Historians/History

Why It's Time to Rethink the 70s

by Bruce Schulman and Julian Zelizer

Why publish a book about one of the most underappreciated decades in contemporary American History? Until very recently, the 1970s seemed like little more than a cruel joke. When they thought about the period at all, historians, pundits, and the great majority of American citizens dismissed the decade as a bizarre interlude between the liberal achievements and eventual crack-up in the 1960s and the conservative revolution of the 1980s. The 1970s meant bad hair, bad mus

The Five Years that Made Lincoln President

by John Waugh

Abraham Lincoln, who hated to condemn a deserting soldier to death, was given to putting the papers of tough cases aside and saying, “they are still in soak.” He might have said the same thing at one time about his political career. It was after his one term in Congress ended in 1849. He was not running for reelection, probably couldn’t have won if he did, because he had opposed the U.S. Mexican War, not a popular position in Illinois. It appeared to him that his p

Reporter's Notebook: Highlights from the 2008 OAH Convention: Day 2

by Rick Shenkman

Related Links Past AHA & OAH Conferences OAH 2008: Day 1 OAH 2008: Day 2 OAH 2008: Day 3 Want to share your reflections on the OAH annual meeting? We've set up a special blog so you can. CLICK HERE

George W. Bush: As He Now Appears in a History Book

by Kathryn Moore

George W. Bush entered office under a cloud of doubt, with Democrats crying “Foul!” following the month-long drama of recounting ballots in Florida and court battles there and in the Supreme Court. But on January 20, 2001, Bush too

My Love-Hate Relationship with John Brown

by John Michael Cummings

I never expected John Brown to dominate the title of my first novel.  As a native of Harpers Ferry wh

The Mystery of Oswald's Contacts with the CIA in Mexico

by Jefferson Morley

A small group of senior CIA officers may have been running an authorized counterintelligence operation involving Lee Harvey Oswald six weeks before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. That

Why We Should All Regret Jefferson's Broken Promise to Kościuszko

by Gary B. Nash and Graham Russell Gao Hodges

In March 1798, Tadeuz Kościuszko, a hero of the American and Polish revolutions, and Thomas Jefferson, Vice President of the United States, huddled in a cramped second-story room in Philadelphia to make a pact of ho

Is the National Archives Preserving or Distorting the Heritage of the New Deal?

by Martin Halpern

In encouraging students to conduct research on important events in history, historians today have access to a wealth of resources on the Internet. I tell my students to view critically all sources but that sites managed by government agencies and university libraries are generally reliable. My experience with calling to the attention of the National Archives an important error on the www.ourdocuments.gov website will lead m

Can the State Kill Someone Twice? The Strange and Disturbing Case of the Death of Willie Francis

by Gilbert King

Having heard oral arguments in Baze v. Rees, the Supreme Court will soon decide whether the drugs used in lethal injection executions constitute cruel and unusual punishment as prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. It’s a question the Court has not addressed in more than sixty years, in a case that some legal scholars believe was botched just as badly as the state execution of a stuttering, seventeen-year-old African-American named Willie Francis by a drunken guard and inmate fro

Why Did Truman Fire MacArthur? (And Why Did He Wait So Long to Do It?)

by Michael D. Pearlman

That President Harry Truman fired General Douglas MacArthur will hardly be news to readers of the History News Network. The recently published Truman and MacArthur: Policy, Politics, and the Hunger for Honor and Reno

Forgiveness : Grandeur or Political Slogan?

by Valérie Rosoux

On February 13, the prime minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, presented the official apology of his country to the Aborigines, particularly to the “Stolen Generation,” the children wrested from their parents and placed in institutes and with white parents. The words of the head of the government were unequivocal: “To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry. And for the indignity and degradation thu

OAH: Slighting '68

by Fran Shor

The OAH plenary on “1968” provided a large audience of historians with a variety of perspectives on the broader context and implications of that tumultuous year. However, in their desire to escape fetishizing a single year, practically all of the panelists (with the exception of Manning Marable) overlooked the actual events of that year and how they were emblematic of significant changes or on-going contradictions. What I would like to highl

The Worst Massacre of Blacks by Whites in U.S. History--And the Lesson It Teaches Today

by Charles Lane

On April 13, 1873, the United States experienced the worst one-day slaughter of blacks by whites in its history. In tiny Colfax, La., white paramilitaries attacked lightly armed African American freedmen who had assembled in a local courthouse to defend their elected officeholders. By the time the Colfax Massacre was over, more than 60 black men lay dead. Most were killed after they had surrendered.

Human rights and the ‘work of memory’ in international relations

by Valérie Rosoux

For more than a century and a half, the incessant reminder of past confrontations created entrenched positions on either side of the Rhine. These perceptions gave rise to belligerent discourses calling for the crushing of the ancestral enemy. They were based on the same events, but the meaning assigned to these events was totally different. The discourses were thus frequently based on mutually contradictory versions of the past.In 1950, however, Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman stressed

April 4, 1968

by Joseph A. Palermo

"Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation. And I want to thank God, once more, for allowing me to be here with you."--Martin Luther King, Jr., Mason Temple, Memphis, Tennessee, April 3, 1968

Reporter's Notebook: Highlights from the 2008 OAH Convention: Day 1

by Rick Shenkman

Related Links Past AHA & OAH Conferences OAH 2008: Day 1 OAH 2008: Day 2 OAH 2008: Day 3 Want to share your reflections on the OAH annual meeting? We've set up a special blog so you can. CLICK HERE

Reporter's Notebook: Highlights from the 2008 OAH Convention: Day 3

by Rick Shenkman

Related Links Past AHA & OAH Conferences OAH 2008: Day 1 OAH 2008: Day 2 OAH 2008: Day 3 Want to share your reflections on the OAH annual meeting? We've set up a special blog so you can. CLICK HERE

by Michael Pearlman

The Real Eisenhower

by Ira Chernus

Peace activists love to quote Dwight Eisenhower. The iconic Republican war hero who spoke so eloquently about the dangers of war and the need for disarmament makes a terrific poster-boy for peace. The image of Eisenhower as the “man of peace” is so useful that I almost hate to burst the bubble. But if you look at the historical record there is no escaping the other Eisenhower.

HNN Poll: How Historians Rank the Presidency of George W. Bush (2008)

by Robert S. McElvaine

Deadline Extended! Responses will be accepted through March 24.“As far as history goes and all of these quotes about people trying to guess what the history of the Bush administration is going to be, you know, I take great comfort in knowing that they don’t know what they are talking about, because history takes a long time for us to reach.” — George W. Bush, Fox News Sunday, Feb. 10, 2008An HNN Poll conduc