Skip to main content

“for This Relief, Much Thanks”

March 2023
1min read

Some theatre posters reflected the fad that even the audience far gone on melodramatic thud and blunder was not insatiable: a spot of comedy now and then was more tlian acceptable. Certainly the scene chosen for this lavish lithograph advertising The Fatal Card (1805) looks like something out of a gay farce by Oscar Wilde; and the caption at the bottom does nothing to alter the impression. It is therefore somewhat surprising to read the following excerpts from the New York Dramatic Mirror’i review: “The Fatal Card w an out-and-out melodrama with no special claim to originality, but the situations are thrillingly sensational … The explosion of the cottage in the last act proved one of the most remarkable … mechanical effects ever seen on the local stage. … The ingenious and dexterous celerity with which the explosion was followed by the collapse of the cottage aroused thunderous applause from every man, woman and child in the audience.” And the plot, it seems, involved a lynching, a band of swindlers, burglary, murder, and a hero lashed beside an “infernal machine,” to be saved in the very nick by the arrival of the heroine, who is the villain’s daughter. Or sometliing like that. Nothing about reading poetry in a canoe; or rather, no mention of it in the review. But the comic scene was undoubtedly there, along with others, in recognition of the great truth that man cannot live by blood alone.

We hope you enjoy our work.

Please support this 72-year tradition of trusted historical writing and the volunteers that sustain it with a donation to American Heritage.

Donate

Stories published from "December 1963"

Authored by: Michael Blow

The first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution might have earned a fortune if he had chosen to commercialize his inventions. But American science would have suffered

Authored by: Oliver Evans

Take a cup of Choctaw and add Frenchmen: aventuriers de bois and Acadian refugees from Nova Scotia
Blend in a Mississippi Bubble, a sprinkling of fugitives from justice, and a few filles de joie
Now sift in Catalans, Spanish planters, gens de couleur , and a large gombo nègre
Make a Code Noir and some Quadroon Balls
Stir together gently, adding Dalmatian oystermen, Filipino shrimpers, Germans, and “Kaintucks” (often rather tough)
Add a pinch of pirates
Simmer slowly under six flags
Serves most of southern Louisiana

Authored by: C. S. Forester

Hundreds of miles from salt water, two tiny, improvised fleets hammered away at each other in one of the decisive naval engagements of the War of 1812

Authored by: Lucius Beebe

Its diners were sumptuous, its sleepers luxurious, its lounges a rendezvous for the nation’s notables. And it even made a regular gambling stop at Reno

Authored by: Paul Russell Cutright

Medicine was primitive and their knowledge of it limited, but in their hazardous journey to the Pacific, Lewis and Clark lost only one patient

Authored by: Mary R. Maloney

His family and aides knew John Renolds as a bachelor whose only love was soldiering. The tragic aftermath of his death at Gettysburg revealed one of the Civil War’s most poignant romances

Authored by: Bruce Catton

DRED SCOTT v. SANFORD

Authored by: The Editors

SHUN THE CUP, & KEEP THY FEET TO THE PATH

Authored by: Charles Morrow Wilson

In San Francisco Warren G. Harding lay dead, and the nation was without a Chief Executive. In the early morning hours, by the light of a flickering oil lamp, an elderly Vermonter swore in his son as the thirtieth President of the United States

Featured Articles

Rarely has the full story been told how a famed botanist, a pioneering female journalist, and First Lady Helen Taft battled reluctant bureaucrats to bring Japanese cherry trees to Washington. 

Often thought to have been a weak president, Carter was strong-willed in doing what he thought was right, regardless of expediency or the political fallout.

Why have thousands of U.S. banks failed over the years? The answers are in our history and politics.

In his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln embodied leading in a time of polarization, political disagreement, and differing understandings of reality.

Native American peoples and the lands they possessed loomed large for Washington, from his first trips westward as a surveyor to his years as President.

A hundred years ago, America was rocked by riots, repression, and racial violence.

During Pres. Washington’s first term, an epidemic killed one tenth of all the inhabitants of Philadelphia, then the capital of the young United States.

Now a popular state park, the unassuming geological feature along the Illinois River has served as the site of centuries of human habitation and discovery.  

The recent discovery of the hull of the battleship Nevada recalls her dramatic action at Pearl Harbor and ultimate revenge on D-Day as the first ship to fire on the Nazis.

Our research reveals that 19 artworks in the U.S. Capitol honor men who were Confederate officers or officials. What many of them said, and did, is truly despicable.

Here is probably the most wide-ranging look at Presidential misbehavior ever published in a magazine.

When Germany unleashed its blitzkreig in 1939, the U.S. Army was only the 17th largest in the world. FDR and Marshall had to build a fighting force able to take on the Nazis, against the wishes of many in Congress.