How About a Little Self-Control? George Washington, President Number One, is known to have been a man of few words. Historians point to his rather humble beginnings and his lack of a formal education as reasons for his relative silence. He was also in the company of intellectual big dogs, Adams, Jefferson and others, who […]
American-Japanese Concentration Camps When Admiral Yamamoto’s forces conducted their mostly successful raid on Pearl Harbor, many Americans panicked over the thought of a follow-up invasion of the west coast. U.S. Army officers baldly asserted that American-Japanese were all under the control of the Japanese Emperor and therefore consisted of an enemy “fifth column” waiting for […]
 A Complicated Matter Hacked Sony emails show that Actor Ben Affleck, while participating in PBS’s Finding Your Roots, found his and wasn’t so thrilled. His very great granddaddy owned African slaves. I can remember when the scandal would have been the discovery of African blood coursing in “white” veins, certainly not owning a few. Is Affleck’s […]
Seesaw on the Mississippi War consists of two basic options: defense or offense. The middle ground is the perilous transition between the two, mastered only by the truly expert. Two hundred years ago today, the war of 1812 thundered to an effective close when two able leaders, Andrew Jackson and Edward Pakenham made history on […]
On the Square Benjamin Ogle Tayloe (1796-1868) is the son of Colonel John Tayloe III, the man who built the Octagon House at 18th and New York Ave., NW, Washington, D.C., about 1800. The Octagon House was the stand-in White House for the Madison’s after the Brits burned the real one around the corner during […]
Camelot’s Court: Inside the Kennedy White House “He can’t do that to me.” Such was JFK’s response when he was told at 8am, while still in bed in pajamas, reading the morning papers, about the missiles in Castro’s Cuba. He, of course, was Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet Premier and Kennedy’s chief antagonist. Kennedy’s exclamation underscores how […]