American History
History on Display: Americans and the Holocaust
On a recent trip home to Springfield, Missouri, I had the chance to visit a traveling exhibition titled Americans and the Holocaust at the local public library. Sponsored by the United States Holocaust Museum and the American Library Association, the exhibition is small but powerful. The exhibit includes some well-done general context about the Nazis’…
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Molly Pitcher(s?)
In 1876, caught up in the patriotic excitement of the first centennial of the American Revolution, the people of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, raised a stone inscribed “Molly Pitcher” over the previously unmarked grave of a local resident, Mary Ludwig Hays McCauley (ca. 1754–1832). In the years before her death, Hays claimed to have served at the…
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In Pursuit–Version 2
The phrase “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” is, I believe, one of the few portions of the Declaration of Independence that most Americans can recite from memory.[1] It is no surprise that two groups have chosen “In Pursuit” as the title for history-based projects For America 250. I reviewed one of those projects…
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