History
Still talking about ‘Plantations’: Supporters of a plan that would give voters in next year’s general election the opportunity to strike the phrase “and Providence Plantations” from the state’s formal name, launched a public awareness and education campaign Wednesday….Backers say there is much work to be done if they are to persuade Rhode Island voters…
Ocean State Republican has posted video and text of President Reagan’s 1984 D-Day speech: The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next. It was the deep knowledge…
They editorialized, they polled and now they’ve been seconded by the faculty: Brown University will no longer celebrate Columbus Day. Why? From an earlier editorial at the Brown Daily Herald: Anyone who has studied history, especially at a mostly liberal institution like Brown, knows that Christopher Columbus did not “discover” the Americas. Not only are…
People wonder why race remains an issue, why the United States seems to move forward so slowly. Well, does this memorial of guilt strike anybody else as bizarre? More than 240 years ago, John and Moses Brown financed a slave ship bound for Africa. They also poured money into Brown University in Providence. Slaves worked…
Rhode Island and Providence Plantations was established by Royal Charter in 1663: Because titles to these lands rested only on Indian deeds, neighboring colonies began to covet them. To meet this threat, Roger Williams journeyed to England and secured a parliamentary patent in March 1643-44 uniting the four towns into a single colony and confirming…
I understand that part of historian Doug Burgess’s argument is that piracy was once a somewhat respectable occupation among American colonies, but I can’t help but take this as an indication of the historical nature of conservative reformers’ current task: Newport became a Colonial capital for pirating. “The Colony [of Rhode Island] now began to…
Tocqueville and Thanksgiving….two of my favorite things. The foundation of New England was a novel spectacle, and all the circumstances attending it were singular and original. Nearly all colonies have been first inhabited either by men without education and without resources, driven by their poverty and their misconduct from the land which gave them birth,…
It took historians a full term of George W. Bush’s presidency before they declared he was “the worst president ever.” Now, only days after the election, at least one prominent historian is declaring that the presidency of Barack Obama will be “unforgettable” (h/t). Like Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D.Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F.Kennedy, and…
Sen. Joseph Biden, September 18, 2008: “We want to take money and put it back in the pocket of middle class people. Anyone making over $250,000….Is going to pay more. You got it. It’s time to be patriotic, Kate. It’s time to jump in, it’s time to be part of the deal, it’s time to…
A snippet from his life and writings. – Hundreds were reportedly executed on his watch, and that doesn’t include the deaths incurred in the wars he was constantly trying to start. – When describing the differences in the strife between “Europeans” and “the black,” … [he] wrote, “their different attitudes of life separate them completely:…