Kenneth C. Davis's Blog, page 81
March 9, 2015
Who Said It? (3/9/2015)
Franklin D. Roosevelt delivers a “fireside chat” in Washington, D.C. (April 28, 1935) Image Courtesy of Franklin D. Roosevelt Library
Answer: President Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Fireside Chat on Banking” (March 12, 1933)
First of all, let me state the simple fact that when you deposit money in a bank the bank does not put the money into a safe deposit vault. It invests your money in many different forms of credit—bonds, commercial paper, mortgages and many other kinds of loans. In other words, the bank puts your money to work to keep the wheels of industry and of agriculture turning around. A comparatively small part of the money you put into the bank is kept in currency—an amount which in normal times is wholly sufficient to cover the cash needs of the average citizen. In other words, the total amount of all the currency in the country is only a small fraction of the total deposits in all of the banks.
Source: Franklin D. Roosevelt: “Fireside Chat on Banking,” March 12, 1933. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project .
Resources on FDR at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Museum
March 4, 2015
Pop Quiz: Where was Robert Frost born?
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
Answer: San Francisco
Robert Frost (Courtesy Library of Congress)
Robert Frost was born on March 26, 1874, in San Francisco. One of his most famous poems, “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” (Source: The Poetry Foundation) was published on March 7, 1923. It begins:
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
A video tribute to Frost and more biographical information can be found at this earlier post, “A lover’s quarrel with the world”
Here is brief biographical sketch of Frost from poets.org
March 3, 2015
Who Said It? (3/3/2015)
“These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest….”
Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address” (Saturday March 4, 1865)
Abraham Lincoln (November 1863) Photo by Alexander Gardner
One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
Don’t Know Much About® the American Presidents (Hyperion Paperback-April 15, 2014)
Don’t Know Much About® History: Anniversary Edition (Harper Perennial and Random House Audio)
Don’t Know Much About the Civil War (Harper paperback, Random House Audio)
February 19, 2015
Don’t Know Much About® Executive Order 9066
Dorothea Lange
In this 1942 Dorothea Lange photograph from the book “Impounded,” a family in Hayward, Calif., awaits an evacuation bus.
Franklin D. Roosevelt famously told Americans when he was inaugurated in 1933:
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself
But on February 19, 1942 –a little more than two months after the attack on Pearl Harbor– President Roosevelt allowed America’s fear to provoke him into an action regarded among his worst mistakes. He issued Executive Order 9066.
The result of this Executive Order was the policy of “relocating” some 120,000 Japanese Americans, and a smaller number of German and Italian Americans, into “internment camps.”
I have written about the subject of the internment of the Japanese American population in the past. I relink these today, including this post on the birthday of Ansel Adams, who photographed the internment camp at Manzanar, and another on photojournalist Dorothea Lange, who also documented the period. Both of these posts include links to other resources on the history of “Internment.”
Photo: (National Park Service, Jeffery Burton, photographer
Among these resources is a site devoted to the War Relocation Camps –a Teaching With Historic Places Lesson Plan from the National Park Service called “When Fear Was Stronger than Justice.”
February 15, 2015
Who Said It? (2/15/2015)
George Washington to Robert Morris (April 12 1786)
I hope that it will not be conceived from these observations, that it is my wish to hold the unhappy people who are the subject of this letter in slavery. I can only say that there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it [slavery]–but there is only one proper and effectual mode by which it can be accomplished, & that is by Legislative authority;
Pop Quiz: Which vice president was arrested for treason?
Answer: Aaron Burr
On February 19, 1807, Burr was arrested in what is now Alabama.
Burr (1756-1836), the third vice president of the United States from 1801-1805 under President Thomas Jefferson, had famously killed political rival Alexander Hamilton in a duel in 1804. (He was never charged in that case.) He was arrested in what is now Alabama in 1807, accused of plotting to split the nation or planning to invade Spanish territories.
Courtesy of Alabama Department of Archives and History
A few weeks before Burr was arrested, Thomas Jefferson had addressed Congress on the “Burr Conspiracy.”
“Message to Congress (January 22, 1807)“
Burr was acquitted in what was then the “Trial of the Century.”
The complete story of Burr’s arrest, trial and life is the opening chapter in A NATION RISING.
What day is it? Don’t Know Much About® George Washington
It’s that time of year. Time once again to explain that the upcoming national holiday is not “Presidents Day.”
Yes, I cannot tell a lie. The day we celebrate on the third Monday in February is really called “George Washington’s Birthday.” Ask the National Archives.
Want to learn a little more?
Here is the website for the National Park Service’s Birthplace of Washington site.
And here is the National Park Service website for Fort Necessity, scene of Washington’s surrender and “confession.”
February 12, 2015
Teachers- A new round of classroom Skype visits
As the 150th anniversary of the final days of the Civil War approach, I will once again offer a round of free, classroom visits via Skype. These sessions are conversations not lectures and I welcome student questions. They typically last 40 minutes to one hour.
To learn more about this offer and register for a possible visit, please visit the FOR TEACHERS page linked here.
Don’t Know Much About the Civil War (Harper paperback, Random House Audio)
Abraham Lincoln (November 1863) Photo by Alexander Gardner
NEW BOOK IN STORES ON MAY 5, 2015
“A fascinating exploration of war and the myths of war. Kenneth C. Davis shows how interesting the truth can be.”
—Evan Thomas, New York Times-bestselling author of Sea of Thunder and John Paul Jones
I am very excited to announce the publication of my new book, THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF AMERICA AT WAR: Untold Tales from Yorktown to Fallujah. A collection of “war stories” about six important battles in American History that have been overlooked, forgotten or mythologized, the hardcover book and audio will be available on May 5 from Hachette Books and Random House Audio.
Going beyond strategy and tactics, winners, losers and casualty counts of traditional military accounts, these six stories reveal who has fought America’s wars and how America’s military has changed over more than two centuries –going from from the legendary “Minutemen” who fought 240 years ago at Lexington and Concord to the technologically advanced, global power America is today. In these stories I also examine the human side of war, from the point of view of those who fight and those civilians who are often trapped in a combat zone.
To learn more about the book. see more advance praise, and preorder copies, please visit The Hidden History of America At War.
Don’t Know Much About® Abraham Lincoln’s Birthday
February 12 used to mean something special — Abraham Lincoln’s Birthday. It was never a national holiday but it was pretty important when I was a kid and we got the day off from school in my hometown.
The Uniform Holidays Act in 1971 changed that by creating Washington’s Birthday as a federal holiday on the third Monday in February. It is NOT officially “Presidents Day.”
But it is still a good excuse to talk about Abraham Lincoln, especially since his real birthday is on the calendar.c
“Honest Abe.” “The Railsplitter.” “The Great Emancipator.” You know some of the basics and the legends. But check out this video to learn some of things you may not know, but should, about the 16th President.
Here’s a link to the Lincoln Birthplace National Park
This link is to the Emancipation Proclamation page at the National Archives.
And you can read much more about Lincoln in Don’t Know Much About the American Presidents, Don’t Know Much About History and Don’t Know Much About the Civil War.
Don’t Know Much About the Civil War (Harper paperback, Random House Audio)
Don’t Know Much About® the American Presidents (Hyperion Paperback-April 15, 2014)
Abraham Lincoln (November 1863) Photo by Alexander Gardner
