November 2006

Americans are once again fighting over immigration, but our current dispute pales in comparison with past battles on the subject. A hundred and fifty years ago today, citizens not only debated immigration but voted, fought, and bled over it. And on November 4, 1856, a three-way presidential election pitted the Nativist “American” and Republican Parties against pro-immigration Democrats for control of our nation’s borders, tenements, and very identity.

The town of St. Francisville, Louisiana, some 100 miles northwest of New Orleans, escaped major damage from Katrina and her evil sister Rita, and amid all their destruction, the hurricanes completely spared the old Oakley House there. An ambitious restoration—the first in almost 50 years—had already been underway at the West Indies-style plantation house, built in l799, and the work stayed on track even as the people of West Feliciana Parish opened their homes to some 2,000 hurricane refugees. By last month, Oakley in all its renewed Federal period splendor was once again open to the public. It’s well worth visiting.

Borat, the new “mockumentary” by the British comic Sacha Baron Cohen, subtitled “Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,” has made a swarm of film critics dizzy trying to pin down the film’s—and Cohen’s—antecedents. So far no one has had much success.