“A splendid little war” was how Secretary of State John Hay described the Spanish-American War of 1898. Since Hay had served in Abraham Lincoln’s administration, he had had a lot of experience with more jaundiced wars like the one in the 1860s. The Spanish-American War was little, and its splendor depended upon where you were when it occurred. In DC’s clubrooms and in Congress, it was quite alluring, and was to most of the country. But if you were on the front line taking rounds from Spanish Mausers or suffering agony from malaria or dysentery — which a good part of the army was — it was not so splendid. (more…)
Tag: the South
-
4,261 words
What was life like in the antebellum South? Obviously it’s going to be a matter of perspective. Thomas Nelson Page provided one such viewpoint, the type we seldom hear about lately. He was a lawyer in his early career and a diplomat later, but is best known as a writer.
Aside from several novels, he published a non-fiction account of the Old South as he remembered it during his boyhood. This was Social Life in Old Virginia Before the War (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1897). It’s a quick read, providing a glimpse into a bygone time. (more…)
-
5,752 words
I’m a recent transplant in this city. And as far as cities go, this one isn’t terrible. We live just over the hill from Erie, one of those giant inland seas carved from North America’s heartland, and it’s like having our own, muted stretch of coast for the quiet. (more…)
-
2,418 words
Shooting at White People With Intent to Kill Is Clearly a Mental Health Crisis
Justin Tyran Roberts has short dreadlocks, a scowling face, and a dumb tattoo between his eyebrows. The convicted felon has reportedly confessed to a shooting spree in Columbus, Georgia and Phenix City, Alabama last weekend that either involved three incidents where five white men were injured or four incidents where six white men were injured. (more…)
-
Richard Lyman Bushman
The American Farmer in the Eighteenth Century
New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2018Most of us who are not farmers are tempted to take farming for granted. We certainly see the results of farming in the produce sections of our supermarkets. Beyond that, we have pleasant images of industrious country folk in denim overalls just doin’ their thing amid amber waves of grain. (more…)
-
Ron Chernow
Grant
New York: Penguin Press, 2017Ulysses S. Grant is one of the archetypal Americans. A brilliant general who would only accept unconditional surrender. A modest president who eschewed pomp in favor of simple, democratic attire. (more…)
-
3,233 words
A thought has been lurking in the back of my mind for some time.
In terms of fiction, and even outside it (with the notable exception of H. P. Lovecraft), were certain authors reflexively embraced as soul mates by white conservatives and racialists, in reality . . . anti-white — out of “principle,” opportunism, or just unconsciously? (more…)
-
Thomas Nelson Page
Bred in the Bone
New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1904Bred in the Bone, a 1904 novella by Thomas Nelson Page, epitomizes race realism through the proxy of horses and horse racing. It also embodies the author’s characteristic nostalgia for the aristocratic white supremacy of the antebellum South. (more…)
-
1,912 words
Spring has finally come roaring into Georgia, blanketing vehicles with yellow pollen and causing a sudden eruption of three-foot dandelions all across my front and back yards. (more…)
-
1,842 words
Like her near-contemporary Gore Vidal (both were born in 1925), the fiction writer Mary Flannery O’Connor had her first brush with fame via a Pathé movie newsreel. She had a pet chicken whom she’d taught to walk backward. Gore’s fame came a few years later when he piloted an airplane, age ten. (more…)