March 9, 2021
An exhibit about the presidential election of 1912 featured its four main candidates, from left: Eugene Debs, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt.Credit.Mario Tama/Getty Images
There is no rule that says American political parties canât die, and there was a time when it was quite common.
And not just in the 19th century either. The first decades of the 20th century, for example, saw the rise and fall of the Socialist Party, with Eugene V. Debs at its head. The short-lived Progressive Party came to life as a platform for the revived presidential ambitions of Theodore Roosevelt, and the Populist Party swept through much of America in the last years of the 19th century as a vehicle for the interests of farmers and laborers.
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One of the oldest imperatives of American electoral politics is to define your opponents before they can define themselves. So it was not surprising when, in the summer of 1963, Nelson Rockefeller, a centrist Republican governor from New York, launched a preëmptive attack against Barry Goldwater, a right-wing Arizona senator, as both men were preparing to run for the Presidential nomination of the Republican Party. But the nature of Rockefeller’s attack was noteworthy. If the G.O.P. embraced Goldwater, an opponent of civil-rights legislation, Rockefeller suggested that it would be pursuing a “program based on racism and sectionalism.” Such a turn toward the elements that Rockefeller saw as “fantastically short-sighted” would be potentially destructive to a party that had held the White House for eight years, owing to the popularity of Dwight Eisenhower, but had been languishing in the minority in Congress for the better part of three decades. So
How a lame duck president signed Washington Territory’s birth certificate on Inauguration Eve January 20, 2021 at 12:20 pm
President Millard Fillmore was a lameduck when he signed legislation creating Washington Territory on March 2, 1853 two days before Franklin Pierce was inaugurated. (Library of Congress)
It was on March 2, 1853 – two days before the presidential inauguration of Pierce County namesake Franklin Pierce – when lame duck President Millard Fillmore signed the legislation creating the Washington Territory. Pierce was a Democrat; Fillmore was a member of the Whigs, one of the predecessors of the Republican Party.
Dr. Paul Finkelman is the president of Gratz College near Philadelphia. He’s also author of a book about Millard Fillmore published a decade ago. He says the process of Oregon Territory, which was created in 1848, being split up a few years later to create Washington Territory, was “pretty normal.”
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7 Things You May Not Know About Freemasons
What are those symbols all about, anyway?
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What are those symbols all about, anyway?
Freemason secrets allegedly lurk behind everything from the planning of our nation’s capital to murder. Members of the enigmatic Masonic brotherhood include prominent politicians, Founding Fathers and titans of business. In modern times, Masons are known for donating millions to charity. But who are the Freemasons and what do they stand for? Is there really a secret Freemason handshake? Here are seven things you may not know about Freemasons.
1. The Freemasons Are the Oldest Fraternal Organization in the World.