Tag Archive for ‘slavery’
America’s “Other” Independence Day
America’s birthday is fast approaching. But let’s not wait for July 4th to light the fireworks. There is another Independence Day on the horizon. Juneteenth falls on June 19 each year. It is a holiday whose history was hidden for much of the last century. But as the nation now observes the 150th anniversary of the Civil War’s onset, it is a holiday worth recognizing
Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Juneteenth-Our-Other-Independence-Day.html#ixzz1PXGpVxj8
Don’t Know Much About History… Still!
The latest in the perennial drumbeat of bad news about failing American History grades in American schools has just been released. And it is as bad as ever. So the first simple question is:Why Are we so Bad at History?
Don’t Know Much About® “Brown v. Board of Education”
Every day, eight-year-old Linda Brown wondered why she had to ride five miles to school when her bus passed the perfectly lovely Sumner Elementary School, just four blocks from her home. When her father tried to enroll her in Sumner for fourth grade, the Topeka, Kansas, school authorities just said no. In 1951, Linda Brown [...]
Don’t Know Much About® John Brown
Abolitionist martyr? Or terrorist? Born on May 9, 1800, John Brown has always posed that awkward question in American history. I am quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. –John Brown at his execution (November 2, 1859) Viewed through history as a lunatic, psychotic, [...]
Don’t Know Much About® Thomas Jefferson
Among America’s iconic Founding Fathers, is there a more complicated and contradictory figure than Thomas Jefferson? Scientist, humanist, Enlightenment thinker, writer, architect, politician. He was all these things. The confusion over this genius comes from one basic question: How could the man who wrote, “All Men are Created Equal” and “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit [...]
Today in History: “We the People” (v 2.0)
On March 11, 1861, the delegates at the Congress of the Confederate States of America, meeting in Montgomery, Alabama, adopted a Constitution. Working under duress, they used the U.S. Constitution almost verbatim as their template. But they made some changes… What was the difference between the Confederate and U.S. Constitutions? One week after Lincoln’s inaugural address, [...]
Sugaring Time and the Civil War
This year, as the 150th anniversary of the Civil War approaches, the maple sugar season has a different meaning. Some 70 years before the war began on April 12, 1861, people had looked to maple sugar –both as a political and economic weapon against slavery.
“We are not enemies but friends.”
“That there are persons in one section or another who seek to destroy the Union at all events and are glad of any pretext to do it I will neither affirm nor deny; but if there be such, I need address no word to them. To those, however, who really love the Union may I [...]
Today in History: The Birthday of the Confederacy
The Confederacy was officially born on February 4, 1861 when six breakaway states created the Confederate States of America. What was different about the Confederate Constitution?
