by Paul J. Croce
Paul J. Croce is Professor of History and Director of American Studies at Stetson University, author of Young William James Thinking
(Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018), and recent past president of the William James Society. He writes for the Public Classroom and his recent essays have appeared in Civil American, History News Network, the Huffington Post, Origins, Public Seminar, and the Washington Post. The Lost Cause, Henry Mosler, 1868. Johnson Collection, Spartanburg, South Carolina (Public Domain)
President Donald Trump has answered speculation about what he would do after his electoral defeat. His actions were his words of provocation. As pragmatist philosophers have pointed out, including William James, choices of words are important actions. Trump’s script is akin to the story of the southern Lost Cause after the Civil War, when the defeated Confederacy turned military loss into cultural victory, as historian Karen Cox has observed.
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The Saturday Evening Post turns 200 this year, so we are bringing you excerpts from our archive to celebrate our long history. Seth M. Flint, an 18-year-old bugler attached to Gen. Ulysses Grant, was present at Appomattox for the truce ending the Civil War. At the age of 93, he shared his memories of that historic meeting i
n an article from our April 6, 1940, issue.
On the morning of April 9, 1865, a horseman at top speed was seen coming from our front lines; as he drew near, I recognized him as a young lieutenant of Gen. Meade’s staff. He pulled his horse back on its haunches and handed a paper to Grant from Lee.
Man playing trombone at Robert E. Lee monument RICHMOND, Va. As fencing is installed around the 130-year-old Robert E. Lee monument in Richmond, Va., in preparation for its removal, the monument itself has become an unlikely symbol of hope and persistence for many in the surrounding communities.
Gov. Ralph S. Northam ordered the removal of the Confederate general’s memorial in June 2020, but it has been delayed by legal action from local residents who want it to remain.
The 60-foot, 12-ton statue on Monument Avenue is covered in graffiti, applied and reapplied multiple times since June’s Black Lives Matter protests.
Jan 25, 2021
The boy in me was mesmerized by those not so young men marching by, the flag of the United States proudly in the fore, my father, Russell J Fischer (American Legion Post 201, Sunbury), marching in the first line of veterans behind the flag bearers on Memorial Day some six decades past. I stood as my father had instructed, and placed my hand over my heart. Respect and obligation my father taught me, not so much for the flag as for the words that followed in The Pledge: “and for the Republic for which it stands.” Flags are just pieces of cloth, he said, but the republic and by extension the nation, are the sum total of the values we hold dear, and our commitment to them. It is what defines us as Americans, ideals such as liberty, equality, justice. Those were the foundations of what I later learned as the concept of American exceptionalism, the United States as a beacon to the world, a “Shining City on a Hill.”
The venerable North Howard Street theatrical costumer A.T. Jones & Sons Inc. that has kept Baltimoreans and environs dressed as ghouls, ghosts and in other guises for more than 150 years, now faces an uncertain future since the death of its owner, George F. Goebel, 88, who was also a well-known magician and illusionist, earlier this month.