honor Of The Thing…”
John Adams: “Had I been chosen President again, I am certain I could not have lived another year.” Jefferson: “No man will ever bring out of the Presidency the reputation which carries him into it.” John Q. Adams: “The four most miserable years of my life…” Buchanan (to Abraham Lincoln): “If you are as happy, my dear sir, on entering this house as I am in leaving it and...
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