Articles

Washington's Farewell Address (FOXNews.com - February 22, 2010) In 1796 our first president called on the nation to avoid partisan acrimony and to maintain the union to which he had devoted his life. › View complete article Martha Washington: The First Lady (Stamford Advocate - February 19, 2010) Martha Dandridge's first husband died after seven years of marriage and four children. A year and a half later at age 27, the pretty, personable and very rich widow married her second husband, George Washington -- on January 6, 1759. › View complete article Franklin and Lincoln: True Leaders for Change (Connecticut Post - January 17, 2009) They were born 103 years apart. Abraham Lincoln was born in rural Kentucky in 1809. Benjamin Franklin was born in relatively cosmopolitan Boston on Jan. 17, 1706 -- 304 years ago, today. › View complete article The Death of George Washington (December 14, 2009 - Fox Forum) George Washington died on December 14, 1799. The 60-year-old former president was effectively asphyxiated over a two-day period. "I die hard," said Washington before he passed away. It was indeed a hard and painful death which Washington met with his usual stoicism. › View complete article President and prize-winner was a bull moose ( October 21, 2009 - Greenwich Time) Theodore Roosevelt was campaigning for president in Milwaukee, Wisconsin when he was shot in the chest. John Schrank, an anarchist and would-be assassin fired his .38 revolver as Roosevelt paused outside the Hotel Gilpatrick to wave to the crowd. Schrank was quickly seized, the former president seemed unfazed, and local doctors quickly ruled that his wound was superficial. › View complete article 400 years ago, Hudson sparked our long river voyage ( September 16, 2009 - Norwalk Advocate) Two centuries before Abraham Lincoln was born, Henry Hudson sailed up the river that would come to bear his name. After tentatively exploring the mouth of the Delaware River and the Chesapeake Bay to the south during the summer of 1609, Hudson spent three weeks sailing up and down the Hudson. Hudson's ship, the Half Moon, got as far as present-day Albany before turning back because of impediments to further travel upriver. › View complete article For back to school, lessons of a self-educated president (September 3, 2009 - Stamford Advocate) Abraham Lincoln seldom got the chance to go to school. He received fewer than 12 months of schooling. Congressman Lincoln, it was reported, once said that a Georgia colleague was "an eloquent man, and a man of learning; so far as he could judge of learning, not being learned himself." Such self-deprecation came naturally. Lincoln's friend Joshua Speed noted that Lincoln "was never ashamed, so far as I know, to admit his ignorance upon any subject, or of the meaning of any word, no matter how ridiculous it might make him appear." › View complete article Holding court: Connecticut's Oliver Ellsworth (August 21, 2009 - Danbury News) Sometimes, you need to know when to quit. Connecticut delegate Oliver Ellsworth left the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia on Aug. 23, 1787 -- nearly a month before the Constitution itself was formalized. But Ellsworth had left his mark on the founding document before departing. During late July and early August, Ellsworth served on the five-man committee chaired by James Wilson that crafted the language of the U.S. Constitution. › View complete article Father's Day with the Founding Fathers (June 21, 2009 - Connecticut Post) Proper education and conduct was a repeated theme of letters from the Founders to their favorite relatives. Alexander Hamilton's advice to his 9-year-old daughter Angelica could easily have been written by rival Thomas Jefferson: "I was very glad to learn, my dear daughter, that you were going to begin the study of the French language. We hope you will in every respect behave in such a manner as will secure to you the goodwill and regard of all those with whom you are associated." › View complete article The men who created this country owned much of it, too (May 15, 2009 - Stamford Advocate) America was built in part on land investment and speculation. In 1796 as he was preparing to leave office, President George Washington wrote Sir John Sinclair a long letter about the characteristics and value of American land, which Sinclair was considering purchasing: "The rise in the value of landed property, in this country, has been progressive, ever since my attention has been turned to the subject -- now more than 40 years -- but for the last three or four (years) of that period, it has increased beyond all calculations -- owing in part to the attachment to, and the confidence which the people are beginning to place in, their form of Government -- and to the prosperity of the country from a variety of concurring causes, none more than to the late high prices of its produce." › View complete article Nation divided is an old American story (December 3, 2008 - Greenwich Time) Barack Obama is not the first president-elect to confront the demons of division. Thomas Jefferson confronted such a situation after the election on 1800 — perhaps the most bitter and unpredictable in American history. Jefferson and John Adams, who had bonded as fellow members of the Continental Congress and as American diplomats in Paris, had split during the administration of President Washington. › View complete article Whither American History and American Capitalism (November 6, 2007 - Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History) We gather to think about American History, to consider the academic standing of our national patrimony, even to think about its adversaries. In President Lincoln’s final message to Congress, he admonished us that “[Our opponents] do not attempt to deceive us. [They] afford us no excuse to deceive ourselves…” Even the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Woodrow Wilson, warned us about academic politics - just as he was giving up the Presidency of Princeton University. Announcing his candidacy for Governor of New Jersey in 1912, it was reported he was asked by a reporter why in the world would you give up academic eminence at Princeton for the Governorship of New Jersey? Because, Wilson is supposed to have said, I wanted to get out of politics. › View complete article To Be Presented Here: Lincoln Prize Promotes Unity (April 17, 2005 - TimesDispatch.com) We who love our common country embraces the study of American history. The Lincoln Prize originates in this patriotic sentiment. It was Abraham Lincoln himself who confided, in a eulogy of Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky, that we love our country not only because it is our country, but also because it is a free country. » View complete article Alexander Hamilton (March 31, 1999) Richard Brookhiser, the celebrated author of Rediscovering George Washington (1996), intrudes again upon the specious present to hold up for the praise of men the character and achievements of Alexander Hamilton, (1999). "He is a great man" we are told. Indeed, "...a great American". This is so, according to Brookhiser, because "most men, who make it, provide for their families, thank fortune, and maybe give to charity." But Hamilton was different, Brookhiser insists, not because Hamilton (a prodigy like the younger Pitt) became America's first Secretary of the Treasury at 32; neither because he towered over all the other cabinet officers as the de facto first minister of the founding administration. But because, from his front position at the post, he designed, into his comprehensive program of economic growth and national institution building, "ways to bring light to the talents of other men as well as himself." In a word, magnanimity marked his essential character. His pathbreaking policies, though not populist, "would enable his countrymen to become conscious of their resources." » View complete article