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Economic History
Museum Extension Service (10 East 43rd Street, N. Y. 17) is the source of two filmstrip examinations of aspects of economic history. When Cotton Was King traces the expansion of cotton cultivation in the pre-Civil War South. The economic importance and the social consequences of the plantation system are brought to view in a selection of vivid pictures. Abolitionism and the sectional...
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News Of History
Boston’s famed Beacon Hill will be preserved if a move now under way is carried to successful completion. At a meeting of more than 100 persons interested in the preservation it was agreed to petition the Massachusetts Legislature to create an “Historic Beacon Hill District” with a board of five members to consider all plans for new construction, exterior restoration, or renovation in the area...
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The Farseeing Visitor: 1835
“There are at the present time two great nations in the world which seem to A tend toward the same end, although they started from different points: I allude to the Russians and the Americans. Both of them have grown up unnoticed; and while the attention of mankind was directed elsewhere, they have suddenly assumed a most prominent place among the nations; and the world learned of their...
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July 4 In 1826
The approach of the fiftieth birthday of the United States, in 1826, naturally animated the minds of Americans with thoughts of the nation’s past, the heritage they had received from those who had asserted and won independence, and the dwindling number of Revolutionary leaders who survived. By far the most conspicuous survivors were three men who had signed the Declaration of Independence—Thomas...
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Tragic Story Of The San Patricio Battalion
In the 5th U.S. Infantry, stationed with General Zachary Taylor’s army on the Mexican border in 1846, Sergeant John Riley was rated a good soldier. Before his present duty he had served as a drillmaster for the Corps of Cadets at West Point which demanded high competence. Such was Riley’s ability that he was in line for a lieutenant’s commission, and rising from the ranks was rare at that period...
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The Boy In The Window
Stefan Lorant has made a double reputation, as a picture-magazine editor in Europe and as an historian in America (The Presidency, Lincoln, The New World). In the pursuit of these two careers he has become the foremost iconographer in his field, with many discoveries to his credit in American pictorial history.While editing photographs for a recent book on Lincoln, he studied the picture on the...
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Why Did They Go Away?
Fifty years ago on a shelf of Monadnock Mountain in Essex County, Vermont, were the empty cellar of a house, the foundations of a barn, and the stubborn remains of an orchard. To us youngsters these things were the ruins of some ancient and extinct civilization, pervaded with the same mystery that held the excavators of Pompeii. The find of a bullet mold, or a pewter spoon, was an event...
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Drill Master At Valley Forge
On the first day of December, 1777, a group of four foreign gentlemen landed from the French ship Le Flamand at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. They had had a rough voyage, 66 days at sea diversified by a mutiny of the crew and three occasions when the vessel was on fire. But they were not traveling in search of comfort and safety: they had come to offer their services to the army of the infant...
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The Boyhood Of Alexander Hamilton
Of his boyhood Alexander Hamilton habitually said very little. His political enemies said a good deal but mostly under their breath and only the most ill-tempered of them, old John Adams, went so far as to call him “the bastard son of a Scots peddler.” Hamilton’s family, by seeking to deny the fact of his illegitimacy, merely focused attention on it. Gertrude Atherton, in her fictionalized...
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A Liner, A U-boat... And History
Those who watched from the pier knew the emotions usual at sailings. They felt the initial pain of separation as the gangplanks dropped away and the first feet of clearing water divided them from those who were departing. Then, as the eye’s focus shifted from the waving figures at the railing and took in the majestic whole of the ship now pulling back into the river, with its graceful lines...
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When The Old Streets Talked
In New York City around the middle of the Nineteenth Century almost all household products, from lamp oil to strawberries, were hawked directly from the crowded streets. Many of the street vendors became strongly attached to one locale, among them an old apple woman who for many years set up her chair at the front door of A. T. Stewart’s dry goods store. When Mr. Stewart prospered and moved to...
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The Boy Skipper Who Found A Continent
Man’s long search for a continent at the bottom of the world ended on November 18, 1820, when an American barely out of his teens discovered the world’s seventh and last great land mass.It was almost an accident that Nathaniel Brown Palmer of Stonington, Connecticut, found the shore that had eluded the best efforts of more seasoned explorers. At the time he did not realize the extent of his...
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The Rebels Of Merry Mount
No early English settler was more delighted with New England than was Thomas Morton, lawyer of Clifford’s Inn, London. He had none of the dour misgivings of William Bradford and the other Mayflower Pilgrims who had landed at Plymouth less than two years before. From the moment he stepped ashore at Massachusetts Bay, in June, 1622, he fell in love with this American earth: its Indians, its wild...
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The Smart Ones Got Through
The difference between “an historical event” and “a dramatic event” is well illustrated by the stories of the Stevens Party and the Donner Party. The former is historically important, and the pioneers who composed it brought the first wagons to California and discovered the pass across the Sierra Nevada that serves still as the chief route for railroad, highway, telephone, and airlines. The...
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How Lincoln Would Have Rebuilt The Union
James G. Randall, one of America’s greatest historians and a leading authority on Abraham Lincoln, died just as he was passing the mid-point of the fourth and final volume of his monumental study of Lincoln in the war years, Lincoln the President . This volume, entitled The Last Full Measure , has been completed through the collaboration of R. N. Current, of the University of Illinois, and...
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Lincoln’s Plan For Reconstruction
The State of the Union In his annual message to Congress in December, 1863, in fulfillment of that provision of the Constitution which requires that the President shall “give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union,” Lincoln addressed himself to the question of reconstruction. He did not deal in quibbles or generalities, but came up with a plan. Anyone who knew Lincoln would...
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Reading, Writing And History
Not with a Bang but a Whimper The Creative Imagination The Unpronounceable Man The Great Crevasse Current Books in Brief A Check List of New Books
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Not With A Bang But A Whimper
When an empire falls apart the cracks usually can be seen ahead of time. There may never be an actual crash—a moment of final disaster of which, long afterward, men can say definitely: Here is where it all ended. Instead there is likely to be a long period in which things just don’t seem to go right. We may not see the fabric coming unstitched, but we do begin to notice that a good many big...
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The Creative Imagination
Just where and how are the novelist’s skills useful to the historian? Some of them, obviously, the historian picks up only at the risk of his professional integrity. The bestseller lists in years past (to say nothing of the longer list of books which aimed at that target and missed) are full of distressing examples of “fictionalized” history, “reconstructed” events for which there can be no...
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The Unpronounceable Man
Somebody once called Ulysses S. Grant “the unpronounceable man,” and the phrase will do until a better one comes along. This little chap was a man you couldn’t quite figure, somehow—seemingly uninspired, ordinary as an old shoe, a straightaway plodder who undeniably liked to drink more than was good for him . . . and yet, at the same time, a fascinating and complex person with flashes of...
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The Great Crevasse
John Charles Frémont was one of the those skyrockets that arch up across the American sky now and then—a wild quick climb, a dazzling shower of sparks, and then a headlong plunge down into the darkness. Seen from a distance, the man seems to have had a minimum of solid substance, so that it is hard to understand what people used to see in him. Yet he burned with a bright light once. Many...
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Current Books In Brief
The Great Reconnaissance , by Edward S. Wallace. Little, Brown...
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A Check List Of New Books
The Virginia Exiles , by Elizabeth Gray Vining. J. B. Lippincott Company. $3.95. A novel about 23 Pennsylvanians, who during the Revolution were banished to Virginia because they refused to subscribe to a loyalty oath. Andrew Jackson: Symbol for an Age , by John William Ward. Oxford University Press. $5. The mind of Nineteenth-Century America is explored in this book which is more...
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When Mary Lincoln Was Adjudged Insane
It is generally known that Mrs. Abraham Lincoln was adjudged insane in later life. The circumstances of her sanity trial, however, are not so familiar and certain details have been lacking. A new document has now come to light which brings the tragic event into focus as vividly as if it were done in technicolor.Ten years after the assassination of her husband, Mrs. Lincoln was in a shattered,...
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Seeing And Hearing History
Modern History of Film Pioneer Life Western Americana American Transportation American Recreation Recorded Americana
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Modern History On Film
Film makers enjoy resurrecting, with some regularity, pictures of past years or decades and assembling a new view of a bygone era. With good material and skillful editing, the historically minded producer can bring forth a vivid document of history. Often, however, historic materials battle with the purely nostalgic for a place of prominence in the compilation. Three recently released 16mm...
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Pioneer Life
The nonrevealing title of Dear Nancy actually hides a sponsored film (Breck Shampoos) that is a remarkably detailed document of early Nineteenth-Century life. The film provides a year-around view of typical activities of rural America by using the authentic settings of Old Sturbridge Village. Craftsmanship, routine work, and recreation are appropriately described in re-creating the...
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Western Americana
Fur Trappers Westward (Arthur Barr Productions, 1265 Bresee Avenue, Pasadena 7, Calif.) is one of the outstanding motion picture interpretations of an historic subject. It meticulously follows the life of the early Nineteenth-Century “mountain men” from the keelboat journey up the Missouri River to the rendezvous for disposing of the catch of furs. Set against colorfully impressive scenery,...
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American Transportation
The needs of a restless people in a vast continent are forcefully revealed in a Life Filmstrip (9 Rockefeller Plaza, N.Y. 20) on the history of American Transportation: Horseback to Jet . Although the subject is a familiar one, the splendid selection of pictures provides a refreshing approach to the subject. With considerable emphasis on social history, the materials should also motivate...
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American Recreation
The millions of travelers using the American transportation facilities will be interested in the Life Filmstrip on our National Parks . The strip shows in splendid detail various examples of “America’s Wonderlands.” Featuring the magnificence of such parks as the Grand Teton, Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Grand Canyon, the filmstrip also includes views of the Great Smokies and the Everglades....
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Recorded Americana
Songs of the North and South , a Decca long-playing recording (DL-8093), furnishes a musical impression of the Civil War period. Frank Luther, Zora Layman, and the Century Quartet perform 35 selections from both sides. The music expresses patriotism, love, anxiety, braveness, and humor. Many of the titles—once the hit songs of their day—have disappeared from familiarity, so that it is...
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News Of History
The month of September will be celebrated throughout the United States as John Marshall Bicentennial Month. A commission was established by the 83rd Congress to encourage commemorative programs throughout the country. The commission is publishing a commemorative brochure on the life of Marshall and his place in the nation’s history. A nation-wide speakers bureau will provide state and local...
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Collaborationist: 1776
History is full of people, big and small, who balanced precariously on the fence of divided loyalty. Wartime military occupation by a foreign power, the fate of New York City during the Revolution, accelerates this agile pastime, and a modest silversmith named Charles Oliver Bruff unwittingly recorded his story for posterity. Bruff first addressed his New York newspaper advertisements...
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The End Of Formalized Warfare
The first English settlers who landed at Jamestown in 1607 came dressed and armed for battle. In the best European tradition of the day, they carried not only firearms but pikes, poleaxes and swords. Across the chest they wore breastplates; to protect their legs they had light metal skirts, and on their heads sat iron pots. To the red men who watched them furtively from the fringing...
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Evangelists To The Machine Age
December 31, 1875, was probably celebrated in the cities of the United States with the usual quota of well-spiked merriment. But some 10,000 citizens of Philadelphia spent the evening in a Pennsylvania Railroad freight depot at Thirteenth and Market Street which had been outfitted with chairs and a platform big enough to hold a choir of 500. There they joined in hymns and prayer, and...
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General Howe’s Orderly Book
Across the bay from the little settlement of New York there appeared in the summer of 1776, gradually swelling throughout June, July and early August, the most formidable military force Great Britain ever sent abroad. The Narrows and Lower Bay were a forest of masts, men-of-war and transports by the hundreds; ashore on Staten Island were 27 regiments of the line, not to mention grenadiers,...
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De Soto And The Golden Road
Hernando de Soto, so the chronicler said, first came upon Cuzco at sunset.The great wheel of the sun, sinking with an enormous burst of reddened glory, lighted up the city so that even the poorer buildings took on a burnished golden look. As the retreating rays touched the beaten gold plates that decorated its walls, the pyramided Sun Temple, towering over the lower buildings around it, gleamed...
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Another View Of The Great Roads
And while the capitals of Christendom, but a few hundred miles apart, remained as far asunder as if seas had rolled between them, the great capitals Cuzco and Quito [separated by 1,230 miles] were placed by the high-roads of the Incas in immediate correspondence. Intelligence from the numerous provinces was transmitted on the wings of the wind to the Peruvian metropolis, the great locus to...
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The Blockade That Failed
The two outstanding facts concerning the blockade of the southern states by the United States Navy during the Civil War are, one, that it was, lor the first three and a half years, almost totally ineffective, insofar as preventing supplies from reaching the rebels was concerned, and, two, that by the end of 1864, when it did become effective, the war was already over, for all practical purposes....
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The Wild Freedom Of The Mountain Men
Freedom is a word that has had many meanings. In all its disguises it has been relentlessly pursued, but perhaps it has been longest hunted under its most artless aspect—the simple notion of individual liberty and unrestraint. Jean Jacques Rousseau reduced this ancient and naive dream of individual freedom to concise statement in 1750, mistakenly choosing primitive man, the noble savage...
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A Medical Profile Of George Washington
If one looks closely at Gilbert Stuart’s well-known portrait of George Washington, one observes an artificial bulging of the cheeks, as if they had been stuffed with cotton.It has been reported that Stuart actually did use cotton to fill out the sunken cheeks of the illustrious sitter of this portrait, who at the time was wearing a set of ill-fitting dentures. In 1796), when the picture was...
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Made For America
No artifacts of the early days of the Republic possesses, to many eyes, more antique charm than the decorated chinaware which graced the shelves and tables and lined the wainscottings of the newly prosperous Americans. Strangely enough, nearly all of them were fabricated abroad, in far places like China or in the potteries of our then recent enemies in England. Foreign merchants and...
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Spoiled Child Of American Politics
When Henry Cabot Lodge was a lad of sixteen, his mother took him to the studio of a famous American sculptor named William Story. Alter examining a number of Story’s works, she decided to purchase one entitled: “Lybian Sybil.” She asked young Cabot what he thought of it. He replied that the statue was perfectly lovely, but the inscription was all wrong. “It ought to be ‘Libyan’ and ‘Sibyl’,” he...
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Crazy Bill Had A Down Look
It was a great event in the upstate New York villages of the Finger Lakes country, during the late 1840’s, when George J. Mastin came to town with his “Unparalleled Exhibition of Oil Paintings.” First there appeared broadsides on barn doors and in tavern barrooms describing the fourteen huge paintings (8 x 10 feet, most of them) and promising a religious and historical lecture by Mr....
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The Early Days Of Radio
Not the least remarkable characteristic of our accelerated times is the astonishing speed with which the most fantastic scientific developments are accepted as commonplace. Such is the story of the invention and growth of radio. Tales of its early days seem strange and even quaint, although it is only 30 years since thousands of Americans were passing their evenings with crystal sets, trying...
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“Heard You Perfectly!”
Milwaukee-born Hans von Kaltenborn, Spanish War veteran, Harvard graduate and former tutor to Vincent Astor, describes his earliest experiences with the instrument that was to make him famous. He was at the time radio beckoned a member of the staff of the Brooklyn Eagle. Later Kaltenborn organized the Radio Pioneers, the club which launched the project of recording radio history through the...
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Just Another Fad
Vice-president of the National Broadcasting Company, one of the founders and later president of the National Association of Broadcasters, William S. Hedges came into radio through journalism. As president of the Radio Pioneers in 1949–50, he helped Columbia launch the radio history project. He appears in this excerpt as a young reporter on the Chicago Daily News . In January, 1922, I got...
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All Alone With The Microphone
The distinguished author and lecturer, and moderator of The People’s Platform and Invitation to Learning , recalls a terrifying experience for a tyro political analyst back when radio was young. For those who are interested in the development of radio, I think this incident will be amusing. Once in the early days I was in the studio talking into the microphone. There was only one other...
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Young Man With An Earphone
 My first exposure to wireless, as this form of communication was called in those days, was in 1907 when I happened to glance through a copy of a magazine called Electrical World, which I found on my father’s desk. I read about this new method of communication that was becoming more and more popular here and abroad. The necessary equipment, fortunately, was simple as compared to that used...
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‘They Heard You In Cape Town!’
Dorothy Gordon has had a distinguished career in radio, both in the field of music and with children’s programs. She founded youth forums and is director and moderator of the New York Times Youth Forum. Here she describes some of her earliest experiences in broadcasting. I started my concerts in 1923 over WEAF. At the station there was a glass window that separated the studio from a sort of...
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