The discovery of a previously unknown personal letter by Thomas Jefferson this past December, written sometime in 1808 towards the end of his presidency, was the impetuous for such a question.

The “faded, stained piece of paper” apparently covered in Jefferson’s own scribbling has received more attention recently with calls for its authenticity to be confirmed.

From the article:

Its real value, rather, is bolstered by the existence of a “free frank” — a clear version of Jefferson’s signature that once doubled as postage — on the document, Eyler said. “So to a postal history collector that is worth as much as the letter is.”

According to the Legion’s January newsletter, the uncovering of the manuscript is part of a broader effort to put the post’s historically significant items on display “for everyone to enjoy” — a history that could be quite substantial.

After the Washington Post published a story on the letter last month, Eyler received a call from a person who worked with the Legion in the ’60s and ’70s. The caller, whose name Eyler didn’t record, said at that time “other Jefferson letters and materials were found on the second floor” and donated to historical outlets around the state.

And while the recently discovered document could very easily have been tossed aside at some point in the last 200 years, records exist that show it was indeed sent from Jefferson’s own desk but lost in the shuffle of time.

“It’s just the fate of the recipient keeping the manuscript,” Eyler said, noting that it was habit at the time to hold on to and keep track of correspondence. The end result is an intimate relationship between generations.

“To me, manuscripts are like the window to someone’s thinking,” Eyler said. “It’s primary-source [material] — you have a letter written by Thomas Jefferson and you know just what he was doing at that moment in time.”

Athol (Massachusetts) Historical Society President Susannah Whipps-Lee said the time capsule — which has yet to be opened — was made from an old glass container that looked like a pickle jar with a rusted metal screw top. It was buried about 150 years ago, she explained, in what is known as the Old Indian Cemetery or Settlers Burial Ground, which has no gravestones.

The capsule has not been opened yet, but could contain some important and surely interesting documents. The capsule has perhaps as many as “300 documents” and was discovered by Athol history teacher Keith Williams who had read about the possibility of a buried time capsule in an Athol Town History book.

From the report:

On the back of a treasured draft of the U.S. Constitution was a truncated version of the same document, starting with the familiar words: “We The People. . . .”

They had been scribbled upside down by one of the Constitution’s framers, James Wilson, in the summer of 1787. The cursive continued, then abruptly stopped, as if pages were missing.

A mystery, Toler thought, until she examined other Wilson papers from the Historical Society’s vault in Philadelphia and found what appeared to be the rest of the draft, titled “The Continuation of the Scheme.”

The document – one of 21 million in the Historical Society’s collection – was known to scholars, but probably should have been placed with the other drafts, said constitutional scholar John P. Kaminski, director of the Center for the Study of the American Constitution in the history department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“This was the kind of moment historians dream about,” said Toler, 30, a lawyer and founding president of the Constitutional Sources Project (www.ConSource.org), a nonprofit organization, based in Washington, that promotes an understanding of and access to U.S. Constitution documents.

“This was national scripture, a piece of our Constitution’s history,” she said of her find in November. “It was difficult to keep my hands from trembling.”

Unlike those who get a tremble down their leg when a politician speaks, this is something that I could agree with. I would be trembling as well.

The article continues:

“Wilson was a great man and one of the great founders and should be respected for that,” he said. “We owe him our gratitude for the role he played.”

Wilson, who lived in Philadelphia, was selected July 24, 1787, with four other members of the Constitutional Convention to serve on the Committee of Detail.

The committee – which also had John Rutledge, Edmund Randolph, Nathaniel Gorham, and Oliver Ellsworth – used 28 resolutions passed by members of the convention to flesh out the Constitution.

They finished their work and presented it Aug. 6, 1787, to the Constitutional Convention. It included Wilson’s famous “We the People” beginning.

Seeing the framers’ drafts and thought processes leading up to that point was especially thrilling to Toler, who is studying at Oxford University, where she is seeking a doctorate in U.S. history and specializing in constitutional legal history.

“The Constitution may be the most important document written in modern history,” said Toler. “It is the longest-standing written constitution and the basis for most of the constitutions in the world.”

I would love to spend time during the summer doing such research, that would be an awesome experience. To find and hold such a document, perhaps the first one to do so since Wilson, would be breathtaking!

This brings me to an excellent book sent to me by The Oxford University Press As If an Enemy’s Country The British Occupation of Boston and the Origins of Revolution, by Richard Archer.

Archer provides a well written and astutely researched narrative that outlines the origins of the American Revolution in Boston. Have we lost our way?

From the publisher:

In the dramatic few years when colonial Americans were galvanized to resist British rule, perhaps nothing did more to foment anti-British sentiment than the armed occupation of Boston. As If an Enemy’s Country is Richard Archer’s gripping narrative of those critical months between October 1, 1768 and the winter of 1770 when Boston was an occupied town. Bringing colonial Boston to life, Archer deftly moves between the governor’s mansion and cobblestoned back-alleys as he traces the origins of the colonists’ conflict with Britain. He reveals the maneuvering of colonial political leaders such as Governor Francis Bernard, Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson, and James Otis Jr. as they responded to London’s new policies, and he evokes the outrage many Bostonians felt towards Parliament and its local representatives.

More on this excellent book later.

“…two historians are helping him [Stone] with [the doc]… to offer a fuller understanding of the 20th century…”

Stone’s message, “Hitler [was] enabled by Western bankers.” This should be interesting to see what connections Stone attempts to make and what sources he uses, but most importantly who are the two historians? I searched, and searched, and could not find them.

What I do know about post-WWI American businesses is that they wanted Great Britain and France to ease the reparations and the United States to forgive war payments in an attempt to protect their investments in Europe and Germany.

Now what Stone will attempt to establish is that it was not monetary interests alone, but more importantly racist, Jew hating capitalists somehow facilitated Hitler’s rise…

So who are Stone’s historians that apparently will provide him with the proper historical data?

Stay tuned.

[the photo is of our guy Stone and one of his heroes, Hugo Chavez. Need we say more?]

From the Associated Press:

Howard Zinn, the leftist academic whose alternative history of the United States became required reading for millions of ordinary people, as well as a following of celebrities, has died. He was 87.

Zinn’s death was confirmed by his website, www.howardzinn.org. The Boston Globe reported that the cause of death was heart attack and that he died Wednesday while traveling in Santa Monica, California.

I have made it clear on this blog I am no fan of Howard Zinn the activist historian. But Howard Zinn has done more for his country than I ever will with his WWII service, though I know later he had very complex issues about that time of his life. I found a photo of Zinn from those days and I want to celebrate his service.

Anyway, Godspeed Mr. Zinn.

So back to the point of this post, The Great Depression and more specifically FDR’s “New Deal.” Numerous books have come out lately challenging the so-called Liberal or Progressive point of view (that goes something like this): Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal policies were responsible for ending the Great Depression and that the causes of the depression were over-production, under-consumption, and unequal distribution of wealth.

The Books that I have been reading are: New Deal or Raw Deal?: How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America by Burton W. Folsom Jr., FDR’s Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression by Jim Powell, and The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, by Amity Shlaes. Each book has basically the same take and none are perfect. They are at the least “skeptics” of FDR’s New Deal policies, and probably they are best described as fiscal Conservatives who downright loathed the big government shift of the 1930s.

My students will first read their textbook Out of Many: A History of the American People, which ignores most of the major issues the above authors point out with FDR’s policies.

The belief that unhindered capitalists brought the country down (thus leading to the Great Depression) due to greed (sound familiar?) is incorrect, according to the noted sources above. The major causes of the Great Depression, for example, as outlined by Mr. Folsom: 1) Negative consequences of WWI spending left the country with a national debt of $24 billion ( today its trillions) when it was before the war $1.3 billion. But most importantly, $10 billion was lent to European nations and most balked at repayments during the 1920s; 2) the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act that crippled American businesses and production; and 3) poor performance by the Federal Reserve, which was designed to stop precisely what happened, a banking collapse. The Fed raised interest rates sharply in 1928 and 1929 that made it harder for money to be borrowed and slowed the flow of money. Mr. Folsom contends that inflation in the 1920s was low, not high, and that the 1920s was a decade of overconsumption than underconsumption. FDR latched onto the “underconsumption” analysis and allowed it to drive a majority of his economic policies.

OK, lots of issues, but the bottom line is, like most major historical events, the Great Depression is complex. Mr. Folsom is for my practical purposes here and in the classroom no more correct or incorrect than those others who would disagree.

Questions to be addressed: Was the Great Depression prolonged by FDR’s policies? Did FDR “save” jobs and save the economy enough to keep it afloat? Many of Roosevelt’s policies failed or at least produced such meager long-term results that it is hard to point to them as successes. A couple of programs that Mr. Folsom viciously attacks are the New Deal’s National Recovery Act and the Agricultural Adjustment Act. Both of which (and more) I will address in part II of this series on the Great Depression.

To be continued….

Henry A. Kissinger was sworn in on September 22, 1973, as the 56th Secretary of State, and since that moment was one of those politicians whom people have loved to hate. Just do a Google search and there are all kinds of interesting websites; one even shows the man with a “wanted” ad for “War Crimes.” He was destined to be hated due to his untimely arrival in Washington: the Vietnam was a lost cause politically, and Kissinger’s even- keeled intellect was widely rejected by reactionaries.

Anyway, I read Kissinger’s book – Diplomacy – in in the mid-90s after  it came out as it was required for a class and was very impressed with his knowledge. He is an historian and reminded me, as far as his knowledge of history, of our 28th President, and leading Progressive of his time, Woodrow Wilson.

This leads me to a recent book I finished by Ronald J. Pestritto,  Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism, who literally disects the pattern of idealogy as expressed by Woodrow Wilson. In the book Pestritto “highlights Wilson’s sharp departure from the traditional principles of American government, most notably the Constitution.” Ronald J. Pestritto attempts to argue “that Wilson’s unfailing criticism places him clearly in line with the Progressives’ assault on the original principles of American constitutionalism.” He does do his homework,  his research is in depth, and in particular he focuses on the wide ranging array of writings and speeches that Wilson made while a scholar and student of history before he became president.

It’s fair to say that Pestritto is no fan of Wilson’s worldview. He does make an impressive argument, but he did not present an even and fair book.  But, then again, that was not his purpose. His goal was to connect the ideology of Liberalism today with the Progressive movement of Wilson and his peers. Pestritto clearly succeeds but I think a lot of Wilson’s Progressive-ness that was obviously for the good of the nation and potetntially for the world had anyone listened. For example, his 14 Points, League of Nations, Moralism, fiscal understanding of a modern economy, all got lost if not ignored by Pestritto. Wilson was a complex individual: intellectual, historian, scholar, racist, populist, progressive, ect. But he saw America as an “Exceptional” nation and saw human progress with America leading the way as uniter of the world. His Ideas for diplomacy and public policy, I think, were visionary and represent what was best in American values. He was not perfect and saw the state has having a larger role in government (a very large role), but clearly that was needed in many respects during his time.

This leads me to my final point. I was pretty pointed with Oliver Stone’s upcoming Documentary. I wonder if he will focus on how European leaders (Britain and France in particular) ignored/spurned Wilson’s call for victory without victors, and his Fourteen Points, as the true cause for the rise of Hitler? I somehow highly doubt it. Stone at least will try to make the connection between evil capitalists and how they underminded Wilson’s 14 Points/ LEague of Nations, that is my prediction.

I am in the middle of a course on American Civil War Command and Leadership, and specifically the Joseph T. Glatthaar book Partners In Command. Glatthaar’s assessment of McClellan is scathing, but then again most are. I know that maybe Dimitri and some others might object, but how on God’s green (er, brown) earth can anyone say that McClellan was not a mitigated disaster and extended the war by perhaps as a long as a year and cost the country so many more lives?

I am obviously not a historian (though I hope I am in training) and am very aware of this. So I understand that I still have more to learn about McClellan.

So for now, lets look at what I know:

• His habitual inclination of paralysis by over-analysis… to say the least. During his Seven Days Campaign and his Antietam debacle in particular.
• His arrogance and temperance that did not allow him to work with both those above and below him. In specific, his contemptible behavior towards Pope and his refusal to reinforce during the Second Bull Run defeat.
• But perhaps most significantly, it certainly appears he was a man who had never really experienced defeat or failure and the thought of it caused him much delay.

Yes, very general statements.

It seems there were very real opportunities to take the war to Richmond in 1862, and perhaps decimate Lee and his army at Antietam, yet McClellan was not able to do so.

So, I ask you, where am I getting this wrong?