I believe at some point I have mentioned in this blog that David O'Brien authored a book about an unpublished opinion written by Justice Robert H. Jackson that would have served as a concurrence to the court's opinion in the famous 1954 case, BROWN v. BOARD. The court's opinion was expressed in a unanimous vote and a single opinion by Chief Justice Earl Warren, declaring that the old rule that allowed "separate but equal" treatment in education facilities, i.e. segregation by race in schools, was a rule no longer. A follow-up decision the next year addressed the issue of remedy: it ordered states to desegregate their schools with all "deliberate speed." (Jackson was dead by that time.) Jackson never published his concurrence because the Chief Justice lobbied hard to dissuade him from doing so. It was Warren's considered view that on a matter so pressing the Court must speak with one voice. I bring it up again because I would like to offer a quota...
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The phrase isn't as easy to define as one might have hoped.... There is an intuitive division of types of history in which a lot of us engage without questioning it much. If you tell me, " I'm writing a political history of the United States in the late 19th century" I expect you are working on Boss Tweed, Grover Cleveland, Ida B. Wells. "I'm writing a cultural history of the United States in the late 19th century." Ah, then I would love the chance to quiz you about the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, Thomas Nast's cartoons and the music of Victor Herbert. I've posted a photo of Victor Herbert here. To get a bit closer to what I want -- suppose you are tell me you are writing a history of economics, as a field of study, in the US during this period . Delightful! Nothing like a good discussion of Henry George, Herbert Spencer, John Bates Clark and Thorstein Veblen. But then we get back to where we began. What does an economic histor...
One of the facts that lies in the background of constitutional history, and usually stays there, without being highlighted, is this: most of the founders of the United States shared a disdain for the institution of a "standing army" --that is, of a permanent professional military force maintained through peacetime and composed of full-time soldiers. Their idealization of the "militia," and the reference thereto in the second amendment, arguably the second amendment itself, constitute the flipside of their anti-standing-army persuasion. If you ask about the background and history of this conviction, you are generally referred to the build-up to the revolution, as the mother country built up its military presence (the "regulars") in the troublesome colonies. But a newly published paper makes the point that the vocabulary in which our founders expressed their conviction on point has a specific history within that Mother Country. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol...
Our guest blogger today is Henry Cohen, a retired legislative attorney for the Library of Congress/Congressional Research Service. This is an essay he first published in Spring 2022 issue of THE LINCOLN FORU M BULLETIN . The above map shows Italy's political divisions in 1860. This was after the Garibaldi victories to which Cohen refers, creating the large red area, yet before the King's announcement giving the red area an ambitious name: the Kingdom of Italy. We leave the rest to Henry. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Our story begins in 1861. Giuseppi Garibaldi (1807-1882) was the personification of the Risorgimento, Italy’s nationalist liberation movement, and was the most inspirational and beloved hero of mid-19th century Europe. In 1860, with his guerrilla Redshirts, he had conquered Sicily and Naples, giving southern Italy to King Victor Emmanuel II, who in 1861 established the Kingdom of Italy. But not all of Italy w...
I think we should all refer with some regularity to the President of the United States as "the Orange Dynast." The Orange Dynasty, in British history, is of course a colorful incident (pun intended, however lame) in the monarchical history of the mother country. This was the family that benefited by the second and permanent overthrow of the Stuarts. The founding fathers of the United States generally shared a view of the world in which the Orange dynasty were the "good guys." They were superior to the Stuarts, because the Stuarts claimed absolute monarchical authority whereas the Orange monarchs, William and Mary first, Anne later, acknowledged that they could reign only because Parliament ruled. Recall that Patrick Henry compared himself to two regicides ... Brutus and Cromwell. The Orange were also seen by our founders as superior to the Hanoverians, who replaced them, because after all the Hanoverians were imported Germans, not Brits or even harmless Dutch, a...
The flotsam of the contemporary news cycles moves by us so quickly and is soon forgotten. Our Orange Dynast is a child whose attention flits quickly from one subject to another, more-or-less effectively dragging the news cycle with him. Hey! It would be cool to buy Greenland. Look! There are protestors at my rally! Wow! That one is fat! We need more background checks. Oooh, something shiny! We have lots of background checks. I'm the Chosen One. That was a joke. Isn't it time for another infrastructure week? Anyway, about buying Greenland ... the thought that occurs to me is that Trump must have figured Greenland is HUUUUGE because he probably doesn't understand Mercator projection, and the fact that areas near the poles aren't as large as they seem to be on a standard map. Portrayed as above, it is still impressive but not quite so HUUU... Also, Trump probably has heard that Jefferson bought a large territory from Napoleon, that Andrew Johnson bought A...
In 1823, the five great powers of the continent of Europe were scheming to reverse an outbreak of revolutions in South America. There powers were: France, Spain, Russia, Austria, and Prussia. This was the situation that created the Monroe Doctrine. Great Britain's elite was unhappy about the counter-revolutionary scheming: not because it was sentimental about the national sovereignty of the new powers an ocean away, but chiefly because Great Britain's interests as a hegemon were threatened by any cause that promoted unity among those older powers on a continent so close its best swimmers could get there without mechanical help. The Prime Minister of Britain was George Canning (pictured above). He proposed to Monroe's administration that it join with Britain in a warning to those five continental powers about the errors of their colonialism-reasserting ways. Much of Monroe's cabinet thought this was a good idea. It was Secretary of State John Quincy Adams who arg...
We hardly ever see strikes like this any more. From a safe distance, it is possible to be nostalgic about them. On July 15, 1959, sixty years and half a week ago, half a million American steelworkers walked off the job at once. Nearly every steel mill in the US closed. The steel companies demanded that the union give up a "contract clause," which limited managerial discretion in changing the number of workers assigned to a task, introducing new work rules, or automating of many tasks. The union insisted on keeping the contract clause, the talks broke down: hence the strike. The Union won. The contract clause stayed in. One key figure in resolving the stand-off? Vice President Nixon. With his own campaign imperatives for the following year in mind, and with the prospect of a major reversal in the economy if steel production stayed abysmal, Nixon adopted the mediators' role. He was instrumental in pressuring the managers to back down. You didn't know t...
I came across this by accident while looking for something else, but it is a fascinating story. It's the life and death of the first woman executed in the United States, specifically by Massachusetts two years after Independence had been declared. I had never heard of the case and am happy for the serendipity of this discovery. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathsheba_Spooner It leaves me wondering why the case hasn't developed a higher pop-culture profile than it has. The wiki article cites a single radio dramatization of it back in the 50s Somebody ought to pick up on this!
Four recent or forthcoming books that may deserve the attention of some of the readers of this blog, below. 1. AFRICA, EMPIRE, AND FLEET STREET, by Jonathan Derrick. Published by Oxford University Press, this is the story of Albert Cartwright, an anti-colonialist, and the newspaper he ran for decades, the London based WEST AFRICA MAGAZINE. 2. WHITE SHOE, by John Oller, published by Dutton. This one is forthcoming -- March 2019. It tells the story of the Wall Street lawyers of the end of the 19th century and the early 20th who created what are still considered the establishment (or "white shoe") law firms in that vicinity to this day. 3. CONSCIOUSNESS AND PHYSICALISM, by Andreas Elpidorou and Guy Dove. Published by Routledge. "Physicalism" in the philosophy of mind is roughly what used to be known as "materialism." These authors think it should be regarded not as a dogma but as a research program, and that it is a sensible program. A reviewer in the...