In the freedom and flexibility it offers, the automobile is quintessentially American. In our cities and towns though, few could claim that the change from downtowns bustling with residents and commerce to deserted sidewalks fronting blank-faced office buildings and parking garages is one for the better.
Where did the starry-eyed soul who organized your a-historical, hysterical ode to the automobile get those one-sided impressions of “liberation” in a “high, wide, and handsome” dream machine, et cetera, et cetera? Not in the gridlocked world most of us inhabit, stuck in traffic and stuck in lives dependent upon two thousand pounds of steel to buy a half-gallon of milk.
By letting the car culture overcome the nation, we have wrecked habitat and health and ravished our cities and countryside. Some birthday.
As a confirmed motorhead who thinks (and teaches) about automobiles even between centennials, I’d like to extend my congratulations on the November 1996 issue of American Heritage . Great stuff, beautifully presented! It immediately goes on my list of teaching aids for the docent course at the Towe Ford Museum of Automotive History.
I do have a small historical quibble with Mr. Gordon’s “Engine of Liberation” roster of those “banging away in basements and carriage sheds.” He is right to say that Henry Ford fit that description, banging away in the shed behind his and Clara’s house on Detroit’s Bagley Avenue. Out of his (and friends’) banging came his 1896 Quadricycle. However, the rest of the men on Mr. Gordon’s list got their respective starts without being shade-tree mechanics. Each is a fascinating story in himself.
Having recently secured the right to vote, America’s women rose up in early 1922 to defend an even more fundamental liberty: the right to smoke. In February newspapers reported the shocking news that smoking was common among female students at Northwestern, the University of Chicago, and Columbia University’s Teachers College. In response, the state of Nebraska took swift action to shield its daughters from such evil big-city ways. The board of education of Nebraska’s normal schools voted to refuse leaves of absence for teachers to attend those three colleges, or any other where female smoking was common. Citing Prohibition, The New York Times sarcastically endorsed the ban: “Tobacco must ‘go.’… Millions of people enjoy its use. Therefore, they mustn’t be allowed to use it.”
As they rose and began their chores on the morning of March 22, settlers along Virginia’s James River had reason to be optimistic about the future. After the harrowing first few years that followed its founding in 1607, the colony was starting to prosper from the cultivation of West Indian tobacco. It enjoyed a measure of self-government, and ships regularly brought new settlers, indentured servants, and marriageable women. Moreover, the Powhatan Indians, second only to disease as a threat to the early colonists, had been rendered friendly and docile. The two races mingled so freely, in fact, that the Powhatans often ate and slept in whites’ houses and borrowed their possessions—even firearms. So when Jamestown and its surrounding plantations began to stir that Good Friday morning, the presence of Indian guests and traders drew no particular attention.
“In 1492, Christophe Colomb discovered America!! 300 years later, on January 21 1783, a vast country raised itself up in the north of this continent, acquired its independence from British power and monarchy with the help of the arms of France and by a solemn treaty of peace!!! Liberty reigns here! Who can as yet say and predict what the consequences of this immense and glorious event will be??”
When Captain Louis François Bertrand Dupont d’Aubevoye, Comte de Lauberdière, wrote these lines, he was safely back in France after three years of service in the American Revolution. French arms had been crucial for American independence, and Lauberdière wanted to write an account of France’s role—and his—in that “most glorious revolution of which history speaks.” He also wanted to record those experiences that “had surprised him most in this little known country.” Some of the surprises had not been pleasant ones.
What are America’s most important wines? Not necessarily the best wines, since these will vary from vintage to vintage, but the most important, the wines that in some way have made a significant difference. Below are my “top ten.” Although each ranks among the finest in its class, not all classes are equal, and the list undoubtedly reflects my own prejudices as much as anything else. All these wines, however, are or have been groundbreaking, making them leading players in the twenty-five-year drama of the rise of American wine.
Caymus Special Selection Cabernet Sauvignon
"BRECKINRIDGE, WHAT DO YOU THINK of the Dred Scott decision and the rights of the South in the Territories now?”
This earnest-sounding question would not, on the face of it, seem to betray what Douglas Southall Freeman described as the “rasping, mordant wit” whose sting General Jubal Early’s subordinates knew all too well. But it does. August 1864 found the Confederates, badly whipped by Phil Sheridan, retreating through the Shenandoah Valley in a grueling night march. Early, who had bitterly opposed secession, spotted his fellow general John Breckinridge, who’d been all for it, fast asleep in the saddle. He spurred his horse, trotted up alongside his exhausted colleague, and barked out his sardonic inquiry.