A traveler’s package on hotels, bed and breakfasts, restaurants, and activities is available from the Chamber of Commerce, P.O. Box 89, St. Andrews, New Brunswick Canada EOG 2X0 (506-529-3555), or the New Brunswick Department of Tourism, P.O. Box 12345, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada E3B 5C3 (800-561-0123).
Whatever other surprises might erupt on a trip across the country, one thing you can pretty much count on is the presence of a King James Bible in your hotel or motel room, put there by an organization called the Gideon Association. That’s as much as most of us know. That Gideon Bibles have made their way to 140 countries in nearly sixty languages, have been placed in prisons and colleges, that they reached servicemen in Pearl Harbor in December 1941, that the five hundred millionth copy was handed to President Bush in 1990 would probably not astound the two founders, traveling salesmen who met by chance at the Central Hotel in Boscobel, Wisconsin, on September 14, 1898.
The 55-mile drive south and west from Little Rock on U.S. 70 leads into oak-and hickory-covered hills known as the Zig Zag Mountains. Road cuts reveal the great folds of sandstone and novaculite underlying this terrain, ancient seabeds, compacted and pushed upward in tightly arching swales, then eroded down to these steep ridges of the most resistant rock. It is pretty country, itself worth the trip, but the very source of this beauty made, in earlier times, the pilgrimage to Hot Springs difficult, especially for those, who, because of illness or injury, were most desperate to reach the place. What takes little more than an hour today was in the 1830s a two-day effort by stagecoach, and as late as the 1870s the road was frequented by highwaymen.
It was interesting to read that like Dumas Malone, Mr. Fleming ignores the detailed research of Fawn Brodie for her Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate Portrait. She made a strong effort to track down all possible original sources of information regarding Jefferson’s relationship to Sally Hemings and presented an equally strong case for his paternity of several of her offspring. Among other telling data was Brodie’s finding that Peter Carr was nowhere around on one or more occasions when Sally was supposedly impregnated by him. So what more useful data could be uncovered by a committee of scholars researching the matter is a real question.
One of your “mysteries” is not a mystery at all but the product of a rather severe historical fraud.
Jacques Barzun of Columbia University wanted to know why Secretary of War Stanton kept Maj. Thomas Eckert from accompanying President Lincoln to Ford’s Theatre. Presumably Eckert might have prevented John Wilkes Booth from assassinating Lincoln that night. Barzun also suggests that Stanton likewise dissuaded General Grant from joining the Lincoln party.
One of your “mysteries” is not a mystery at all but the product of a rather severe historical fraud.
Jacques Barzun of Columbia University wanted to know why Secretary of War Stanton kept Maj. Thomas Eckert from accompanying President Lincoln to Ford’s Theatre. Presumably Eckert might have prevented John Wilkes Booth from assassinating Lincoln that night. Barzun also suggests that Stanton likewise dissuaded General Grant from joining the Lincoln party.
The Arkansas Parks and Tourist Commission (1-800-643-8383) will provide maps and brochures on the Hot Springs area. For information on the town’s facilities and amenities, write Hot Springs National Park, Box 1860, Hot Springs, AR 71902, or call the Fordyce Bathhouse Visitor Center (501-623-1433.) Dee Brown’s book The American Spa is another good source. The Buckstaff, dating back to 1912, is the only one of the grand bathhouses still in business; call 501623-2308 for the latest on rates and services. “You will join a long line of people who have bathed in the Hot Springs of Arkansas,” promises the Park Service brochure, “a line that goes back 10,000 years.”
The answer to “What Made Burr Tick?” is quite simple. Burr was a contemporary of Napoleon Bonaparte, whose incredible rise to power in Europe had blurred all sense of reality for an entire generation. Like Napoleon, Burr was a young aristocrat who had risen to prominence through battlefield courage in a revolution. Burr’s efforts to make himself emperor of Mexico were surely no more far-fetched than Bonaparte’s already successful grab for power in Revolutionary France.
I would like to take exception, however, to Thomas Fleming’s question “Was Jefferson Guilty?” The question presumes that miscegenation is a crime. Personally, I have no idea whether or not Jefferson was sexually involved with Ms. Sally Hemings. But if he was, it would have been an affair between two unmarried people. By all accounts they were emotionally devoted to each other. Where’s the guilt?
For brochures, maps, and details on special events, drop by the University Information Office, located at Phelps Archway, where our tour begins. Since many of the college’s gates are locked, you’ll have to ask a passing Yalie to admit you to a number of the courtyards mentioned here. Several venerable blocks along Chapel Street, home to the Art Gallery and the Center for British Art, have recently undergone a salutary restoration, resulting in an appealing streetscape of small shops, cafés, and narrow, brick-lined alleys. Books on Yale and New Haven, including the brand-new volume of color photographs Yale: A Portrait , are on sale at the Co-op on Broadway.
Professor Smoler, in his article on the Persian Gulf, writes that “[historical] analogy is all we have.” Not quite. We need no historical studies to make a very accurate prediction of what may happen in the Persian Gulf. If war breaks out, hundreds—or more likely thousands—of men and women will die. Which leaves only a simple question: Why?