January 2011

1840 One Hundred and Fifty Years Ago 1865 One Hundred and Twenty-five Years Ago 1890 One Hundred Years Ago 1915 Seventy-five Years Ago 1965 Twenty-five Years Ago

“The Public Schools and the Public Mood” by Carl F. Kaestle (February) offers an interesting perspective on the course of public education from its inception to the present. If, indeed, we have created a system that, despite constant attempts at reform, remains stagnant, we must think long and hard before we move on.

We are attempting to make great strides in education reform in Mississippi. We have invested a great deal of thought in planning our “Mississippi’s Best” program, and it is one in which we take great pride. We hope we can succeed where others have failed to bring about changes to meet the educational problems that face each generation. We have no choice. The future of every child in America depends on it.

To come up with a contemporary parallel for Dorothy Thompson, I suggest imagining a large plumed creature composed of equal parts Barbara Walters, Jesse Jackson, Garrison Keillor, George Will, and William Bennett. I would further suggest that even such an animal could make only about half the noise created by Thompson during the quarter of a century in which she turned out a thrice-weekly newspaper column, lectured, and, by various other verbal means, shaped and swayed the opinions of a hefty portion of the American public. The wingspread of her influence is hard to convey; “household word” doesn’t begin to do it. When I asked my ninety-eight-year-old father— many of whose friends were Dorothy Thompson’s friends as well—to describe her, he said she was the “most powerful woman in America.”

History abounds in ironies, and never more so than in the capriciousness with which it hands out enduring fame. Consider Senator John Sherman, Republican of Ohio. His older brother, William Tecumseh, marched through Georgia into immortality in a single autumn. John served six years in the House of Representatives, 32 in the Senate. He was one of the country’s ablest Secretaries of the Treasury and was a major contender for the Republican nomination for President three times. He ended his political career as Secretary of State under McKinley. Yet today he might be remembered only for bringing the term "fence-mending" to American politics, were it not for one piece of legislation, the Sherman Anti-trust Act.

The voice down at the other end of the table was edged with irritation. “Damn it, Prohibition was a failure too. You’d think we’d have learned something by now!” Then my friend turned to the dinner party’s in-house historian. “Right, Bernie?”

“Sure” was my quick answer. Like most quick answers, it was too easy.

We were speaking of the drug “war.” As the 1990s began, people involved in some way with narcotics dominated the lurid headlines, and a small but growing number of spokesmen were for some form of drug legalization. It was these last who had raised the decibel level. In essence some guests believed that the “legalizers” were willing, as a cheap fix, to sell out the poor to addiction, while others—including my friend who had appealed to the court of history—contended that the “prohibitionists” ignored the sordid record of our thirteen-year effort to stamp out alcohol.

The Russians Move West Dirty Tricks

I am interested in Civil War-era history and found the March issue one of the best you have produced in recent years. One correction: Thomas Fleming’s “The Big Parade” states, “Two weeks after Appomattox, in Raleigh, North Carolina, Sherman had sat down with his fellow West Pointer. . . .” The meeting and signings took place in Durham, North Carolina—not Raleigh.

Peter Andrews’s excellent article “The Rock of Chickamauga” prompted me to review the Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant to see what Grant’s own words were about General Thomas. Grant states:

“Thomas’s dispositions were deliberately made, and always good. He could not be driven from a point he was given to hold. He was not as good, however, in pursuit as he was in action. I do not believe that he could ever have conducted Sherman’s army from Chattanooga to Atlanta against the defences and the commander guarding that line in 1864. On the other hand, if it had been given him to hold the line which Johnston tried to hold, neither that general nor Sherman, nor any other officer could have done it better.

“Thomas was a valuable officer, who richly deserved, as he has received, the plaudits of his countrymen. ...”

Perhaps we could reduce Grant’s opinion of Thomas by using the parlance of modem baseball: Good field, no hit.

While I agree with the thesis that the Army Colt (“American Made,” March) was a “crowning achievement,” a number of misstatements detract from what is otherwise an interesting article. The comparison of the Dragoon, 1851, and 1860 models confuses weapon weights and caliber sizes. The .44-caliber Dragoon, at four pounds, one ounce, was heavy; the .36-caliber 1851, at two pounds, ten ounces, was lighter; the .44-caliber 1860 weighed only an ounce more than the 1851, but its advantage was in its heavier caliber rather than its overall weight.

Loading the, or each, chamber with powder (and ball) was typical of most Civil War weapons, which were muzzle-loaders. The problem wasn’t that brass was too expensive; rather, cartridges hadn’t been developed that could safely contain the propellant loads necessary for the heavier calibers (.36 and .44 vs. .22). And fresh cylinders are not snapped into place; one must loosen a screw and remove a wedge and then the barrel before cylinders can be exchanged.

The photograph on pages 66-67 of your February issue purportedly shows a teacher instructing her pupils in multiplication “at a school in Nebraska in 1895.” It’s a mighty strange-looking classroom. I’d wager it was actually a photographer’s studio. I wonder if the Nebraska State Historical Society has any more information on the provenance of the photograph.