On May 13, 1846, the United States Congress, egged on President James K. Polk, declared war on Mexico. In 1879, Ulysses S. Grant, who had fought in the war as a strapping young lad, described the whole affair as “wicked” and that the land grab made him “ashamed of [his] country.” Abraham Lincoln was a freshman in the House of Representatives during the war, and he was one of its harshest critics. Alas, Mr. Lincoln was voted in to office after war had already been declared. It wasn’t just Whigs who opposed the war, either. John C. Calhoun, one of Polk’s...

“Class distinctions in America are so complicated and subtle that foreign visitors often miss the nuances and sometimes even the existence of a class structure. So powerful is ‘the fable of equality,’ as Frances Trollope called it when she toured America in 1832, so embarrassed is the government to confront the subject [...] that it’s easy for visitors not to notice the way the class system works.” - Paul Fussell, Class: A Guide Through the American Status System  On May 10, 1849, the oddest riot in American history took place in and around a theatre in...

It’s May Day, a holiday celebrated by leftists all over the world. In Venezuela, a leftist government is starving its citizens and shooting the complainers. In Russia, a country that was once the epicenter of violent socialist revolution, a May Day celebration is held, but the real activity is centered around preparations for the May 9 parade celebrating the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany. The United States has never had a strong socialist movement, and it’s better off because of it, but individuals in this country have long taken advantage of the freedom found...

April 20 was  national pot-smoking dayin the United States. In Colorado, you can buy marijuana legally, smoke it legally, and grow it legally. In January 2014, the state officially legalized pot. Since then, several other states have joined Colorado in legalizing the wacky weed and one CBS poll says that 65% of Americans now favor legalizing pot. Colorado is not just a trendsetter for today, either. In 1967, its governor, John Love, signed a bill on April 25 that legalized abortion. The controversy surrounding Colorado’s legislation has been unending, and still goes on today, but...

By now you all know April 15 isn’t just tax day, it’s also “Jackie Robinson Day.” Since 2004, all Major League Baseball players have worn Robinson’s number (42) on that day in honor of his courage in becoming the first black baseball player in the Major Leagues. Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, which is a polite way of saying he broke racist segregation in professional American baseball. You all know who he is. Hopefully you were able to check out Bryce Harper’s tribute to Jackie Robinson this year, too. (Here’s a good link.) Robinson’s...

You’ve probably never heard of Silas Dinsmoor. He was an Indian agent in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, at a time when Indian agents were viewed by Washington policymakers more as diplomats than as corrupt, racist bureaucrats. The early American presidents knew that the Native American nations surrounding their fragile republic posed an existential threat. In the early era of the republic, there were three competing factions when it came to the West (the Appalachian Mountains): the federal government; western colonists from Europe; and the Indians, who were usually further...

On April 4, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) will turn 70. This is an incredible historical feat. Alliances never last long, and the fact that NATO transcends oceans and continents makes the longevity of this alliance all the more impressive. There are those in the United States who have never liked the alliance, or at least America’s participation in it, and often argue that America’s growth into the most powerful polity in world history, with the world’s freest people enjoying their liberties, has been done unilaterally thanks to our unique culture and set of...

On March 4, 1897, Grover Cleveland left office for the last time. His second go-round as president of the United States is often used as a milepost that marks the end of the Frontier Era in American history. The so-called Wild West had come and gone, but so had the era on Republican domination of the Presidency and Reconstruction of the South. In just 32 years, between 1865-97, the American republic swallowed up half of a continent after it took mostly English colonists and American republicans roughly 245 years, from Plymouth Rock to the onset of the Civil War in 1861, to reach the...

Wyatt Earp was born on March 19, 1848. When I was a teenager my grandparents took me and my sister to Arizona during spring break to catch Spring Training. We took breaks from baseball to see Nogales, a couple of museums, and Tombstone. It was awesome. To celebrate Earp’s 171st birthday, and to pay tribute to my grandparents (they’re both still alive!), I figured I’d set the record straight on Wyatt Earp and the O.K. Corral gunfight. First things first: the gunfight at O.K. Corral did not actually take place at the O.K. Corral. The 30-second gunfight took place six lots away...

Andrew Johnson, 17th President of the United States, had a tough job. He wasn’t even elected to be President of the United States. His predecessor was assassinated after waging a four-year war on several rebellious states within the federation his state belonged to, and his state was among the rebellious! He was picked by that same predecessor to be Vice President because of his ties to the opposition party (see Roger Schleuter’s explanation for Abraham Lincoln’s decision to pick a Democrat as his 1864 running mate). To top it all off, the assassination of Johnson’s...

The secession of Texas from Mexico on March 2, 1836 has much in common with the secession of 13 colonies from the British Empire on July 4, 1776. For one thing, the victors of both wars styled their secessions as “revolutions” rather than separatist movements. There are other similarities, too, starting with the fact that Texas was not the only state in Mexico to try and secede from Mexico City. The self-declared republics of Rio Grande, Zacatecas, and Yucután also asserted their independence from Mexico, though Texas was the only state to actually succeed in its rebellion....

On Feb. 28, 1991 the first Gulf War was declared “over” and the victors packed up and went home. Iraq’s armed forces were crippled and Kuwait had been liberated from Baghdad’s grip. The American-led multi-national military force that repelled Iraq from Kuwait was hailed in almost all corners of the globe as a paragon of multilateral cooperation and a new world order. George H.W. Bush, former head of the republic’s most prominent clandestine spy agency, mustered up enough international support to justify the invasion of the Gulf and the crippling of Iraq’s...

Yesterday was President’s Day, a day usually associated with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. In the spirit of the holiday, I thought it’d be fun to highlight a short list of presidents who are unheralded and long forgotten. (Those who were assassinated or had an untimely death while serving as president are disqualified.) So, without further adieu: 5. Rutherford B. Hayes (presidential term: 1877-81). A Republican during an era of Republican domination of the presidency, Hayes lost the popular vote but won the office as a result of the electoral college. But just...

Calvin Coolidge is one of the most understudied Presidents in American history. He stepped in when President Warren G. Harding died unexpectedly in San Francisco, and then ran for the presidency himself in 1924, winning after taking every non-Southern state except for Wisconsin (which was home to the upstart Progressive Party’s candidate, Robert LaFollette). President Coolidge was a conservative Republican from New England. Silent Cal’s demeanor might also contribute to his lack of attention in American history textbooks. Nobody wants to write about a scandal-exempt presidency or...

So, Punxsutawney Phil predicted an early spring this year. Thanks to Bill Murray’s classic performance in the famous film, you know what I’m talking about. America has a lot of strange, offbeat traditions or holidays, which is to be expected in a commercial republic of 328.4 million people that bridges the world’s two largest oceans. Immigration into the republic played, and continues to play, a role in the strange and offbeat traditions of America’s regions. The contributions that immigrants bring to the republic are immense, and include cultural as well as economic...

On Jan. 26, 1880, Douglas MacArthur was born in the barracks at Little Rock, Ark. to an Army Captain and his wife. MacArthur is one of the finest men the republic has ever produced. Aside from being a general during World War II, in which he led American forces to overwhelming victory while minimizing losses, MacArthur was also a presidential candidate, a father, an educational reformer, and, perhaps most interestingly from a historical standpoint, a benevolent conqueror (which will be the subject of this short Historiat post). After the United States and the rest of the Allies conquered...

On Jan. 24, 1895, the Queen of Hawaii was forced to abdicate her throne, thus paving the way for American annexation of the islands (which culminated in statehood in 1959). The American annexation of Hawaii had three important ramifications: 1. It set up a clash with the Japanese that ended with World War II. At the time of the Hawaiian monarch’s abdication, the Japanese and Americans were competing for influence in Hawaii and the broader Pacific Islands region by subsidizing settler immigration to various isles. The Japanese had more people in Hawaii than the Americans, and were easily...

On Jan. 17, 1942, Cassius Clay was born in Louisville, Ken. Clay would go on to have an incredible career in the brutal sport of boxing, but his position as one of the greatest Americans of the 20th century extends far beyond his 56-5 record in the ring. Cassius Clay symbolizes the struggle of African-Americans in the United States, that much is obvious. But Cassius Clay - aka Muhammad Ali - also symbolizes the true triumph of the United States in the Cold War. The young republic did not defeat a foreign enemy so much as it, through the lens of Muhammad Ali’s life, defeated the racism...

On Jan. 8, 1877, the United States Army clashed with a combined Sioux-Cheyenne force during a brutally cold winter in the Tongue River Valley of Montana Territory. Less than 10 people died in the Battle of Wolf Mountain, but it was a clear psychological victory for the U.S. Army: the Sioux and Cheyenne could no longer take refuge in the Rockies during winter on the plains. The Americans had learned how to track, and fight in the snow. To make matters worse, the realization that the Sioux and other Indian nations could not regroup during the winter prompted the great Sioux tactician Crazy...