Editor's Note: Steven Waldman is one of our most articulate thinkers on the subject of religion. He was National Editor of US News & World Report and founded the multifaith religion website Beliefnet.com. He has also published several books including Sacred Liberty: America's Long, Bloody, and Ongoing Struggle for Religious Freedom and Founding Faith: How Our Founding Fathers Forged a Radical New Approach to Religious Liberty. Waldman currently runs Report for America, a nonprofit dedicated to strengthening our democracy through local journalism.
—The Editors
Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
August 2019
There were no primaries back then to select presidential candidates, no organized political parties, no orchestrated campaigns, not even any established election procedures. But it really didn’t matter, because when the votes of that odd invention called the Electoral College were cast in February of 1789, George Washington had in effect won by acclamation.
As the new president, Washington was largely making it up as he went along.
While no one could agree what kind of republican government the principles of the American Revolution required, all could agree that Washington embodied those principles more fully and fittingly than anyone else. His trip from Mount Vernon to the temporary capital in New York that April was a prolonged coronation ceremony: rose petals strewn in his path, choirs singing his praises to the tune of “God Save the King,” and even a laurel wreath lowered onto his noble head.
Headlines in the New York Times in July 1962 captured the national sentiment: “Silent Spring is now noisy summer.” In the few months between The New Yorker’s serialization of Silent Spring in June and its publication in book form that September, Rachel Carson’s alarm touched off a national debate on the use of chemical pesticides, the responsibility of science, and the limits of technological progress.
The first Congress may have been the most important in American history, establishing how our new government would work based on principles that had been only broadly outlined in the Constitution. We asked the distinguished historian Fergus Bordewich to provide us with an overview of the first two years of the U.S. Congress and the challenges it faced. Portions of this essay appeared in Mr. Bordewich's recent book, The First Congress. His new book, Congress at War, due out in February 2020, will focus on how Congress helped win the Civil War.
--The Editors
The stock market crash of 1929 burst the bubble of uncontrolled speculation and business expansion of the Roaring Twenties. At first, both President Hoover and most of the country thought any major economic downturn would follow the pattern of those of the past, purging marginal businesses, followed by reorganization and recovery. The president saw no need for government intervention in the economy, just as his predecessors had rejected it on similar occasions. He was pleased to follow Democrat Grover Cleveland’s observation during the economic decline of 1893: “It is the business of the people to support the government, but it is not the business of the government to support the people.” He listened to Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon, who advocated a “do nothing” approach to economic lows.
The Soviet Union was erased from world maps not because of a reform process or a series of diplomatic arrangements. It simply could not sustain itself. Historians will debate for decades, perhaps centuries, which factors weighed most on the Soviet system. Was it the bankruptcy of State ideology? Was failure preordained because communism was so contrary to human nature? Did the calcified and rusting Soviet economy finally bear such a burden that it imploded, much like a weak roof collapsing under the burden of heavy snow?
On December 15, 1941, America was at war. Just one week earlier, President Franklin D. Roosevelt warned the nation that “our people, our territories, and our interests are in grave danger” after the “unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan” on Pearl Harbor. Three days after that, Adolf Hitler addressed the Reichstag and said that Nazi Germany must defend itself against President Roosevelt’s aim of establishing “world domination and dictatorship.”
Editor's Note: Portions of this essay were written by the distinguished Presidential historian Michael Beschloss for our book, The American Heritage History of the Presidents.
The first president of the United States I ever saw was Richard Nixon, during his 1960 campaign against John Kennedy. At the age of four, I am told, I was held up in the air as the future president’s motorcade sped down the Lincoln Highway in Illinois, where I lived. That fall, Nixon was promising Americans that if they made him president, “your children and grandchildren won’t grow up under Communism.” To drive home his point, the Nixon campaign wanted his parade routes lined by small girls and boys. I was one of those.