For information and brochures about the battlefield, call or write Gettysburg National Military Park, Gettysburg, PA 17325 (TeL: 717-334-1124). For information about where to stay locally and about other nearby attractions, contact the Gettysburg Travel Council, 35 Carlisle Street, Gettysburg, PA 17325-1899 (Tel: 717-334-6274).
I enjoyed the interview with Jack Kemp. He is an adroit and intelligent spokesman for a conservative view of the role government ought to play in the economic sector. But a person who adopts Kemp’s view of restoring the Republican party to reflect the view of Abraham Lincoln misses or ignores an important truth. The Republican party of Lincoln’s time believed and acted as if the federal government had the power and ability to solve many issues of the time. Politically it was in opposition to the main-line thinking of the Democratic party, which thought that governmental economic activity should be left to the states.
It must be my fault. Surely, somewhere in its interview with President-wannabe Jack Kemp American Heritage must have noted that these pages represented a “Paid Advertisement for the Republican Party.” I just can’t find the tag line. I guess I need glasses.
I have long admired the politics and achievements of Jack Kemp, and Fredric Smoler’s insightful interview with him in the October issue (“We Had a Great History, and We Turned Aside”) illustrates the political philosophy that should be the platform of the Republican party. “Entrepreneurial capitalism” and “upward mobility” are the concepts that have attracted millions of immigrants to the American dream and that have built a great country. The idea of allowing the common people to advance themselves freely is the basis of the American system that too few in politics today seem to understand.
The Republican party has been splintering and losing focus in recent years, with Christian Fundamentalism, homophobia, xenophobia, and racism creeping in where they do not belong. We must reassess our platform and unite as Lincoln’s party once again if we want the White House back in 1996. Jack Kemp is the man to take us there.
Like his father, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather before him, Dave was a Michigan farmer. His great-grandfather had emigrated from Poland in 1X61, briefly worked in the Detroit area, then enlisted in the 24th Michigan. Months later, at the Battle of Gettysburg, Dave’s great-grandfather saw his regiment shot to pieces. On McPhcrson Ridge the black-hatted men of the 24th fought the 26th North Carolina Regiment to a standstill, but at dusk only ninety-nine of the nearly five hundred men of the 24th remained. Dave’s great-grandfather was one of the survivors.
Dave never went to college; he never even graduated from high school. But he read a lot, and he gave a lot of thought to his heritage. And although it was all but impossible to escape the demands of his dairy farm, he had managed to visit the Gettysburg Battlefield twenty-two times.
In 1804, a Pueblo Indian sold his four-room adobe house in the farming community of Taos, New Mexico, to Don Severino Martínez, a Spanish trader. No other details of this transaction are recorded, although the dwelling was to become famous—both for the family who lived in it and for its survival as the best example of a Spanish hacienda in the American Southwest.
Situated in the farthest corner of the vast Spanish Empire, at the end of the Camino Real, the ancient road from Mexico City, Taos is almost as isolated now as it was then, but Don Severino Martínez had done well to buy his house. Over the years, as Taos grew into an important commercial center and meeting point for three cultures, Martínez became the town’s leading merchant and its mayor. He kept on adding to his home, so that, by the time he died in 1827, it had grown to 21 rooms that enclosed a courtyard (a placita). Today, the Martínez family’s house still stands as a monument to the ferment of cultures in the early history of the Southwest.
I enjoyed the “Business of America” column on executive compensation in the September issue. I hate to think how much time and effort we are all going to spend getting around the milliondollar limitation. If we only put that effort into productive means, we could probably add a full percent to the GNP.
I can’t tell you how pleased I was to see that you had included Richard Marius’s After the War in your “Editors’ Choice” (December). I had reviewed it for our local paper, calling it “one of the great contemporary novels,” and was prepared to see it widely praised and selected on many best-books-of-theyear lists. But except for a good review in The New York Times , it was virtually ignored. I still think it’s a remarkably good novel and hope your mention will help push it back to a recognition as one of our best depictions of the American experience. And it’s nice to know that I wasn’t the only one who liked it.