Category: The Historical Muse

Thoughts on history and the historical profession. Clio is the muse of history–this category title is a play on that concept.

American Character: John Jay

  

He was a significant founder, yet not many people know his name. He was a devoted Christian, but how many are aware of that? John Jay’s family came to America as persecuted Protestants from France. Liberty of conscience came with them, and that belief was transferred to him. Jay was deeply involved in the constitutional debate over Great Britain’s policies leading to the American Revolution. While he was very concerned over the British government’s claims, he nevertheless was a moderate… Read more »

No Defense for This

  

Before Ronald Reagan won the presidency, he discovered something that astonished him. While touring America’s missile silos, he asked a simple question: what can we do in case of a nuclear missile attack on us? The answer from the military officer? Nothing. We could rain missiles on the Soviet Union, but there was no way to stop missiles from hitting us. Reagan wanted to rectify that situation. That’s why in March 1983 he told the nation that he was directing… Read more »

This Day in History: Escape from Long Island

  

On this date in 1776, the American Revolution almost came to a devastating end just a little more than one month after the fledgling nation declared its independence. George Washington was given the task by the Continental Congress to protect New York City from the British military. It was a virtually impossible demand. Washington had no navy; the British had the greatest one in the world. Washington’s army was an army in name only, without regular training and relying on short… Read more »

What Was the Ted Kennedy Legacy?

  

Ted Kennedy died of brain cancer yesterday. He was in the Senate for 47 years. As a Kennedy in Massachusetts, he was never seriously challenged for the position. Simply being a Kennedy assured him of a Senate job for life. Although nominally a Catholic, it was obvious he never took his church’s teachings to heart. Staunchly pro-abortion all his life, he was in the forefront of almost every liberal cause. His endorsement of Obama over Hillary Clinton in the 2008… Read more »

American Character: John Witherspoon

  

He was the man who shaped the men who shaped America, yet few know anything about him. John Witherspoon arrived in America in 1768, enticed to leave his Scottish homeland by the offer of the presidency of a fairly new college called the College of New Jersey. Later, its name would change to Princeton. Witherspoon was a clergyman before he was an educator, but the two were always intertwined in his life. He took the fledging college, which started shortly after… Read more »

American Character: Samuel Adams

  

If Patrick Henry was the voice of American resistance to the policies of Great Britain, Samuel Adams was the organizer. His contributions to American independence are immense. Far ahead of his contemporaries, he believed that independence was inevitable. When others thought everything between the colonies and the Mother Country had been ironed out, Adams understood that the truces were essentially temporary peace arrangements. The problem, he knew, was that both operated from differing principles. To keep his fellow citizens informed… Read more »

American Character: Patrick Henry

  

Nearly everyone knows the name Patrick Henry. But we are a nation of people only barely acquainted with our Founders. There is little depth to that knowledge. Henry was a man who was motivated by his Christian faith, something some historians try to deny. As a young boy, he was taken to the revival meetings of the First Great Awakening by his mother. It was at these meetings that he learned his method of public speaking, an approach that made… Read more »