January 2011

Has the press gone too far?” is a question that has been asked more frequently in this presidential campaign than any other. At a time when politicians are being canvassed on their love lives, their acquaintance with marijuana, and the originality of all their sayings, the question seems to answer itself. The “character issue” has become, in many people’s eyes, a hunting license. The prey are intimidated even when they are not eliminated, made to seem vulnerable, “on the run” instead of running for office. The character issue seems to reverse its intended effect and puts in question all of a candidate’s merits if he or she cannot measure up.

You might be interested in an additional fact regarding Elbern Coons’s article “Blizzard.” That same year, 1931, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows of Holly, Colorado, raised the money for a monument in memory of the five children and bus driver who had lost their lives. The monument was dedicated on October 7, 1931, and placed near the graves of the blizzard victims in the Holly Cemetery.

I very much enjoyed Jack Rudolph’s “Forts of the Americas” (March 1988). It has always amazed me that so much effort was expended to build these “impregnable” fortresses that usually proved of little value when attacked by resourceful opponents.

Although some of these forts, notably Quebec (1760 and 1775) and Fort Stanwix (1777), managed to hold out long enough for relief forces to arrive, the only spectacularly successful defensive victories of early American forts were administered by the French—Fort Duquesne in 1755 and Fort Carillon (Ticonderoga) in 1758. However, in both the above battles the better-led French forces moved out of the forts and massacred the larger British forces with wilderness fighting tactics.

In the twentieth century, after the defensive domination of the Western Front in World War I, military strategy again drifted into a “fortress mentality” with the same disastrous results (Maginot Line, Singapore, and Corregidor).

I’m complimented and grateful at the mention of my history of our navy in the “Correspondence” section of the February issue of American Heritage, but (and perhaps because of it) I cannot avoid adding a bit to the Merrimack/Virginia name argument.

In the old days, when captured ships were taken into the opposing navies, it was customary to retain the old name. This custom sat well with the victorious navy as well as with the losing side, for whom the captured ships were not a memory of past glory. Sometimes the captured name was bestowed on a newly built ship if the old one was too seriously damaged. Besides, sailors claimed it was bad luck to change the name of a ship. In the case of the Merrimack , there was more reason yet.

I am a senior at Hamilton College with a deep interest in photography. I’m happy to say I instantly recognized the man on the cover of your March issue.

Your “unknown turn-of-the-century” photographer is John H. Garo of Boston. An Armenian by birth, he was the teacher of the eminent portrait photographer Yousuf Karsh in the 1920s. In Karsh’s autobiography he writes, “…—Garo taught me something more important than technique alone—Garo taught me to see.…” Furthermore, Karsh writes, “even as a young man, I was aware that these glorious afternoons and evenings in Garo’s salon were my university. There I set my heart on photographing those men and women who leave their mark on the world.”

What do my wondering eyes behold but an article in American Heritage by Walter Karp (“Where the Media Critics Went Wrong,” March 1988) trying to convince your readers that television has had no effect on the public.

As a person who does not now have and has never had a television set in his home, 1 am able to observe the deleterious effects of this insidious new drug.

I know of former community activists who now sit in front of their sets giggling night after night at cartoons. Many young lawyers who formerly could have been counted on to have read the daily newspapers from cover to cover prior to eating breakfast now admit they rely upon television as their sole source of information with respect to news.

Slogans, lack of athletic ability, cliché conversations, mass appetites for similar products, fast-food meals, lack of home life, lack of dinner-table talk—all are signs of the new TV age.

Mr. Karp’s article on television is so wrong-headed as to be bizarre. Has Mr. Karp been spending the last ten years in a box? Has he spoken to teen-agers recently? I am so enraged by the stupidity of his “good-time message” that I feel like canceling my subscription to your magazine. Doesn’t anybody care about the reactionary fantasies dished out in your articles? Speaking as a member of the sixties generation I ask you to remember that the entire vocabulary, tradition, and educational culture at that time were not immersed in television as they are today. Delusion may have made your life bearable, Mr. Karp, but give me truth any day. American Heritage, like the Life and Look of old, panders to those who want to hide from reality.

Your February 1988 article “Starting Out in the Hill Country” is of particular interest to my family. My great-grandparents Ludwig and Charlotta Sahm and their five children were some of the “innocents,” of whom Carla Davidson writes, who were lured to Texas in 1844 from Germany. They became original settlers of New Braunfels, Texas.

Under the terms of the Fisher-Miller grant, German families were offered six hundred acres of land to settle in Texas. Along with other hopeful immigrants, the Sahm family had a less than promising introduction to the United States. The ship that brought them from Germany ran aground near Galveston, Texas. In an unsuccessful effort to free the vessel from a sandbar, the captain had all the passengers’ belongings thrown overboard. A U.S. Navy ship rescued the bedraggled families, who then spent New Year’s Day 1845 huddled together on the Texas shore without food, shelter, or dry clothing. However, the state of Texas did provide some relief as the immigrants were moved inland, eventually to settle the city of New Braunfels.

“Starting Out in the Hill Country” accurately sets forth a description of the region. While the Texas Hill Country does not have the dramatic landscapes or scale of other attractive regions, there is a peaceful feeling about its quiet brooks and meadows.