Historians/History

Another Thomas Jefferson Tried to Eliminate Slavery in Virginia

by Thomas Fleming

This article is adapted from Thomas Fleming’s new book, A Disease In the Public Mind – A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War. Part two of a three-part series (read parts one and two). Thomas Jefferson Randolph. Credit: Monticello.

Margaret Thatcher and Jimmy Carter: Political BFFs?

by Lee P. Ruddin

Credit: Wiki Commons.Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher are commonly portrayed in the media as close political and ideological allies. Both were conservatives who reinvigorated their parties and transformed politics in their respective countries, both took on the entrenched welfare state (Thatcher moreso than Reagan, but then the British welfare state was larger and more politically popular), and both were firm anti-communists.The "special relationship" between the United States and Great Britain never seemed more special when Reagan and Thatcher were in office. But it's worth remembering that Thatcher, who became prime minister in May 1979, nearly two years before Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as the fortieth president.

1983: The Most Dangerous Year of the Cold War

by David Austin Walsh

Credit: militarists.ru.Just how close did the world come to full-blown nuclear war in the 1980s?Frighteningly close.That's the conclusion of researchers at the National Security Archive at George Washington University, which released on May 16 a collection of documents on the 1983 Able Archer war scare, the closest the Cold War came to turning hot since the Cuban Missile Crisis.Many of the documents come from Soviet archives, and are summarized in English; others came from the U.S. government after Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requestsThe release is the first in a series of three postings; the second will consist of U.S. military documents, the third documents from the U.S. intelligence community. (The National Security Agency, the website notes, refused to release its relevant documents after a 2008 FOIA request, but “did review, approve for release, stamp, and send a printout of a Wikipedia article.”)

Meet Richard Whitney, Wall Street's 1930s Version of Bernie Madoff

by Malcolm Mackay

Richard Whitney being led away after his trial. Credit: AP/Kings Academy.

Why Students Should Stop Interviewing Vietnam Veterans

by Jerry Lembcke

Credit: Vietnam Veterans Against the War.It’s that time of the year: Hi, my name is Emily and I’m supposed to interview a Vietnam veteran for my AP history class. Hello, I’m Chris and my senior project is on the Vietnam War. Do you know any veterans I could talk to? Dear Veterans, I’m studying the Vietnam War and I would like to know how you were treated when you came home. Could I ask you some questions? Thank you for your service, Jason.Sometimes the inquiries arrive through the listservs of veterans’ organizations; others find their way to me more directly. They become more frequent in the months when the high school history curriculums reach the spring events that ended the war in 1975. The approach of Memorial Day in late May sustains interest in the war through the end of the school year.

America's First Political Dirty Trick

by Harold Holzer

Credit: Smithsonian.Reprinted by arrangement with Viking, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., from The Civil War in 50 Objects by Harold Holzer and the New-York Historical Society. Copyright © 2013 by the New-York Historical Society.

Niall Ferguson Meets with Students; Harvard Faculty Clarify Stance

by David Austin Walsh

Credit: Flickr.UPDATE 12:13PM: David Armitage, chair of the Harvard history department, wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed that the department requested a "post in the modern history of gender and sexuality (jointly with Harvard's program in women and gender studies) long before the recent debate arose." He also pointed to the work of Afsaneh Najmabadi, Nancy Cott, and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich as an example of Harvard's pre-existing strength in the field of gender and sexuality studies.Historian Niall Ferguson, in an attempt to blunt criticism of his recent controversial remarks about John Maynard Keynes's sexuality, spoke on Monday to students at a lunchtime panel at the Harvard College Women's Center.

Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea

by Mark Blyth

Credit: Oxford University Press.This book has a rather unusual genesis. David McBride from Oxford University Press emailed me in July 2010 and asked me if I wanted to write a book about the turn to austerity in economic policy. I had been playing with a book idea called “The End of the Liberal World” for a while but really hadn't been getting all that far with it. Dave's offer seemed to be a ready-made alternative project. After all, someone had to write such a book, and since I had, as bankers say, “skin in the game” here, for reasons I shall elaborate below, I said yes. Shortly thereafter Geoffrey Kirkman, Associate Director of the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, where I am a faculty fellow, wondered if there was anything that I would like to make into a short video. I say yes – I'd do something about this new book that I have agreed to write.

The Real Story of the MS St. Louis

by Richard Breitman and Allan J. Lichtman

The MS St. Louis in Havana. Credit: Wiki Commons.Critics of Franklin Delano Roosevelt often use the ship the St. Louis as an emblem of FDR’s alleged indifference toward the Holocaust. In Hollywood’s version, now deeply engrained in American popular culture, the 937 German-Jewish passengers of the MS St. Louis undertook the “voyage of the damned.” The president could have saved them and did nothing. As a result, most of them perished.In our new book FDR and the Jews, we noted in passing that American officials did not order the Coast Guard to prevent the St. Louis from landing in the United States. Since our book appeared a few months ago our critics in the press -- and some surviving St. Louis passengers -- have complained about this particular statement.

Niall Ferguson's Harvard Colleagues Support Him, but Not LGBT Historians

by David Austin Walsh

Credit: Wiki Commons.UPDATE 3:58PM: Don Romesburg, co-chair of the Committee on LGBT History, issued the following statement on Monday to HNN, calling for Harvard to demonstrate its commitment to taking LGBT history seriously:[Niall] Ferguson's subsequent attempts to clarify his statement unfortunately show little more understanding of the history of sexuality than his initial comment did. The Committee on LGBT History encourages him to consulting the field’s extensive scholarship, much of which our members have written, to avoid echoing unfounded and discriminatory stereotypes and to deepen his understanding and analysis of the LGBT past. Harvard should show leadership here by, at a minimum, hosting a major conference about LGBT history and encouraging Ferguson to attend. It is also high time that Harvard makes a new tenure-track hire in LGBT history. The incident has underscored the value of teaching and researching LGBT histories. This confronts ignorance about LGBT people, lives, and communities, and in the process, builds a more accurate historical record overall.

Republicans Should Like Ike

by Keith W. Olson

Official White House portrait of Dwight D. Eisenhower.As Republican leaders continue to try to redefine their party identity they would do well to review the legacy of Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower, arguably, the most successful president since World War II. As president he faced crises and challenges both foreign and domestic, different from those of today but equal in magnitude, as well as the need to maintain national leadership.

Thomas Jefferson's Nightmare

by Thomas Fleming

Incendie de la Plaine du Cap. - Massacre des Blancs par les Noirs, 1833.This article is adapted from Thomas Fleming’s new book, A Disease In the Public Mind – A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War. Part two of a three-part series (read part one here).

Why Historians' Memoirs are So Valuable

by James M. Banner, Jr.

Historians of 'Past and Present' by Stephen Frederick Godfrey Farthing, 1999. National Portrait Gallery, London. John Elliott is one of the sitters.Cross-posted from the Weekly Standard.

Marc Lendler: "Every Idea is an Incitement..."

by Aaron Leonard

Image via Shutterstock.

Ira Katznelson: The Racist History of the New Deal

by Robin Lindley

WPA Poster, 1935.When Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president in 1932, the United States faced uncertainty and imminent peril at home and abroad. The unemployment rate was 25 percent. Systems of credit and banking were broken and the stock market had lost 80 percent of its value since the 1929 crash. Factories were abandoned. Thousands of families lost their homes. There was no social safety net for millions of impoverished men, women and children. At the same time, liberal democracies struggled as brutal dictatorships in Germany, Russia and Italy flourished, and some Americans feared complete disintegration of the social order and revolution.

Trashing Keynes for Being Gay is Nothing New

by David Austin Walsh

J.M. Keynes (right) and Duncan Grant in 1913.Harvard economic historian Niall Ferguson told a group of financiers and investors last Saturday that John Maynard Keynes was a flawed economist who didn't care about future generations because he was childless and gay.Tom Kostigen, a reporter for Financial Advisor magazine, first reported on the story:Ferguson asked the audience [at the Tenth Annual Altegris Conference in Carlsbad, Calif.] how many children Keynes had. He explained that Keynes had none because he was a homosexual and was married to a ballerina, with whom he likely talked of "poetry" rather than procreated. The audience went quiet at the remark. Some attendees later said they found the remarks offensive.It gets worse.

It's Not You, Stonewall, It's Me

by Wallace A. Hettle

1864 portrait of Stonewall Jackson by D.W. King.Dear Stonewall,I still think of you fondly sometimes. I cared enough about you to spend eight years of my life researching and writing about you and your friends. In my opinion, I wrote a pretty good book: Inventing Stonewall Jackson:  A Civil War Hero in History and Memory. I examined the assumptions that shaped your historical image, and the ways that image morphed into popular cultural in the twentieth century. In this way, I raised some questions about you, and forced me to think hard about how biography works as a genre, often coming perilously close to historical fiction.

May 8: Victory in Europe Day

by Robert Huddleston

An American soldier with a captured Heinkel He 162 Volksjager in 1945. Credit: Wiki Commons.In late spring of 1945, the conflict in Europe ended, not with a whimper but a bang. On April 30, Adolf Hitler put the barrel of a gun to his right temple and pulled the trigger. VE-day, May 8, 1945 soon followed as the Nazis agreed to an "unconditional surrender."

George Washington: The Forgotten Emancipator

by Thomas Fleming

George Washington at Yorktown, by Auguste Couder. P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } This article is adapted from Thomas Fleming’s new book, A Disease In the Public Mind – A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War.

Philosophy Matters

by Yvonne Sherratt

Martin Heidegger, one of Hitler's philosophers. Credit: Wiki Commons/HNN.With today's heated rhetoric against the study of history and philosophy, it's worth reminding our readers that philosophy matters, and -- tragically -- one of the ways it matters is how it can be twisted into support for atrocities.