Not until Theodore Roosevelt resigned his prestigious position as assistant secretary of the navy in 1898 to fight with the Rough Riders in the Cuban dirt would there be a rich man as weirdly rabid to...
Professor Winthrop delivered an influential lecture at Harvard proposing the earthquake might have been caused by heat and pressure below the surface of the earth. With God’s help, of course, but God...
Standing there at Powell’s grave, telling my nephew about a buried skull, I realize how much of our relationship revolves around body parts and severed heads. Once Owen learned to walk, we started pla...
Steuben explained to his friend, You say to your soldier, ‘Do this,’ and he does it; but I am obliged to say, ‘This is the reason why you ought to do that,’ and then he does it.
The last line of Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen is addressed to the American people and their congressmen. As they deal with me and my people, kindly, generously, and justly, so may the Great Ruler...
The most important reason I am concentrating on Winthrop and his shipmates in the 1630s is that the country I live in is haunted by the Puritans’ vision of themselves as God’s chosen people, as a beac...
The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave, he wrote. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficien...
The people who visit the [Lincoln] memorial always look like an advertisement for democracy, so bizarrely, suspiciously diverse that one time I actually saw a man in a cowboy hat standing there readin...
The true American patriot is by definition skeptical of the government.
There seems to be no end to the satisfaction one gets in having one’s opinions confirmed.
To Arendt’s point about post-revolution stability deriving from pre-revolutionary experience in self government, it’s worth remembering that two of Henry’s less chatty fellow burgesses became the firs...
Whether or not the United States has saved the world, it did save France a time or two. When the American Expeditionary Forces commanded by General John J. Pershing came to the aid of France during Wo...
Did not hesitate to be disagreeable to preserve my independence—applied
It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces.
The cheapest, most pleasurable way for a country of strangers to get to know each other and the rest of the world is through reading.
The subject of Peter Gallagher’s eyebrows, I realize, is a digression away from the Oneida Community, and yet, I do feel compelled, indeed almost conspiracy theoretically bound to mention that one of...
After he finishes his song, I ask him, Sir, were you just playing ‘Lean on Me’? That’s right! he answers, thrilled. Now, whenever I think of Mudd and his house I hear that song, hear Mudd serenading t...
Americans’ fatal tendency of disunion.
As the starstruck Lafayette later described his first glimpse of Washington, It was impossible to mistake for a moment his majestic figure and deportment; nor was he less distinguished by the noble af...
By journey's end the brides were much better acquainted with their grooms and more or less pleased with the matches. Sybil Bingham wrote in her diary, thanking God for answering her prayer for filling...
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