Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
June 2020
We wonder which is worse: authorities abusing our Constitutional rights or protesters wantonly damaging historic monuments dedicated to young revolutionaries such as Lafayette and Kosciuszko?
The spray-painting of statues of revolutionaries who fought for our freedom is not acceptable.
Many people believe it was a violation of First Amendment rights for the government to attack and arrest citizens protesting the murder of George Floyd and what they see as systemic racism in many police departments. To do so for the purpose of a frivolous and ineffective photo opportunity seems inappropriate.
The Civil War ended 165 years ago, but still casts a long shadow. In recent protests during which statues of Confederate heroes were torn down or defaced, many people have made it clear they will no longer tolerate public memorials to men who fought to keep Americans of African descent enslaved, and who caused the deaths some 365,000 members of the U.S. military. The Civil War caused pain beyond measure.
David O. Stewart is the author of several histories and historical mysteries, including The Paris Deception, a novel set at the Paris Peace Conference that features both Dulles brothers as central characters. Previously, he previous wrote an essay for American Heritage on the 1807 trial of Aaron Burr.
On May 17, 1673 two birch bark canoes carrying seven Frenchmen left the Jesuit mission at Michilimackinac, what is today St. Ignace, Michigan, embarking on what would become one of the greatest voyages of discovery in American history. Their dangerous, two thousand-mile voyage through the interior of North America would take the explorers to learn its geography and to visit its native people.
For the duration of the Civil War, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant rode on the same Grimsley saddle over countless battlefields, witnessing the deaths of thousands of men who fought to end slavery and preserve the United States against dissolution.
Editor’s Note: Gil Klein is a former reporter for the Tampa Tribune and Media General New Service who runs the University of Oklahoma Washington Program. He is the author of Lafayette Square: Assassination, Protest & Murder at the White House.
On a windy afternoon this April, Maeve Kennedy Townsend McKean, a vibrant blue-eyed 40-year-old, and her son Gideon hopped into a canoe to chase a ball that had blown into the water. But the wind and waves swept them into the Chesapeake Bay near Annapolis. Then they disappeared.
The Kennedy family pioneered a new form of mourning, with 3,000 other friends and family gathering by Zoom.
I know the place where they were lost. I kept thinking of lovely Shady Side on the shore of the Bay while we were celebrating the life of that remarkable woman during an online memorial service.
The numbers are already grim. Worldwide, over 27 million have contracted Covid-19; nearly 875,000 have died from it. Public health experts caution that those numbers are certainly undercounts. Some deaths are mistakenly attributed to underlying conditions, not Covid-19, and many people who likely had the virus were not able to get tested. At-home deaths are often excluded. Overwhelmed health care systems lack the resources to generate reliable statistics.