Category: HISTORY

On Independence Day, we watched a “bipartisan reading of the Declaration of Independence” organized by legislator and educator Sean Brennan, representative to Ohio’s House of Representatives for District 14. Ohio House members from both sides of the aisle took turns reading the Declaration from its opening, “When in the course of human events,” through its closing pledge of “our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor,” along with the names of its signatories. The reading typifies Brennan’s creative approach to public service. It also suggests his effectiveness; Brennan’s colleagues read the Declaration clearly, expressively, and without a stumble.

Brennan, a frequent participant in Teaching American History seminars, has long promoted civic education and civil cooperation at the local and state level. For nearly two decades, he served on the city council of Parma, Ohio’s 7^th-largest city. His service included a decade as the at-large elected Parma Council President, a role in which he chaired council deliberations. He carried on this work while teaching government and an elective course in constitutional, civil and criminal law at Brecksville-Broadview High School. “Being on the Council furnished endless lessons for my classes,” he said. At the same time, Brennan’s teaching work allowed him to share the views of a younger generation with the older citizens of Parma.

In 2020, Brennan began bringing local naturalization ceremonies into the high school. He wanted students to understand the careful process through which immigrants become citizens. He involved students in planning school assemblies during which new citizens publicly pledged, as is customary, to “support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” to “bear true faith and allegiance to the same” and to perform military or other service when the law so requires.  Prior to the pledge, the school choir sang, a film celebrating the arrival of immigrants at Ellis Island was shown, and prominent local citizens from immigrant families gave speeches about their own experience of becoming American. Before these assemblies, “some students didn’t even know what naturalization was! Now they will never forget,” Brennan said.

These events typify Brennan’s creative approach to public service. As a legislator and educator, he’s spent his career reaching across generational, ethnic, religious, and partisan lines to carry out projects that serve the whole community. He’s often worked with private charities on such projects. A runner, he led in the creation of the annual Parma Run-Walk for Pierogies, which raises money for local scholarships and an all-faith food pantry. As a teacher, he appreciated Teaching American History’s free seminars featuring scholar-led discussion of primary documents. In his teaching he used only primary documents, knowing from his city council experience that they “are the materials you deal with when you are trying to solve political and social problems.” Now, as a full-time legislator, he is “working hard to build trust with my colleagues and to honorably serve the people to the best of my ability.”

Teaching American History emphasizes the use of primary documents. Why, then, is Teaching American History publishing a series of narrative histories?

In case you didn’t know about the narrative histories, let me describe them, before I explain them. There will be six:

• Discovery and Settlement      
• The Founding, 1789–1800                            
• Civil War, 1850–1876
• The Emergence of Modern America, 1880–1920                  
• The Great Depression and the New Deal, 1929–1939
• America in the Age of the Vietnam War, 1960–1980                        

Each volume covers a critical period in American history (are there any periods that weren’t?). The subtitle of each is “A Concise History,” because that is what each will be. John Moser’s history of the Great Depression and the New Deal, the only one published so far, is 145 pages. In that brief space, John narrates what happened in the ten years he covers. He tells the story of the economic crisis that followed the stock market crash of 1929, the efforts of Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt to address it, and the economic and political changes wrought in the United States by Roosevelt’s New Deal. In doing so, he reviews the various interpretations offered by the participants in the events he narrates and those who subsequently studied them. In all of this, his narrative is tied to and helps readers understand the 43 primary documents in The New Deal and the Great Depression: Core Documents that John also edited.

But why does TAH offer John’s narrative (and the others), if primary documents are so important?

The idea for the narrative histories came from the experience of teaching the MAHG course on the American Revolution. Several teachers who took the course mentioned that Gordon Wood’s short volume The American Revolution, which was part of the assigned reading, was helpful to them because they did not have an overview of the period and Wood’s book provided it. Talking to them it, we realized that by an “overview” they meant at least three things.

First, they meant a chronology of events, a clear statement of what happened before and after a specific primary document. The chronology helps in understanding the significance of the document, why it was written and what effects it may have helped produce. For example, John’s documentary history contains two documents on the relationship of African Americans to the New Deal. Both provide insight into specific aspects of black life during the depression. John’s narrative places what those documents tell us in the longer-term movement of black voters from the Republican party to the Democratic party. This movement has had a significant effect on American political life ever since. John’s narrative helps us understand why those two primary documents were written. It helps us look forward to the post World War II civil rights movement, even though Roosevelt himself was for political reasons guarded in his dealings with the issue of black civil rights.

Second, the author of a primary document is always aware of more about his current circumstances than a reader many years later will be. As the New Deal continued, for example, Roosevelt was quite aware of his critics, but he did not necessarily even mention them, let alone describe their criticisms accurately or fairly in detail in his speeches. John’s documentary history of the Depression and New Deal includes some of the critics, of course, but his narrative account gives all of them, including extremists of the left and right, due consideration. In doing so, he allows us to better judge FDR’s political maneuvering to deal with them. Ultimately, the context John provides allows us to weigh the argument that the New Deal saved democratic capitalism rather than undermined it.

Finally, as the second reason for the narrative histories suggests, the narrative and the documents work together and allow us to question each more thoroughly. Readers who work through the primary documents will be able to question John’s narrative, just as reading the narrative will allow them to return to the documents with the knowledge they need to better question and evaluate what each author says.

This process of reciprocal questioning is like what happens or should happen in the discussions we have in our MAHG classes and in our one day and multiday seminars.

As these reasons suggest, the narrative and the documentary histories are meant to work together to deepen our understanding of the period they treat. To that end, each narrative history includes a chronology and an appendix that lists by chapter the primary documents from the corresponding documentary history discussed in that chapter. Each of the narrative histories, with the exception of the Founding, will be written by the editor of the corresponding core document collection. The next two to appear (both in the 2024-25 academic year) are The Emergence of Modern America and America in the Age of the Vietnam War.

On this date (June 25^th) in 1929, President Herbert Hoover signed the Boulder Canyon Project Act of 1928, authorizing construction by the federal government of a gigantic dam on the Colorado River, just west of the Grand Canyon. The dam, which would eventually be named after Hoover, took five years to complete, at a then unprecedented cost of $49 million (about $900 million today). When finished, it rose higher than any dam ever before built and enabled the construction of what was then the world’s largest power plant, as well as of the “All-American Canal,” which would carry water from the reservoir the dam created to California’s Central Valley. This allowed California to become a major producer of the fresh produce that now feeds the nation. Most interesting, the building of the Hoover Dam illustrates the unusual and problematic way water rights in the west are determined.

Why the Dam Was Built

Such a project had been recommended by the US Bureau of Reclamation as early as 1919. In the beginning, it was conceived primarily as a flood control measure, since periodic spring flooding on the Colorado had been known to inundate California farmlands as far as eighty miles distant from the river’s normal banks. By the time the Act was passed, the dam was also seen as a way of storing water for use in dry years and as a source of hydroelectric power for a rapidly growing population in the southwestern region of the country.

The act followed lengthy and difficult negotiations among the seven states that shared portions of the Colorado River Basin: the “upper basin” states of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico; and the “lower basin” states of California, Nevada, and Arizona. (The division between upper and lower basins resulted from the topography of the Colorado River canyon, which was unusually steep, except at Lee’s Ferry, a point just upstream of the Grand Canyon, very near the border between Utah and Arizona. Only at Lee’s Ferry had those journeying southwest from Colorado been able to cross the Colorado River, so as to stake claims and settle in Arizona and New Mexico.)

A Compact Among Seven States

Herbert Hoover, Secretary of Commerce under Warren G. Harding, was appointed chair of the Colorado River Commission, which was charged with finding an equitable way of allocating the water resources among the seven states. Compacts between states were authorized by Article I, Section 10, clause 3 of the Constitution, which also specified that such compacts had to be approved by Congress. Never before had a compact been formed among so many states. Hoover would need to convince the delegates of each state to reach an agreement that would then be ratified by their state legislatures; then the agreement would have to be made official through an act of Congress.

Hoover had experience managing projects combining technical and political difficulties. After making a fortune as a mining engineer, he had organized an effort to provide food to occupied Belgium during the first world war. Later, he’d headed the American Relief Organization, which provided food to post-war Central and Eastern Europe. As chair of the new commission, Hoover spent six months in fruitless meetings, failing to persuade the state delegates to accept an equitable division of the water that would be stored behind the proposed dam. What finally persuaded the upper basin states to work out a compact with the lower basin states was a 1922 Supreme Court decision on a case involving a dispute between Colorado and Wyoming over use of the water in the Laramie River. To understand that decision, and to understand why seven western states needed to negotiate a compact to be sure to have the water they needed, one needs to understand how water rights in the west are granted.

First in Time, First in Right

Since the beginning of gold and silver mining operations in the western states, water rights had been claimed and held in a way that differed from the practice elsewhere in the country. In the east, those who owned land owned the right to draw enough water to irrigate their crops from rivers that crossed their land; frequent rains meant that there would usually be adequate water for those downriver. In the west, water was claimed as property independently of land. This happened because mining operations often used sluices to separate ore from the dirt or mud in which it was found, and the water needed to operate the sluices was often drawn from sources distant to the vein being mined. In time, a legal doctrine developed that gave the right to use any source of water to the first who claimed it, as long as that owner used the entire amount he claimed. If he used less in a given year, he could thereafter claim only the reduced amount.

Within western states, this practice of giving first rights to the first claimants helped to clarify who had a right to water in a region where dry conditions meant there was rarely enough for everyone who wanted it. It remained to be resolved what would happen if two states disputed the right to draw water from a river that ran through both. The Supreme Court declared in 1922 that in interstate disputes, also, the right to first draw water from a river was held by the first claimants. Since California had been settled prior to the southwestern states, this meant that California had a stronger claim on Colorado River water than the other states through which the Colorado flowed. The Court’s decision persuaded those states to cooperate with the Colorado River Commission, since they were more likely to get the water they needed through a negotiated process than through a judicial one.

Hoover summoned the delegates to the Colorado River Commission to a meeting at Bishop’s Lodge, a ranch in New Mexico accessible from Santa Fe only via several hours of driving on bad roads. He wanted to shield the delegates from the denunciations they’d receive at home if the concessions they made were reported. This strategy worked. The US Geological survey had estimated the annual flow of water through the Colorado River at 16.5 million acre-feet (MAF). The commissioners agreed to allocate 7.5 MAF to the upper basin states and 7.5 MAF to the lower basin states, leaving 1.5 MAF to be left to flow into Mexico. The agreement depended on California’s pledge to claim only the amount of water it was already drawing, 4.4 MAF. The compact was later ratified by six of the seven states concerned, Arizona being the lone hold-out. After the commission agreed to overlook Arizona’s refusal of the compact, Congress drafted the law that authorized building of the dam.

Constructing the Dam

The Bureau of Reclamation supervised the construction, which occurred between 1931 and 1936. More than 100 of the thousands who worked on the project died on the job. The finished structure was named the Boulder Dam by the Roosevelt administration, although in 1947 an act of Congress renamed it the Hoover Dam.

A concrete gravity-arch structure that is 726.4 feet tall and 1244 feet long, the dam was built to hold over 28 MAF in the reservoir, Lake Mead, that it created. Today it holds less than 16 MAF. It turns out that the US Geological Survey greatly overestimated the annual water flow of the Colorado, having based its estimate on several years in the early twentieth century when rain and snowfall were heavier than at any time since the 1400s (tree ring analyses have helped to establish precipitation in centuries before records were kept). In recent years, water drawn from the reservoir has included water stored in prior years, and the level of Lake Mead is dropping.

Although the Hoover Dam remains the largest dam in the US, there are now fourteen other large dams on the Colorado River, including the Glen Canyon dam, located at Lee’s Ferry. Each captures water and generates hydroelectric power for the growing demands of towns and cities along the river’s route. The river is drawn from so heavily that it peters out in the Sonoran Desert several miles short of what was once its mouth in the Sea of Cortez.

For Further Reading:

Martin Doyle, The Source: How Rivers Made America and America Remade Its Rivers. Blackstone Publishing, 2021.

David Owen, Where the Water Goes : Life and Death Along the Colorado River.  Riverhead Books, Reprint edition, 2018.

Marc Reisner, Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, Penguin: Revised Edition, 1993. 

Summer has arrived! And that means the pinnacle of TAH’s professional development for teachers has arrived as well: our Master of Arts in American History and Government (MAHG) program at Ashland University in Ashland, OH.

Every summer, hundreds of teachers from around the country join us for week-long classes on topics ranging from early American history to modern political institutions. The one day seminars we hold around the country provide in-depth learning from document-based discussions, but the experience is amplified during the summer residence program.

There’s the obvious benefit of more time than in our one day seminars, with several days to develop your expertise in the topics you’re interested in. But that’s just the start. Teachers and professors live together on campus, sharing meals and continuing the discussions outside of class. Add to this the serenity and seclusion of our campus, and it’s no wonder so many incredible teachers keep coming back every summer.

But all good things eventually end, and some of our students will be finishing their final classes this summer. Teachers at the end of the program can choose to complete either a traditional master’s thesis, a capstone project, or our qualifying exam. With the qualifying exam being the option most of our students choose, we’d like to take a look at the structure of this exam and how to perform well on it.

The exam will be released to students on a Friday, and they will have a little over two weeks to submit their final answers. The exam has two parts. The first part asks students to analyze a short text. The second part consists of four questions. Students answer two of these. The four questions cover a variety of topics, eras, or themes in American history and government. Each question has a corresponding document to analyze in your response.

Tips for Succeeding on the Exam

The first part of the exam comes with detailed instructions that describe what the analysis should consist of. The key is to focus on the argument in the document; don’t get lost in the weeds of irrelevant historical context for this part of the exam.

It’s common for teachers to overlook the arguments in the document. Frequently, teachers will try to do too much and forget to provide this basic analysis. They dive right into the historical context or how the document fits into a larger debate and neglect to take a close look at the document itself.

While the historical context is relevant to the question being asked, it’s important to demonstrate a thorough understanding of the document itself. For what purpose was it written? Who was its intended audience? What effect did it have? One of the benefits to learning through primary sources is developing an ability to understand others as they would understand themselves, so set aside time to make sure you reveal this ability in your responses.  

Another common danger teachers run into is running out of time to complete the essays. We encourage you to take full advantage of all three weekends between the release of the exam and its submission deadline. Start right away to give yourself time to proofread, revise, and edit later.

Save your notes from class! If you’re not a pack rat and can’t save them all, you should at least consider saving notes from the core or required courses in our program (501, 502, 503, 505, 506, and 507). These courses lay an excellent foundation for a deep understanding of the history and government of America. From the American Revolution through the Rise of Modern America, you’ll have plenty of material to draw from to help you answer the questions in your essay.

Take breaks in your writing to revisit later. It may feel like you won’t have time, but you’ll benefit from looking back over your work with a fresh set of eyes. This is also why it’s important to start writing that first weekend you get the questions. You need to have words on the page to work with later after you’ve had time to reflect more on the document and what you’d like to include about it.

Get feedback from the friends you’ve made in the program. We always encourage our students to form study groups for their classes on campus, so continue to make use of the connections you’ve made when working on this exam. Someone familiar with our classes will help you see if you’ve strayed into irrelevance in your answer.

It can also be helpful to try asking people with no knowledge of the topic to proofread your essay for you. English teachers you work with can offer valuable feedback on the coherence of your answers without getting lost in the technicalities of the content. Additional sets of eyes reading back through what you wrote will help you know whether you’ve fully addressed the prompt and thoroughly analyzed the document.

Conclusion

The Qualifying Exam may be intimidating, but as with all of the challenges in the MAHG program it’s also a rewarding way to finish your studies. It will remind you how much you learned over the years in our program, and you’ll leave with that familiar sense of pride when you push your brain to its limits thinking through topics worthy of serious study.

On May 26, 1924, President Calvin Coolidge signed the Johnson-Reed Act, the first federal law in American history designed to establish permanent, comprehensive restrictions on immigration.  It came at the end of a long, contentious process that debated the nature of American citizenship and identity along with the perceived merits and hazards of mass immigration.  The law is rightly regarded as one of the triumphs of American nativism and a pivotal moment in the history of U.S. immigration policy.

Aside from a brief allusion in Article 1, Section 9, to “The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit” (i.e., enslaved Africans), the U.S. Constitution—including all amendments to date—is silent on the question of immigration.  The only constitutional guidance even on the crucial question of defining American citizenship was to empower Congress in Article 1, Section 8 “to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization.” Two years after the Constitution was ratified, Congress set about fulfilling this mandate by limiting eligibility for naturalization to “free white persons” of “good character” who had been in the United States as little as two years, adding that their children under the age of 21 would likewise be counted as naturalized citizens. (The 14^th and 15^th Amendments gave greater clarity to these matters.)

Anxieties about the perils of unfettered immigration and dangerous “aliens” were apparent from the beginning.  Worries over French radicalism led to the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, empowering the President to deport those deemed a threat to the “safety and security” of the nation.  These laws revealed deeper anxieties about national loyalty and the importance of preserving cultural uniformity, concerns that form a consistent throughline in the evolution of American debates over immigration to this day.

Early in the 19^th century, Americans began to sound the alarm over new arrivals—especially Irish Catholics.  These anxieties generated what historians call “nativism,” an impulse that would become a stable feature of American life and an impetus for immigration policy.  Erika Lee defines nativism as “the naming of white Anglo-Saxon Protestant settlers and their descendants as ‘natives’ to the United States and the granting of special privileges and protections to them.”  As the U.S. grew in territory, population, and diversity, so would nativist ambitions to circumscribe the nation’s citizenship qualifications and terms of entry.

The most important early turning point in this evolution came in 1882 with the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first federal law restricting free immigration to the United States (it remained in effect until 1943).  The law’s passage established the need for a federal administrative apparatus for managing the flow of people into the country most notably at key points of entry in San Francisco and New York City.  Little attention was given at this time to the nation’s northern or southern borders.

The 1880s also marked the beginning of the so-called “Great Wave” of immigration from Europe, a massive upsurge in foreign-born people pouring into the United States.  Between 1880 and 1924 roughly 25 million predominantly southern and eastern Europeans arrived in the U.S.; large populations of Italians, Greeks, Hungarians, Poles, and other Slavs, among them 3 to 4 million Jews.  These “huddled masses” would dramatically change the complexion and character of America’s cities.  They were outsiders by language, custom, and religion, prompting a rising chorus of critics who questioned whether they could ever assimilate to the America way of life.  Some wondered, moreover, if these new arrivals might be bringing strange diseases and radical ideas that could destabilize the country in permanent ways.

The foundations of the 1924 Immigration Act were laid during these decades.  In 1894, a group of Harvard educated Boston “Brahmins” formed the Immigration Restriction League, aiming to preserve the Anglo-Saxon “stock” of the American people.  They lent intellectual credence to something called the “Nordic theory” of racial supremacy, which assumed that Anglo-Protestantism was the source of American greatness.  One of the League’s founders, Prescott F. Hall (1868-1921), created an enduring distinction on this basis between “old immigrants” (British, German, and Scandinavian presumed to be intelligent, dynamic, and free) and “new immigrants” (Latin, Asian, Jewish, and Slav presumed to be backwards, stagnant, lazy, and servile).  The League also immediately began pushing legislation that would curtail the flow of “new immigrants.”

League efforts in Congress were championed by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge (R-MA), who worked tirelessly pushing their most prized policy goal: the literacy test.  By this time, both Democrats and Republicans were eager to limit the flow of immigration, and bills advocating the literacy-based restrictions passed multiple times during the 1890s, 1900s, and 1910s, but were consistently vetoed by presidents who argued that such tests ran contrary to American ideals.  Meanwhile, Congress authorized the United States Immigration Commission led by Senator William P. Dillingham (R-VT), its first major effort to study the issue.  The resulting massive 41-volume report reinforced Nordic theory assumptions and, among many other recommendations, endorsed the establishment of national immigration quotas.

World War I both interrupted the flow of immigration and witnessed a mass exodus of foreign-born men re-crossing the Atlantic to fight for their homelands.  Wartime also supplied “emergency conditions” that increased the national appetite for long desired restrictions.  On the front end, Congress passed and Wilson signed the Immigration Act of 1917, which finally satisfied the dream of a literacy test along with other restrictions.  At the war’s end, with a rising tide of social unrest and xenophobia, Congress passed an even more restrictive law, the landmark Emergency Quota Act of 1921, temporarily capping immigration at 350,000 and for the first time implementing a quota system on the basis of national origins.  The quotas were based on the 1910 census and limited the number of immigrants from any country to 3% of the number of residents from that country in the United States, giving much greater weight to people from northern and western Europe.

Because the 1921 law was intended as a temporary fix, the debate over immigration restriction continued.  The national mood heading into the 1920s was decidedly conservative, leading Senators Albert Johnson (R-IL), a staunch eugenics advocate, and David Reed (R-PA) to pen what would become the most restrictive immigration law in American history.  The Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 overwhelmingly passed in both houses of Congress.  It built on the 1921 legislation, this time capping total immigration at 165,000 and reducing the nationality quota from 3% to 2%, but importantly established the basis for these calculations on the population distribution within the 1890 census.  It also barred all immigration from Asia.  These moves vastly diminished the flow of people from outside of northern and western Europe, thus guaranteeing white Anglo-Saxon Protestant dominance in the U.S. through the heart of the twentieth century.

Immigration to the United States shrank to historic lows over the coming decades thanks to the new law, with a strong assist from the economic collapse of the Great Depression.  While Congress adjusted and amend features of the 1924 provisions in the coming decades, Johnson-Reed largely defined immigration policy until 1965 when Lyndon Johnson dismantled and reshaped its priorities as part of his vision for a Great Society.  It is impossible to understand today’s debates about immigration without a deeper understanding of the one-hundred year old Johnson-Reed Act and its long shadow. 

Summer’s here! Time to do that reading you put off during the school year. We asked teacher friends what they plan to read during the summer vacation. Most will delve into the complex and fascinating American story, reading books that will enrich their teaching for next year. If you are still looking for good reads, here are some ideas.

Some MAHG students and graduates of the program now have time to read books recommended by fellow students and professors. Tina Boudell will read American Colossus by HW Brands, which chronicles the rapid industrialization of America in the latter half of the 19^th century and Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics, and American Economics in the Progressive Era, by Thomas Leonard. David Widenhofer will read The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party by Michael Holt. Professor Jeremy Bailey called it “the definitive work on the Whigs,” Widenhofer recalls, “and of course it will be loaded with lots of Henry Clay. Who needs another reason?” he asks.

Jody Glass is reading Gilbert Kings’s Devil in the Grove, a riveting account of Thurgood Marshall’s experience defending four young black men in Groveland, Florida, falsely charged with rape. “A friend from the MAHG program referred the book to me after many discussions on civil rights activism from Reconstruction to the modern Black Lives Matter movement we see today,” she said.  

Several teachers are reading in preparation for summer teacher institutes. Both Kymberli Wregglesworth and Kelly Steffen will attend an NEH workshop at Heart Mountain, Wyoming, site of a World War II Japanese detention center. They are reading Shirley Higuchi’s Setsuko’s Secret and Sam Mihara’s Blindsided, among other books. In preparation for the 2024 Alexander Lebenstein Teacher Education Institute in Richmond, VA, Amy Livingston is reading Doris Bergen’s War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust.

Amber McMunn will attend an NEH institute on the 60^th anniversary of Freedom Summer, the effort that brought northern college students to Mississippi to help register African Americans to vote. She is reading Bruce Watson’s Freedom Summer: The Savage Season of 1964 that Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy and John Dittmer’s Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi.  Tyler Nice, who will be attending an institute on the Civil War and Reconstruction at the University of Virginia, is reading The American War, by Gary Gallagher and Joan Waugh, and Remembering the Civil War, by Caroline Janney.

Many teachers will pursue answers to Civil War-related questions. Both Adena Barnette-Miller and Jason Berling are reading The Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson, an account of the early days of the Civil War. Barnette-Miller, who now teaches a college course on West Virginia history, will also read Daydreams and Nightmares: A Virginia Family Faces Secession and War by Brent Tarter, which tells the story of George Berlin, delegate to the Virginia Secession Convention of 1861 (which triggered the events leading to West Virginia statehood).  Berlin began as an outspoken opponent of secession yet ultimately voted in favor of it. George Hawkins will read Thaddeus Stevens, Civil War Revolutionary, Fighter for Racial Justice by Bruce Levine, along with Henry Louis Gates, Jr’s collection of The Classic Slave Narratives.

Greg Balan has been working toward a PhD at Liberty University. For a course on “The Development of Western Freedoms,” he’s reading Daniel Hannan’s Inventing Freedom and Eicholz’s Harmonizing Sentiments, two books that he says attempt to define “the West” as a locus of political thought. Looking ahead to a dissertation on the origins of Southern pro-slavery arguments, he’ll be reading Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South by Keri Merritt and reading through the work of John C. Calhoun and James Henley Thornwell.

Great biographies, especially of presidents, always fascinate. Lucas George plans to read Ron Chernow’s biography of Grant “to enrich my classes with his Civil War experience” and consider “how his legacy has changed over time.” Brian Milliron will read An Ordinary Man: The Surprising Life & Historic Presidency of Gerald R. Ford byRichard Norton Smith.

Brett Van Gaasbeek plans to read Tip and the Gipper, by Chris Matthews, which recounts the amical relationship between House Speaker Tip O’Neil and President Reagan “during the 1980s, when it seemed that politics didn’t need to be so combative.” Van Gaasbeek will also check out Stephen Knott’s The Lost Soul of the American Presidency, to see what this MAHG professor he admires really “knows about the presidency.”

Speaking of books by beloved MAHG professors, Professor Marc Landy has co-authored with Dennis Hale a book that carefully considers criticisms of the US Constitution throughout our history yet finds good reasons to defend it: Keeping the Republic: A Defense of American Constitutionalism.

“Border policies are a hot topic in the election year coming up,” Robin Deck Davis notes, so she will be reading Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America by Juan Gonzales. Spanning five centuries of Latino experience in the US, the book will enrich  her knowledge of American history as a whole.

With this year marking the 80^th anniversary of D-Day, Milliron and Berling look forward to reading about the challenges faced by those who fought in World War II.  Milliron will dig into Forgotten Fifteenth: The Daring Airmen Who Crippled Hitler’s War Machine, by Barrett Tillman. Berling plans to read C. S. Forrester’s The Good Shepherd, an historical novel about a battleship captain trying to protect a convoy of ships from German U-boats during an Atlantic crossing. Meanwhile, Miles Matthews plans a trip into some of America’s most enduring and revealing narrative myths: The Western: Four Classic Novels of the 1940s and 50s, published by the Library of America.

Both Nancie Lindblom and Anne Walker will read books exploring the influence of the Greek and Roman classics on the founders. Lindblom will read Greeks and Romans Bearing Gifts: How the Ancients Inspired the Founding Fathers by Carl J. Richard; Walker will read The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America by Jeffrey Rosen. Vince Bradburn intends to immerse himself in one of those classic texts the founders read, Plato’s Republic. He also plans to read Henry David Thoreau’s Walden.  “I’ve chosen these two classics to revisit some essential questions on how best to organize society as well as order my individual life,” Bradburn wrote.

Carrie Huber recommends that everyone read Our History is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance by Nick Estes. The book delves into the earlier “history of resistance for the Oceti Sakowin of the Upper Midwest. The discussion of dams on the Missouri River and dislocation of Native peoples was both heartbreaking and fascinating.” Sonja Czarnecky will be slowly and carefully rereading a book she read quickly during her winter break: The Rediscovery of America by Ned Blackhawk. “During my graduate study I kept wondering how encounters between white colonials and native Americans shaped the founding era and the later development of the United States . . . .This book attempts to tell that story,” she writes.

Even during summer, teachers continue thinking about their classrooms. Some look for insights into what is happening inside students’ heads. Berling will read The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt, which discusses the effects of cell phones, social media, and internet access on young people. Lindblom will read Making Thinking Visible by Ron Ritchhart and Mark Church. The book elaborates a set of “thinking routines” that can be used across disciplines and age levels to reveal how students think, guide their learning, and deepen their understanding.

Happy reading to all!

This blog post, written by faculty member Sarah Morgan Smith, was first posted on January 19, 2021.

An online resource guide at Library of Congress, U.S. Presidential Inaugurations: “I Do Solemnly Swear…,” showcases the development of the inauguration day ceremonies. For each president, library staff have collected primary materials illustrating what made his inauguration unique. There are drafts of inaugural addresses, descriptions of the ceremonies written by attendees (sometimes by the president himself), and a wide variety of memorabilia, including ceremony tickets and programs, prints, photographs and even sheet music. Each entry also includes a list of historical ‘firsts,’ along with factoids like which Bible the president was sworn in on, the number of inaugural balls held, and so on. A particularly interesting set of documents illustrates the very first presidential inauguration ceremonies, those for George Washington.

The first Presidential inauguration in American history entailed careful planning, with much behind-the-scenes negotiation. As the first grand public event of the nation under its new Constitution, the inauguration had to strike just the right note. Ceremony was needed, but the event could not be overly solemn, lest it be seen as a royal coronation. Nor could it be merely celebratory, lest it appear too common.

William Maclay, the first United States Senator from Pennsylvania and an inveterate diarist, believed the Senate spent altogether too much time worrying about the niceties of the occasion: “Ceremonies, endless ceremonies, the whole business of the day” (Journal of William McClay, April 25th [1789]). Although a member of the “upper” house, Maclay had very republican tastes and habits. He abhorred those whom he saw applying too aristocratic a veneer over the inauguration ceremonies and, by extension, the new government. Virginians and New Englanders were particularly prone to this vice, Maclay thought, although the “gentlemen of New England” were the worst:

No people in the Union dwell more on trivial distinctions and matters of mere form. They really seem to show a readiness to stand on punctilio and ceremony. A little learning is a dangerous thing (’tis said). May not the same be said of breeding? … Being early used to a ceremonious and reserved behavior, and believing that good manners consists entirely in punctilios, they only add a few more stiffened airs to their deportment, excluding good humor, affability of conversation, and accommodation of temper and sentiment as qualities too vulgar for a gentleman (Journal of William McClay, 28 April 1789).

Vice President John Adams, in particular, irritated Maclay. Adams worried over the formalities, particularly as they related to his (relatively non-existent) role in the forthcoming event. The plan was for Washington to come to the Senate chambers after taking the oath of office. Adams, ever the dramatist, informed the Senate that he was unsure of how to handle himself under such circumstances:

Gentlemen, I feel great difficulty how to act. I am possessed of two separate powers; the one in esse [nature] and the other in posse [power]. I am Vice-President. In this I am nothing, but I may be everything. But I am president also of the Senate. When the President comes into the Senate, what shall I be? I cannot be [president] then. No, gentlemen, I cannot, I cannot. I wish gentlemen to think what I shall be. (Journal of William McClay, April 25)

The Senate, wisely, refrained from attempting to resolve Adams’ identity crisis and moved on to discuss more substantive aspects of the inauguration ceremonies.

Other tense moments marked the planning process. Each highlighted the difficulty of creating in a moment the customs of a new nation. A joint committee, made up of members from the House and Senate, worked out a proposed order of ceremonies. The two houses of Congress then discussed the plan, suggesting amendments. Maclay, a stickler for parliamentary procedure, objected to a motion that the Senators join Washington at a church service following his inauguration. The idea had already been rejected by the joint committee in the course of their sessions. Maclay wrote, “I opposed it as an improper business after it had been in the hands of the Joint Committee and rejected, as I thought this a certain method of creating a dissension between the Houses.” (Journal of William McClay, 27 April) The following day a proposal was made to require state officials to swear allegiance to the new government. Now Maclay worried that the relationship between the federal government and the states would be damaged by the inauguration ceremonies.

Inauguration day dawned at last: “a great, important day,” Maclay wrote, and then implored, “Goddess of etiquette, assist me while I describe it.”

The Vice-President rose in the most solemn manner. … “Gentlemen, I wish for the direction of the Senate. The President will, I suppose, address the Congress. How shall I behave? How shall we receive it? Shall it be standing or sitting?” (Journal of William McClay, 30 April 1789).

In response to Adams’ question, a number of senators began to discuss the behavior of the houses of Parliament when being addressed by the king, and whether, indeed, the new Senate ought to model itself on Britain at all.

Before this question could be resolved, the Clerk from the House of Representatives appeared at the door of the Senate chamber with “a communication.” His appearance vexed the Senate greatly, according to Maclay, for they knew not how to receive him:

A silly kind of resolution of the committee on that business had been laid on the table some days ago. The amount of it was that each House should communicate to the other what and how they chose; it concluded, however, something in this way: That everything should be done with all the propriety that was proper. The question 1717968530 was, Shall this be adopted, that we may know how to receive the Clerk? It was objected [that] this will throw no light on the subject; it will leave you where you are.

Mr. Lee brought the House of Commons before us again. He reprobated the rule; declared that the Clerk should not come within … that the proper mode was for the Sergeant-at-Arms, with the mace on his shoulder, to meet the Clerk at the door and receive his communication; we are not, however, provided for this ceremonious way of doing business, having neither mace nor sergeant …. (Journal of William McClay, 30 April 1789).

Things went on in this vein for some time, with the poor Clerk kept out of the Senate chamber until finally “repeated accounts came [that] the Speaker and Representatives were at the door. Confusion ensued….” Eventually, the members of the House were admitted and sat down with the Senators to await the arrival of the President. After a delay of over an hour, Washington appeared.

The President advanced between the Senate and Representatives, bowing to each. He was placed in the chair by the Vice-President; the Senate with their president on the right, the Speaker and the Representatives on his left. The Vice-President rose and addressed a short sentence to him. The import of it was that he should now take the oath of office as President. … The President was conducted out of the middle window into the gallery, and the oath was administered by the Chancellor. Notice that the business done was communicated to the crowd by proclamation, etc., who gave three cheers, and repeated it on the President’s bowing to them. (Journal of William McClay, 30 April 1789).

Interestingly, administration of the oath of office seems to have been the extent of the public’s involvement in the inauguration ceremonies, for Washington then returned to the Senate chamber where (despite the formally unresolved status of Adams’ earlier question of protocol) all parties took their seats. Washington then stood and addressed the room. To Maclay’s eye, “this great man was agitated and embarrassed more than ever he was by the leveled cannon or pointed musket. He trembled, and several times could scarce make out to read, though it must be supposed he had often read it before.” As he read, Washington fidgeted, holding the speech first in one hand and then the other, moving his free hand into and out of the pocket of his breeches.

When he came to the words “all the world,” he made a flourish with his right hand, which left rather an ungainly impression. I sincerely, for my part, wished all set ceremony in the hands of the dancing-masters, and that this first of men had read off his address in the plainest manner, without ever taking his eyes from the paper, for I felt hurt that he was not first in everything. … (Journal of William McClay, 30 April 1789).

Following Washington’s speech (in accordance with the Senate resolution noted above regarding the inclusion of a church service in the day’s festivities), “there was a grand procession to Saint Paul’s Church, where prayers were said by the Bishop.” Maclay notes that members of the militia stood along one of the streets through which the group traveled, but that appears to have been the extent of the pageantry. That evening, however, “grand fireworks” and illuminations were offered to the public.

The wrangle over ceremonial details was not yet finished, however, for the Senate had to take up the President’s address and consider the proper means of entering it in their journals. Introducing it to the record, Adams referred to the inaugural address as the president’s “most gracious speech.” Maclay spoke up, objecting “I cannot approve of this.” Then,

I looked all around the Senate. Every countenance seemed to wear a blank. The Secretary was going on: I must speak or nobody would. “Mr. President, we have lately had a hard struggle for our liberty against kingly authority. The minds of men are still heated: everything related to that species of government is odious to the people. The words prefixed to the President’s speech are the same that are usually placed before the speech of his Britannic Majesty. I know they will give offense. I consider them as improper. I therefore move that they be struck out, and that it stand simply “address” or “speech,” as may be judged most suitable.” (Journal of William McClay, 1 May 1789).

Adams, predictably, defended his use of the phrase, saying “he was for a dignified and respectable government, and as far as he knew the sentiments of the people they thought as he did.” Maclay—ever the republican—countered “that there had been a revolution in the sentiments of people respecting government equally great as that which had happened in the Government itself.” Americans, he argued, were leery of even the “modes” of monarchy, and already suspicious of the new Constitution with its concentration of power at the federal level. “The enemies of the Constitution had objected to it the facility there would be of transition from it to kingly government and all the trappings and splendor of royalty,” he observed. “If such a thing as this appeared on our minutes, they would not fail to represent it as the first step of the ladder in the ascent to royalty.” (Journal of William McClay, 1 May 1789).

Although Adams remained unconvinced, Maclay won the day: Washington’s address was entered into the minutes with republican simplicity. Pageantry to celebrate the successful launch of the new government was one thing; pomp and circumstance in the day-to-day business of politics, quite another.

Thursday June 6, 2024 is the 80^th anniversary of D-Day, the day Allied forces landed on the beaches of Normandy to begin the “great and noble undertaking” of liberating Europe. We commemorate the anniversary with the words of General Dwight Eisenhower, commander of the Allied forces. The introduction that follows, and the words of Eisenhower, are from World War II: Core Documents, selected and introduced by Jennifer D. Keene.

June 6, 1944 (known as D-Day) the Allied Forces launched a series of attacks on German-occupied northern France. A massive naval armada crossed the English Channel and troops stormed the beaches at Normandy from amphibious landing vehicles. Bad weather compounded the logistical difficulties of attacking the well-defended shoreline. Uncertain whether the attack would succeed, Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) prepared two messages on June 5, 1944. One was distributed to troops right after Eisenhower made the decision to attack at dawn. The second he scribbled in private to be released if the attack failed. The attacks secured a beachhead, so this second message was never issued.

SUPREME HEADQUARTERS ALLIED EXPEDITIONARY FORCE

Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force!

You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hope and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.

Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely.

But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940–41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory!

I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory!

Good luck! And let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Hand-written, unissued message

Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.

Recently I emailed a question to teacher friends who are graduates of the Master of Arts in American History and Government (MAHG) program. “How do you teach students about the challenge of preserving self-government?” Brett Van Gaasbeek replied that he relied on Abraham Lincoln’s analysis of the challenge.

Van Gaasbeek teaches a “College Credit Plus” US History course to sophomores enrolled simultaneously at Northwest High School in Cincinnati and at Sinclair College, where they earn college credits for course. The fast-paced survey covers American history from Columbus to the present day. Early in the fall, Van Gaasbeek’s students had read Lincoln’s 1838 speech to the Springfield Lyceum on “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions.” They “nailed the section on mob rule,” he said. Since that time, they had recalled the speech during discussions of “the Civil War, the formation of unions leading to violent strikes, the rise of the KKK in the 1920s, and unrest associated with the Great Depression.”  

Impressed, I asked Van Gaasbeek to tell me more. He replied, “Why don’t you chat with the students themselves?”

We arranged a Zoom meeting, where I met Van Gaasbeek’s honors-level students, a diverse mix of African-, European-, and Asian-Americans. I asked them, “What have you learned about the challenge of preserving self-government? What problems have Americans repeatedly faced in our history?”

A tall young woman with intricate, shoulder-length braids stepped forward to the video monitor. “I’m Madisyn,” she said. “One thing that seems to come up a lot in our history is corrupt government leaders, people who go into politics just for power, not because they want to make needed changes.”

Jyair introduced himself, then spoke of unequal economic outcomes. Not all Americans are financially successful. “Each new president tries to find ways to help people earn enough to avoid going bankrupt.” But none have yet solved the problem.

Amora, thin and blonde, pointed to the many disputes over taxation. Government needs money to operate, but citizens object to taxes, whether these are the tariffs of the 19th century or the income and capital gain taxes of today. Meanwhile, those with fewer earnings to tax worry about workers’ rights, wages, and benefits.

Janessa spoke of tensions among people with different experiences. People get divided by race, while those with generations of family history in America are suspicious of more recent immigrants.

Maliya added that citizens who “don’t believe their government is doing the right thing” have staged protests.

“Is that a problem?” I asked.

“I think most of the time it is a good thing,” Maliya replied.

True, said a student named Cory; but protest movements reveal the country’s problems. People protest when they feel their concerns are unheard. He mentioned the Black Lives Matter movement.

I asked, “Does preserving self-government require giving representation and a voice to all citizens?” Van Gaasbeek thought Lincoln could help on this point. He turned the conversation to Lincoln’s Fragment on the Constitution and Union. “Do you remember?” he asks the class. “About the apple?”

Casey remembered Lincoln’s analysis, based on an allusion to a verse from Proverbs—“A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.” Lincoln related the “word fitly spoken” to the central promise of the Declaration: that all men are created equal. To Lincoln, the Constitution was a structure of laws created to safeguard this promise. Casey, Van Gaasbeek later told me, was the student who first realized what Lincoln meant.

Now Casey offered a colorful synthesis of Lincoln’s comments on the sectional crisis over slavery: “The apple was like the Declaration, and it was held in place by the framers of the Constitution. But there was a court case about a slave named Dred Scott. And in his ruling, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court said that the enslaved man was not even worth three-fifths of a person. That ruling really threatened the golden apple.”

“Does the Constitution make any sense if we don’t believe in human equality?” I asked. “For example, Casey, why doesn’t Jyair’s vote count for twice as much as your vote?”

“Well, that wouldn’t make sense if all of us are created equal,” Casey responded.

“So, majority rule means everyone’s vote is worth the same as everyone else’s.”

I’d delayed getting to what I really wanted to discuss with the class: Lincoln’s analysis of the most dangerous threats to American democracy. “You’ve read a lot of Lincoln’s writing,” I said. “Your teacher says you read the Lyceum speech that he gave as a young man. Tell me about that.”

Amora said, “He’s criticizing mob rule. He’s saying that if we disagree with a law, we still have to follow it. We can fight to change it, but until it’s changed, we have to follow it. We have to follow the Constitution in order to maintain our independence.”

“When Lincoln speaks of mob rule, what sorts of things does he mean?”

“They were tarring and feathering and hanging people,” Amora recalled.

Madisyn added, “There was a newspaper editor saying things they didn’t like, and they threw his printing press in the river.”

Van Gaasbeek recounted the story. “Elijah Lovejoy was an abolitionist newspaper editor. He was printing his anti-slavery message in 1837 in southern Illinois and sending it to Missouri, a slave state. People said, ‘You can’t publish that here!’ So now the rights of Southerners to hold slaves are pitted against freedom of the press. Lincoln argues that no matter what he’s printing, you have no right to break his press—or to shoot him, as they did! And remember, Lincoln also mentions the riverboat gamblers. They were assumed to be swindling people, so a mob took them off a riverboat and hung them. Lincoln says, you can’t do that—we have a court system for a reason. And if there is no law against cheating while gambling, change the laws.”

“Do you all feel that mob rule is a threat today?” I asked.

“Yes!” several students answered.

“January 6, 2021,” DiWash said. “That insurrection was a perfect example of what Lincoln was criticizing 200 years earlier. It was trying to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power provided for by our Constitution.”

“Can you think of any other instances of mob rule occurring today?”

Madisyn said, “Cory mentioned the Black Lives Matter movement. I know we have a right to peaceful assembly, but when protesters start to fight, break into stores, or hurt other people, it goes from being a peaceful protest to rioting—to mob rule.”

“How does that make other citizens feel—say, those who are watching events on TV?”

“They can get scared. If I were to see a protest turn into a riot, it would discourage me from wanting to help the protesters’ cause. I would feel unprotected, and I’d look for someone to protect me.”

“It could lead to the breakdown of democratic institutions,” DiWash added. “Lincoln says a strong man, a tyrant, could take advantage of the situation.”

“Do you guys remember what else Lincoln said?” Van Gaasbeek prompted. “That Americans would not be conquered by a foreign nation . . .”

“—that we could only be conquered by ourselves,” Cory said.

As the period drew to a close, students discussed the reasons for Lincoln’s success as a leader.

 “He was moderate,” Cory said. “He could see both sides’ goals, and he wanted to prevent the coming war—” so he tried to persuade the South that war was not in their interest. “I think he was elected because people thought he might be able to lead everyone.”

“But the South didn’t listen. They fired on Fort Sumter anyway,” Van Gaasbeek said.

The bell rang, and students began to gather their books. But DiWash wasn’t finished. “Guys, before we go, I want to say something else. Lincoln got elected because his rhetoric was so good. It was a cut above everyone else’s.”

“I would love to talk with you about that sometime,” I said, as DiWash grabbed his books and hurried to his next class.