Interview with Doris Kearns Goodwin for Echoes Magazine, July and August 2025, p. 34. "Lincoln was worried as the Revolutionary generation was dying off, and it was a very tumultuous time. It was in the 1830s when there were abolitionists being killed and lynchings being done in the South. And Lincoln was afraid that when those people died, we would forget the ideals of the Revolution. He recommended that mothers read history to their children, that pastors talk about it from their pulpits, that we had to teach history in the schools--the history of the Revolution--so those ideals would remain strong in our countrymen's minds and hearts."
Showing posts with label American Revolution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label American Revolution. Show all posts
Sunday, September 21, 2025
Thursday, February 20, 2020
The United States of America began in 1776, not 1619
The New York Times has been perpetrating a fraud.
“Gordon Wood, one of the USA’s leading historians of the Revolutionary War, has been sharply critical of 1619’s best known essay (“America Wasn’t a Democracy Until Black Americans Made It One,” by Nikole Hannah-Jones), dismissing Hannah-Jones’s claim that the USA seceded from Britain primarily to protect the institution of slavery as factually inaccurate.
Wood points out that attributing American secession to a desire to protect slavery—rather than (say) taxation without representation, conflicts over French and Indian war debt, or tense armed exchanges like the “Boston Massacre”—“makes the Revolution out to be like the Civil War,” which is “wrong in so many ways.” The eminent historian seems bemused and angered by the decision of the Times to support an arguably questionable scholarly project, saying: “I was surprised by the scope of this thing, [since] it’s going to become the basis for high school education, and has the weight of the New York Times behind it.” Given that the generally reputable Pulitzer Center is already offering a “1619 Project Curriculum” targeted at “all grades,” Dr. Wood’s words of warning ring true.
Similarly, John Oakes, Distinguished Professor of History and Graduate School Humanities Professor at the City University of New York, has been extremely critical of the 1619 Project’s claim that “anti-Black racism runs in the very DNA of this country,” and the project’s explicit attempt to link many Black problems of today (i.e. “mass incarceration”) to historical slavery. As Oakes notes, this is an almost ahistorical view. To people who believe it: “There has been no industrialization. There has been no Great Migration. We’re all in the same boat we were back then.”
https://quillette.com/2020/02/17/sorry-new-york-times-but-america-began-in-1776/
https://1776unites.com/
Update: The 1776 website is so good, I've already written them a fan letter.
“Gordon Wood, one of the USA’s leading historians of the Revolutionary War, has been sharply critical of 1619’s best known essay (“America Wasn’t a Democracy Until Black Americans Made It One,” by Nikole Hannah-Jones), dismissing Hannah-Jones’s claim that the USA seceded from Britain primarily to protect the institution of slavery as factually inaccurate.
Wood points out that attributing American secession to a desire to protect slavery—rather than (say) taxation without representation, conflicts over French and Indian war debt, or tense armed exchanges like the “Boston Massacre”—“makes the Revolution out to be like the Civil War,” which is “wrong in so many ways.” The eminent historian seems bemused and angered by the decision of the Times to support an arguably questionable scholarly project, saying: “I was surprised by the scope of this thing, [since] it’s going to become the basis for high school education, and has the weight of the New York Times behind it.” Given that the generally reputable Pulitzer Center is already offering a “1619 Project Curriculum” targeted at “all grades,” Dr. Wood’s words of warning ring true.
Similarly, John Oakes, Distinguished Professor of History and Graduate School Humanities Professor at the City University of New York, has been extremely critical of the 1619 Project’s claim that “anti-Black racism runs in the very DNA of this country,” and the project’s explicit attempt to link many Black problems of today (i.e. “mass incarceration”) to historical slavery. As Oakes notes, this is an almost ahistorical view. To people who believe it: “There has been no industrialization. There has been no Great Migration. We’re all in the same boat we were back then.”
https://quillette.com/2020/02/17/sorry-new-york-times-but-america-began-in-1776/
https://1776unites.com/
Update: The 1776 website is so good, I've already written them a fan letter.
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