Published in History

In honor of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial, the House of Representatives just passed a Resolution recalling the 1946 designation of Nov. 19 as "Dedication Day," when the Gettysburg Address should be read in public places. Here's a good prelude to Thanksgiving. Recall Lincoln's message designating the last Thursday in November as a national day of Thanksgiving.

No, such praise is not sarcasm from a birther, Teapartier, or other such anti-intellectual dregs--it comes from the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Rocco Landesman.  (See my earlier post on Mr. Broadway Bombast.)  Scott at Powerline quotes his boast: 

This is the first president that actually writes his own books since Teddy Roosevelt and arguably the first to write them really well since Lincoln. If you accept the premise, and I do, that the United States is the most powerful country in the world, then Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar. That has to be good for American artists.

Scott deftly dispatches this error-plagued nonsense.  I would add:  In praising Bacon, Locke, and Newton as his greatest heroes, Thomas Jefferson claimed that his rival Alexander Hamilton had named Julius Caesar as his.  This attribution was intended to underline Hamilton's reputation as a "monocrat"--no friend of the principles of 1776.  Praises of Caesar and of Mao, obeisance to dictators, despots, and Nobel committees, assaults on an aggressive press-- what more does this Administration need to do to separate itself from the principles of 1776?

Ross Douthat sees that the Pope understands the world stakes in his opening to the Anglicans:  It's about standing up to Islam.

Where the European encounter is concerned, Pope Benedict has opted for public confrontation. In a controversial 2006 address in Regensburg, Germany, he explicitly challenged Islam's compatibility with the Western way of reason -- and sparked, as if in vindication of his point, a wave of Muslim riots around the world.

By contrast, the Church of England's leadership has opted for conciliation (some would say appeasement), with the Archbishop of Canterbury going so far as to speculate about the inevitability of some kind of sharia law in Britain.

There are an awful lot of Anglicans, in England and Africa alike, who would prefer a leader who takes Benedict's approach to the Islamic challenge. Now they can have one, if they want him.

University of Maryland students take up their school President's challenge and write a local history of slavery and its role in its founding.  This is a serious work (only 48 pp, rtwt), with wonderful graphics, full of information and sober insights:  The Declaration did have a great influence on freeing slaves.  Did you know, though, that free blacks could not own dogs, but that they did own slaves? 

The students conclude that their University had antebellum roots in both slavery and free labor policies.  After the Civil War state segregation policies thwarted national policy, which was color-blind:

On September 17, 1787 the delegates signed off on the Constitution, sending it to the States to be ratified,  Here's a brief quiz on the text of what they sent.

1.  What provisions of the Constitution may not be amended?

T or F:

2.  The Constitution refers to the national government as "republican."

3.  The Constitution prohibited women and blacks from holding national office.

4.  The Constitution refers to Jesus Christ.

5.  The Constitution sets age and citizenship requirements for the major federal offices--congress, executive, and judiciary.

Answers, with brief commentary, will appear below late tomorrow in the Comments section. 

"Since 'The Age of Reagan' will probably find more readers among conservatives than liberals, this is the message they ought to take to heart -- that being like Reagan can mean more than simply checking off a list of ideological boxes, or delivering a really impressive speech. It can mean marrying principle to practicality, tolerating fractiousness within one's own coalition and dealing with the political landscape as it actually exists, rather than as you would prefer it to be. (And in Hayward's account of the flailing Reagan-era Democratic Party, conservatives can find an object lesson in what happens if you don't.)

The final essay covers Sherman's march to the sea after Atlanta, Hood's failed attempt to get Sherman to follow him west after Atlanta by threatening Nashville, and Sherman's final campaign in the Carolinas.

The idea is to keep it simple while at the same time trying to show how campaigns were planned and executed to achieve strategic and political goals. For far too long, Civil War military history has focused on individual battles without providing the necessary context.

The most recent essay is here. It covers the Virginia Overland Campaign of spring and summer 1864. Next week, Ben will post the essay on the Petersburg siege and Appomattox.

I have two more to complete: The Atlanta Campaign and then one that looks at Sherman's march to the sea and the Carolinas Campaign and also Hood's attempted counteroffensive into Tennessee, culminating in the destruction of his army at Nashville.

I hope folks read these, but the fact is I just enjoy writing them.

Ask Northerners the cause of the war, and the answer often is a single word: slavery. In many places in the South, the answers can vary: states' rights, freedom, political and economic power.

As students across the region begin springtime Civil War lessons, historians say the election of Barack Obama as the first African American president offers an unprecedented opportunity to break through stereotypes and view the era in broader ways....

There is little disagreement among professional historians that the South's effort to maintain the institution of slavery was the central reason that 11 Southern states seceded from the Union and civil war erupted. Today's textbooks have largely caught up with this view. But that doesn't necessarily translate to the classroom.

Even from this journalistic account, it seems pretty clear that the misleading equation of slavery with race or racism is behind the "stereotypes." It's also clear that no one seems to take seriously that slavery violates the central American founding principle of equality. Affirming human equality is the common cause behind a war to prevent secession that became a war to free the slaves. That was Lincoln's explanation, from the First Inaugural through his Second Inaugural. Equality is a principle of limited government, whose protection of liberty allows the fulfillment of human happiness. Ending slavery is the minimal condition for self-government.

While the journalist recounts a clever Simpsons episode, no where does she see fit to quote the 16th president of the United States in the year of the Bicentennial of his birth. But that can be a story for another time.