Kenneth C. Davis's Blog, page 88
March 10, 2014
Who Said It? (3/9/2014)
Andrew Jackson 7th President of the U.S. by Thomas Sully (1825) Source: United States Senate
President Andrew Jackson: “Veto Message Regarding the Bank of the United States “(July 10, 1832)
It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions. In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society-the farmers, mechanics, and laborers-who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their Government. There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing. In the act before me there seems to be a wide and unnecessary departure from these just principle
Full Text at Avalon Project-Yale Law School
The charter of the Second Bank of the United States had become a sharp political issue between Andrew Jackson and his enemies, most notably Senator Henry Clay and Second Bank of the United States President Nicholas Biddle. Jackson vetoed a bill rechartering the Bank in 1832 and his veto was sustained. The Bank –Jackson and his allies depicted it as the “Monster Bank” — became a campaign issue in the 1832 presidential election which Jackson won in a landslide.
Andrew Jackson was born on March 15, 1767 in the Waxhaws region between North and South Carolina. He died on June 8, 1845.
March 4, 2014
Pop Quiz: When was the last March 4th Inauguration?
Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933
Franklin D. Roosevelt was the last president to take the oath office on March 4 in 1933, when he was sworn in for his first term. But Inauguration Day is now set on January 20th. When did that happen and why?
The change followed ratification of the 20th Amendment in January 1933. This alteration came about because the period between Election Day and the opening of a new session of Congress or a presidential inauguration was too long under the original terms of the Constitution, sometimes creating a crisis as a “lame duck” Congress or the outgoing president could not act. Nor could the incoming president-elect respond to an emergency, as in the case of Abraham Lincoln in 1861.
As the National Constitution Center explains:
“The drama over March 4 every year ended when the 20th Amendment was ratified in 1933. Part of the amendment eliminated an extended lame-duck Congress. The new amendment set January 3 as the starting day of a new Congress and January 20 as inauguration day for the president. The previous congressional and presidential terms ended just before the new terms began.”
AMENDMENT XX
Passed by Congress March 2, 1932. Ratified January 23, 1933.
Section 1.
The terms of the President and the Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3rd day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin.
The complete text of Amendment XX can be found at The Constitution of the United States at the National Archives or at the National Constitution Center
The original March 4 inaugural date was the day that the United States government was supposed to start business back in 1789 after the transfer of power from the previous government under the Articles of Confederation.
Ironically, there were not enough members of Congress for a quorum that day so the government actually started with a “shutdown.” The National Constitution Center offers an interesting history of the “birthday of the U.S. Government.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt then became the first president to take the oath of office on the new date on January 20, 1937 when he was sworn in for his second term.
Don’t Know Much About® the American Presidents (2012)
(From Hyperion and Random House Audio)
March 3, 2014
Who Said It? (3/3/2014)
Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural (March 4, 1865) Photo Courtesy of the Library of C0ngress
Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address (March 4, 1865)
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.
Complete text at Avalon Project- Yale Law School
The greatest inaugural address in American presidential history? Hard to argue for another.
Here are some more resources to explore Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address from the National Endowment for the Humanities Edsitement website.
And you can rad more about Lincoln and the Civil War in Don’t Know Much About® the American Presidents and Don’t Know Much About® the Civil War
Don’t Know Much About the American Presidents (2012)
(From Hyperion and Random House Audio)
February 24, 2014
Who Said It? (2/24/14)
Georgia Ordinance of Secession (Approved, Tuesday, January 29, 1861)
The question of “Confederate heritage” has been raised once more in the latest dust up over the Confederate flag. It comes from Georgia where a “vanity” or special license plate features the Confederate battle flag, as the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported.
The state of Georgia has released a new specialty license tag that features the Confederate battle flag, inflaming civil rights advocates and renewing a debate on what images should appear on state-issued materials. The new specialty tag has stirred a clash between those who believe the battle flag honors Confederate heritage and those, particularly African-Americans, who view it as a racially charged symbol of oppression.
Since this issue once more raises the question of “Confederate heritage,” code words for why the Civil War was fought, it presents an opportunity to revisit exactly why the state of Georgia decided to secede from the Union in January 1861. This is also a good example of doing some primary document reading as called for in the Common Core.
Here is the opening paragraph of the Georgia Ordinance of Secession:
The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property, and by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic. This hostile policy of our confederates has been pursued with every circumstance of aggravation which could arouse the passions and excite the hatred of our people, and has placed the two sections of the Union for many years past in the condition of virtual civil war. . . . The party of Lincoln, called the Republican party . . . is admitted to be an anti-slavery party. While it attracts to itself by its creed the scattered advocates of exploded political heresies, of condemned theories in political economy, the advocates of commercial restrictions, of protection, of special privileges, of waste and corruption in the administration of Government, anti-slavery is its mission and its purpose. By anti-slavery it is made a power in the state.
Text of Georgia Secession Ordinance January 29, 1861 Source: The Avalon Project-Yale Law School
The text concludes by setting a price tag on slavery and raising the specter of the threat to Southern wives and children:
Because by their declared principles and policy they have outlawed $3,000,000,000 of our property in the common territories of the Union; put it under the ban of the Republic in the States where it exists and out of the protection of Federal law everywhere; because they give sanctuary to thieves and incendiaries who assail it to the whole extent of their power, in spite of their most solemn obligations and covenants; because their avowed purpose is to subvert our society and subject us not only to the loss of our property but the destruction of ourselves, our wives, and our children, and the desolation of our homes, our altars, and our firesides.
This is Georgia’s stated reason for its “Confederate heritage.”
February 18, 2014
Virginia and the Lovings-Then and Now
Source: Supreme Court of the United States
We have arrived upon another moment in history when We the People becomes more inclusive, and our freedom more perfect.
-U.S District Judge Arenda L. Wright Allen (Decision on Virginia Ban on Same-Sex Marriage February 14, 2014)
Last week, a federal judge in Virginia overturned Virginia’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriages.
The decision by Judge Arenda L. Wright Allen of the Federal District Court in Norfolk, Virginia relied on the Supreme Court decision made last year in United States v. Windsor which ruled that the federal government must provide benefits to same-sex couples married in states that allow such unions. Judge Wright Allen opened her 41-page decision with a quotation from Mildred Loving who successfully challenged Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage in 1967.
Government has no business imposing some people’s religious beliefs over others. . . . I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about. – Mildred Loving, “Loving for All”
Public Statement on the 40th Anniversary of Loving v. Virginia (June 12, 2007).
I wrote about the Lovings and their case in this June 2013 post.
In 1967, the Lovings’s Supreme Court victory over the state of Virginia ended bans on interracial marriage in America. Will Judge Wright Allen’s decision against Virginia in 2014 have similar repercussions?
Judge Wright Allen’s decision included this statement:
A spirited and controversial debate is underway regarding who may enjoy the right to marry in the United States of America. America has pursued a journey to make and keep our citizens free. This journey has never been easy, and at times has been painful and poignant. The ultimate exercise of our freedom is choice. Our Declaration of Independence recognizes that “all men” are created equal. Surely this means all of us. While ever-vigilant for the wisdom that can come from the voices of our voting public, our courts have never long tolerated the perpetuation of laws rooted in unlawful prejudice. One of the judiciary’s noblest endeavors is to scrutinize laws that emerge from such roots.
This ruling also referred to the “due process” and “equal protection” clauses of 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Read more about the 14th Amendment from the National Constitution Center.
Since the Supreme Court decisions on marriage equality last year, the number of states with legal same-sex marriage has grown to 17 plus the District of Columbia, and court challenges to same-sex marriage bans are underway in several other states, including Oklahoma and Utah. The Washington Post published this graphic map of the current state of marriage equality in the United States.
February 17, 2014
It is NOT Presidents Day. Or President’s Day. Or Even Presidents’ Day.
So What Day Is it After All?
Okay. We all do it. It’s printed on calendars and posted in bank windows. We mistakenly call the third Monday in February Presidents Day, in part because of all those commercials in which George Washington swings his legendary ax and “Rail-splitter” Abe Lincoln hoists his ax to chop down prices on everything from mattresses and linens to SUVs.
But, really it is George Washington’s Birthday –federally speaking that is.
The official designation of the federal holiday observed on the third Monday of February was, and still is, Washington’s Birthday.
I wrote My Project About Presidents in 3rd Grade when I was 9. Even then I was asking questions about history and presidents
But Washington’s Birthday has become widely known as Presidents Day (or President’s Day, or even Presidents’ Day). The popular usage and confusion resulted from the merging of what had been two widely celebrated Presidential birthdays in February –Lincoln’s on February 12th, which was never a federal holiday– and Washington’s on February 22.
Created under the Uniform Holiday Act of 1968, which gave us three-day weekend Monday holidays, the federal holiday on the third Monday in February is technically still Washington’s Birthday. But here’s the rub: the holiday can never land on Washington’s true birthday because the latest date it can fall is February 21, as it did in 2011.
There is a wealth of information the First President at Mount Vernon.
Washington’s Tomb — Mt. Vernon (Photo credit Kenneth C. Davis 2010)
Read More About the creation of the Presidency, Washington, his Life and administration in DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT® THE AMERICAN PRESIDENTS
January 31, 2014
Don’t Know Much About® “Connected Classrooms”
I have seen the future (of education). And it works. I think. Last week, I was “visiting” a school in Pennsylvania in which I spoke to and took questions from two hundred kids in the former library –all toting laptops and tablets.
Over the past few weeks, I have visited about a dozen classrooms in Pennsylvania, Alabama, Maryland and one of my favorites, Grapevine,Texas. I have been doing this from the comfort of my office using Skype to visit classrooms around the country –and even the world. Yes, I have been to Bratislava!
I have also begun to connect with an extraordinary group of teachers via Twitter using the hashtag #sschat, and other social media.
Welcoe to the “Connected Classroom.” This is not the classroom of my childhood –or probably yours. But is the classroom of today and tomorrow.
(US News and World Report has published a list of the “Best Connected Classrooms.”)
January 27, 2014
Sabbatical
I am currently completing a new book and have taken a brief “sabbatical” from my regular posts. I expect to resume my regular blog posts in the very near future.
Thanks for following and for your interest!
Watch for the paperback edition of Don’t Know Much About® the American Presidents, coming in April from Hyperion Books!
Don’t Know Much About® the American Presidents-now available in hardcover and eBook and audiobook
January 6, 2014
Who Said It? (1/6/14)
George Washington, “First Annual Message to Congress” (“State of the Union”), January 8, 1790.
Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of publick happiness
Nor am I less persuaded, that you will agree with me in opinion, that there is nothing which can better deserve your patronage, than the promotion of Science and Literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of publick happiness. In one, in which the measures of government receive their impression so immediately from the sense of the community, as in our’s, it is proportionately essential. To the security of a free Constitution it contributes in various ways: By convincing those who are entrusted with the publick administration, that every valuable end of government is best answered by the enlightened confidence of the people: And by teaching the people themselves to know, and to value their own rights; to discern and provide against invasions of them; to distinguish between oppression and the necessary exercise of lawful authority; between burthens proceeding from a disregard to their convenience, and those resulting from the inevitable exigencies of society; to discriminate the spirit of liberty from that of licentiousness, cherishing the first, avoiding the last, and uniting a speedy, but temperate vigilance against encroachments, with an inviolable respect to the laws.
Complete Text: The Avalon Project- Yale Law School
President George Washington first established the practice of reporting to Congress once a year. Washington gave his first annual message—what is now known as the State of the Union—to Congress on January 8th, 1790. He addressed Congress in person in the Senate Chamber of Federal Hall in New York City (the temporary seat of government at that time).
