August 2011

LIKE A CURMUDGEON who writes cranky letters to the editor, retired president Thomas Jefferson wanted to get the news without editorial bias or commentary—the Good News, that is, because he was reading the Bible. Whiling away his dotage at Monticello, he finally had time on his hands to finish a task he had begun decades earlier - namely, to compile and edit a personalized version of the New Testament, which he titled The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth. The original book will go on exhibit this November at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, after undergoing extensive conservation.

Lighting the Hunley

My local newspaper recently quoted Editor-in-Chief Edwin Grosvenor about his concerns that schools today were not adequately teaching the Civil War. My co-worker Fred Lutkus and I wanted to bring to his attention the work done by 12 of our students at the Hamburg Area High School in eastern Pennsylvania: over the 2009–10 school year we built four replicas of the lantern famously used aboard the Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley. After sinking Union screw sloop Housatonic in 1864 to become the first sub to destroy an enemy warship, it mysteriously vanished off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina. Union and Confederate forces reported seeing a blue light from a lantern just before the eightman vessel sank.

We are delighted to welcome an old friend back into our pages. Longtime readers will remember that David McCullough cut his teeth as an American Heritage book editor in the 1960s, then published articles in our pages that would develop into those fine books about the Panama Canal, the Johnstown Flood, and Harry Truman. (Incidentally, we’ve introduced a new feature on our website to search easily for American Heritage authors. Look up David McCullough, for instance, and up pop his 13 articles.)

McCullough’s latest work, about Americans flocking to Paris in the 19th century, is yet another winner—and we’ve worked with him to create a fascinating story about the American artist Augustus Saint-Gaudens and his creation of a monument to Civil War hero Admiral David “Damn the Torpedoes” Farragut, which stands in New York’s Madison Square Park. In this richly designed feature, you’ll find many illustrations that you’ve never seen before.

AT 9 O’CLOCK ON THE morning of September 25, 1775, a French Canadian habitant banged on the main gate of Montreal. The Americans were coming, he blurted breathlessly to a British officer. As drums began to rattle out the alarm and a panicky crowd filled the Place d’Armes, the farmer told Sir Guy Carleton, governor general of Canada, that an American army had crossed the St. Lawrence during the night and was marching south down the island. The invaders numbered in the hundreds. They had already reached the suburb of Longue-Pointe, less than two miles away, and were taking up positions in barns and houses.

For weeks, Carleton had dreaded just such an attack. Fully one-third of the 9000 citizens of Montreal’s environs were transplanted New England merchants and their employees. Carleton’s spies had told himthat couriers from Boston were urging the expatriates to join the spreading struggle for American independence from Britain.