Best 293 quotes in «american history quotes» category

The colonial films of the golden age of Hollywood were a clear proclamation of the Consensus historians' interpretation of the facts. These motion pictures encouraged audiences to believe that our nation could overcome all obstacles to its growth and defend itself against any future foreign aggression.

The Day of Trouble is Near

The difference between a dictator and a true leader, is in intention. Given enough resources anybody can manipulate the minds of the masses and become their chosen authority, for the masses rarely look past the veil of the candidate's charm. And this is more evident today than ever, as a psychologically unfit misogynistic bully has swayed his way into the oval office with nothing but charm and charisma. So, basically we live in a society where a bully can become the authority of a great nation, the history of which is filled with true leaders who were the forerunners of humanitarian glory and real progress - these leaders were not simply the leaders of a country, or a party, but they were and still remain in the heart of the civilized humans as the leaders of humanity. They were the torch-bearers of egalitarianism and their light spread across the globe and touched countless lives with the warmth of humaneness. They lived among the masses but they didn't let the prejudices of the masses become their own, let alone infect the masses with more prejudices, unlike today's so-called leadership in America. They made America truly a great nation, by turning it into a symbol of liberty and acceptance, and today that very greatness is at stake, as the primitive evils of prejudices and discriminations have once again begun to creep into its backbone, through the words and actions of its very so-called leader. This is not a threat to democracy, for democracy itself at our current evolutionary stage, is a threat to our progress, rather it is a threat to the heritage of every single act of kindness, reasoning and acceptance ever committed in the history of humanity. The masses are existentially allowed to talk nonsense and advocate prejudices, but when an authority of the masses begins to talk nonsense and advocate prejudice and bigotry, it is an existential crisis for not just those masses but all humans around the world, with implications of catastrophic proportions. A leader is to take away prejudices from the psychological edifice of a country - a leader is to uplift a country, that is, a people, while warming their minds with the gentle flames of love, acceptance and reasoning. In fact, that's the only kind of true leadership there is, rest are just uncivilized tribalism that brings along more and more conflicts in the heart of the people within a country as well as outside of it.

The early morning sunshine shot up the ice-covered valley. It glinted off the backs of slumbering mastodon, reflected between the antlers of caribou.

The FBI has stated that the investigation relating to Kennedy’s assassination is officially closed. The government’s position still stands behind the Warren Commission’s finding, maintaining that Oswald acted alone. The book “Reclaiming History” was published in 2007 by Vincent Bugliosi, an American attorney and New York Times bestselling author. He wrote 1,632 pages that categorically attempt to debunk the conspiracy theories, however human nature will most likely prevail and these theories will probably continue. In addition, there are still findings of relevance that are surfacing. Although there is a smoking gun suggesting a cover-up, no details have appeared with enough definitive evidence to prove that a conspiracy took place. Was the Castro régime involved or was it the anti-Castro faction in South Florida? These questions are still open but may be answered when President Trump releases the final files presently held by the government. Fifty years after the assassination the World may finally learn the truth… or not!

The G.I. Bill, formally known as the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, provided many benefits for the returning World War II veterans. These benefits included cash payments of tuition and living expenses to attend a university, high school or vocational education school, provided low-cost mortgages, and supplied low-interest loans to start a business, as well as one year of unemployment compensation. About 2.2 million returning, honorably discharged veterans used the G.I. Bill in order to attend colleges or universities, and another 5.6 million used the G.I. Bill for other kinds of training programs. This program helped make the United States the best educated country and the exceptional leader of the world, for years to come. It was an exciting time in America and I had a center aisle seat to witness it.” I and many other veterans used the G.I. Bill to help pay for my education. In my case it allowed me to attend Central Connecticut State College (now a State University) to do my graduate work in education. The fact that so many people could afford to go back to school made the United States the best educated country in the years following World War II. Unfortunately during the past five years the United States has dropped by 11 points in our educational standing worldwide and now scores 17th among the 34 OECD countries. To make matters worse is that we are below average in math and science when the world depends more than ever on technology. A good part of the reason is that young people cannot afford the cost of a college education! The defense used by many of the less educated is that college is for egg heads and being a deplorable is worn as a badge of honor. If something doesn’t happen soon we will become a third world country but that opens up another topic for another day!

The greatest lie ever sold to mankind is that it needs to be better, stronger, faster and more powerful than it already was intended to be when it was created in the beginning.

The heirs of Jefferson and Madison would be the Democratic-Republicans, the heirs of Hamilton and Adams would be the Federalists. But the heirs of Washington would be all Americans.

The "Indians" knew the destruction of the tea had to be finished by midnight--not one minute later. Destroying the tea was against the law. The men were defying King George III of Great Britain. They could be tried for a crime against the government, thrown into jail, and hanged. Why would they risk their lives just to destroy a cargo of tea?

The heroic and often tragic stories of American whalemen were renowned. They sailed the world’s oceans and brought back tales filled with bravery, perseverance, endurance, and survival. They mutinied, murdered, rioted, deserted, drank, sang, spun yarns, scrimshawed, and recorded their musings and observations in journals and letters. They survived boredom, backbreaking work, tempestuous seas, floggings, pirates, putrid food, and unimaginable cold. Enemies preyed on them in times of war, and competitors envied them in times of peace. Many whalemen died from violent encounters with whales and from terrible miscalculations about the unforgiving nature of nature itself. And through it all, whalemen, those “iron men in wooden boats” created a legacy of dramatic, poignant, and at times horrific stories that can still stir our emotions and animate the most primal part of our imaginations. “To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme,” proclaimed Herman Melville, and the epic story of whaling is one of the mightiest themes in American history.

The infamous Fray Nicolás de Ovando y Cáceres, who had sniveled around the Royal Court wanting to become a favorite of the pious Queen Isabella, was appointed Governor of the Indies, replacing Francisco de Bobadilla, the man who had been responsible for sending Columbus from Hispaniola, back to Spain in irons. Prior to his appointment Fray Nicolás de Ovando had been a Spanish soldier, coming from a noble family, and was a Knight of the Order of Alcántara. On February 13, 1502, Fray Nicolás sailed from Spain with a record breaking fleet of thirty ships. Since Columbus’ discovery of the islands in the Caribbean, the number of Spanish ships that ventured west across the Atlantic had consistently increased. For reasons of safety in numbers, the ships usually made the transit in convoys, carrying nobility, public servants and conquistadors on the larger galleons that had a crew of 180 to 200. On these ships a total of 40 to 50 passengers had their own cabins midship. These ships carried paintings, finished furniture, fabric and, of course, gold on the return trip. The smaller vessels including the popular caravels had a crew of only 30, but carried as many people as they could fit in the cargo holds. Normally they would carry about 100 lesser public servants, soldiers, and settlers, along with farm animals and equipment, seeds, plant cuttings and diverse manufactured goods. For those that went before, European goods reminded them of home and were in great demand. Normally the ships would sail south along the sandy coast of the Sahara until they reached the Canary Islands, where they would stop for potable water and provisions before heading west with the trade winds. Even on a good voyage, they could count on burying a third of these adventurous at sea. Life was harsh and six to eight weeks out of sight of land, always took its toll! In all it is estimated that 30,500 colonists made that treacherous voyage over time. Most of them had been intentionally selected to promote Spanish interests and culture in the New World. Queen Isabella wanted to introduce Christianity into the West Indies, improve the islands economically and proliferate the Spanish and Christian influences in the region.

The land she tilled and worked had been Indian land. She knew the white men bragged about the efficiency of the massacres, where they killed women and babies, and strangled their futures in the crib. Stolen babies working stolen land. It was an engine that did not stop, its hungry boiler fed with blood.

Their story, as the Delany sisters like to say, is not meant as "black" or "women's" history, but American history. It belongs to all of us. (From the Preface of "Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years)

The magic of America is that we're a free and open society with a mixed population. Part of our security is our freedom.” Quote by Madeleine Albright, Former Secretary of State. Madeleine Albright was born Marie Jana Korbelová on May 15, 1937 in Prague, Czechoslovakia. She was nominated by President Bill Clinton on December 5, 1996 and was confirmed unanimously by the Senate to become the first woman to hold a Cabinet post as Secretary of State. She currently serves as the Chairperson of the Albright Stonebridge Group and is a Professor of International Relations at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. In May 2012, Secretary Albright was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Aside from English she speaks French, Russian, and Czech; she also understands Polish and Serbo-Croatian.

The name Camp Columbia came from a historic and rather poetic name for the United States. It was founded in 1898, for the purpose of housing U.S. Army troops during the provisional American protectorate over Cuba. It was also considered “the First American occupation of Cuba,” established in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War. After the withdrawal of American troops, the military establishment was turned over to the Cuban government and became the largest Cuban army base on the island. On September 4, 1933, at Camp Columbia, an army base in Havana, Batista with his inner circle of conspirators took over power as he forced a military coup. Labor leaders who had opposed Machado’s re-election, along with “The Student Directory” comprised of teachers as well as students, joined the sergeants in assuming control of the government. In this way, Batista turned the revolt within the military into the full-blown “Revolution of 1933.

The most formidable enemy we face is far more destructive and even more successful than any acts of terrorism—liberalism, which has become a cancer to America and to western civilization at large. Over the past one hundred years, liberalism has done more damage to the American cause of Liberty and our prosperity than any attack by any group in any war ever could have hoped for.

The popular mocking of reparations as a harebrained scheme authored by wild-eyed lefties and intellectually unserious black nationalists is fear masquerading as laughter.

The officer who shot and killed Philando Castile is found not guilty. Oh well, my people of African descent; might as well get our asses back on that hamster wheel as we routinely do. It is wholly apparent that what we're forced to endure is an unremitting drizzle of unnecessary heartache as our lives, in the nation we call home, don't matter.

The other Clans will soon arrive. The greatest times of our family are before us. And so are the darkest.

The races are like America's children. White people are the firstborn, so they were Dad's favorite. Black people are the second kids, the abused ones, so they still hate Dad. Latinos are the third, caught in the middle and always trying to make peace between the other siblings. Asians are the youngest, and get good marks in school, but basically are just trying to keep their heads down and not get involved. And Native Americans are the old uncle who owns a house and everyone else in the family was like, "He's not using that! Let's move in!

There are only two sides to the question, (Stephen A.) Douglas thundered in conclusion. Every man must be for the United States or against it. There can be no neutrals in this war, only patriots -- or traitors.

There is a notion out there that black people enjoy the Sisyphean struggle against racism. In fact, most of us live for the day when we can struggle against anything else. But having been, by that very racism, pinned into ghettoes, both metaphorical and real, our options for struggle are chosen long before we are born. And so we struggle out of fear for our children. We struggle out of fear for ourselves. We struggle to avoid our feelings, because to actually consider all that was taken, to understand that it was taken systematically, that the taking is essential to America and echoes down through the ages, could make you crazy.

There are still people in the United States who believe they are more privileged than others. This may be because of their color, politics, national origin or economic and cultural status. This is the root of many of our national problems and the reason that we should consider carefully who the next president of our country should be!

There was enough intimidation, witness tampering and foul play to go around. Many books have been published about this subject, witnesses have died, some violently, under very suspicious conditions. Over the years, evidence has been tampered with, and fearing for their lives, most other people have decided to clam up and withdraw into the shadows. Personally I still retain a list of convenient deaths after the Kennedy Assassination that happened rounding the Dealey Plaza in Dallas on November 22, 1963! In February 1996, Robert Kennedy, Jr. and his brother, Michael, flew to Havana for a meeting with Fidel Castro. As a gesture of goodwill, they brought with them a file of formerly top-secret U.S. documents. These documents were specifically about the Kennedy administration’s attempt to find a peaceful settlement with Cuba. Castro thanked them for the file and shared the impression that it was President Kennedy’s desire to normalize relations between the United States and Cuba. “It’s unfortunate,” Castro said, “that things happened as they did.” Castro also indicated that normalization might have been possible, had it not been for President Kennedy’s assassination in 1963. Although numerous attempts at normalization between the two countries have been attempted since this meeting, powerful anti-Castro factions continued to thwart all of these efforts. Perhaps we are now witnessing the time when ways will be found to improve the relations between the United States and Cuba and then again perhaps not!

There is no question that the Deep South seceded and fought the civil war to defend slavery. And its leaders made no secret of this motive. Slavery they argued Ad nauseam was the foundation for a virtuous biblically sanctioned social system superior to that of the free states. When 19th century deep southerners spoke of defending their “traditions”, “heritage”, and way of life they proudly identified the enslavement of others as the center piece of all three. Indeed, many of their leaders even argued that all lower class people should be enslaved regardless of race for their own good. In response to Yankee and midland abolitionist the Deep South’s leaders developed an elaborate defense for human bondage. James Henry Hammond, former governor of South Carolina, published a seminal book arguing that enslaved laborers where happier, fitter and better looked after than their free counter parts in Brittan and the North, who were ruthlessly exploited by industrial capitalists. Free societies were therefore unstable as there was always a danger that the exploited would rise up creating a fearful crisis in republican institutions. Salves by contrast were kept in their place by violent means and denied the right to vote, resist or testify, ensuring the foundation of every well designed and durable republic. Enslavement of the white working class would be in his words a most glorious act of emancipation. Jefferson’s notion all men are created equal, he wrote, was ridiculously absurd. In the deep southern tradition, Hammond’s republic was modeled on those of ancient Greece and Rome. Featuring rights and democracy for the elite, slavery and submission for inferiors. It was sanctioned by the Christian god whose son never denounced the practice in his documented teachings. It was a perfect aristocratic republic, one that should be a model for the world. George Fitzhugh endorsed and expanded upon Hammond’s argument to enslave all poor people. Aristocrats, he explained, were really the nations Magna Carta because they owned so much and had the affection which all men feel for what belongs to them. Which naturally lead them to protect and provide for wives, children and slaves. Fitzhugh, whose books were enormously popular declared he was quite as intent on abolishing free society as you northerners are on abolishing slavery.

The Society for the Colonization of Free People of Color of America, better known as the American Colonization Society was a group established in 1816 by Robert Finley of New Jersey which supported the migration of free African Americans to the continent of Africa In 1822, the American Colonization Society established a new colony on the West Coast of Africa that in 1847 became the independent nation of Liberia. By 1867, the American Colonization Society had sent more than 13,000 black emigrants to this new country. Beginning in the 1830’s the society was harshly attacked by abolitionists, who tried to discredit colonization as a scheme perpetrated by the slaveholder’s to rid themselves of any responsibility regarding the freeing of their former slaves. Of course this was true prior to the Civil War and laterr during the “Jim Crow” era! The concept had a sizable following of, southern whites, who thought of this as a way to rid America of a growing black population. Others felt that since the slaves were brought to America against their will that it was only right that they be returned to Africa. Paul Cuffee and other free Blacks petitioned the Massachusetts government to either give African and Native Americans the right to vote or to stop taxing them. Cuffee also advocated the return to Africa of freed slaves. Some years later, after the Civil War, many freed blacks actually wanted to go to the new country of Liberia to make a better life for themselves, however the money necessary to send them back, as could be expected, dried up. The entire program came to an end during the latter part of the 19th century when the American Colonization Society stopped transporting former slaves to West Africa and concentrated instead on educational and missionary efforts. Those blacks that did come from the United States and populated Liberia became known as the Americo-Liberians who soon become the ruling class of Liberia.

The Sleepin’ Fox Catches No Poultry.

...the so much boasted constitution of England...is imperfect, subject to convulsions, and incapable of producing what it seems to promise...

The SS San Pasqual The SS San Pasqual was launched on June 28, 1920, but less than a year later was severely damaged in a heavy storm. In 1924, the “Old Time Molasses Company of Havana,” a leading Cuban-American molasses company, bought her to be used in Santiago de Cuba, as a floating storage container for raw molasses. Eventually her superstructure was somewhat dismantled and she was towed to Havana, where she remained until 1933. Later, she was once again towed. This time the SS San Pasqual was taken along Cuba’s northern coast and purposely run aground off Cayo Santa María. During World War II, the SS San Pasqual was outfitted with machine guns and light cannons. Since the ship was hard aground, she was unable to chase Nazi submarines, but she was far enough off the coast to serve as a submarine lookout post. A footbridge was constructed out to her, providing access from the mainland, but time, tides and hurricanes have washed away all signs of the old bridge.

The Sun Dagger appeared on the rock face directly above the Shaman’s shadowed head. It dazzled within the shade as the sunlight slipped through a gap in the overhead slabs. The dagger cut slowly down the rock, slicing through the very center of the etched spiral. “The middle of time,” Chaco whispered to himself.

The streets of America may not have been paved with gold, but they were cobbled in middle-class dreams.

The Ten Years’ War, also known as “the Great War,” which started in 1868 became the first of three wars of Cuban Independence. In October 1873, following the defeat of the Confederacy and five years into the Cuban revolution, Fry became Captain of a side-wheeler, the S/S Virginius. His mission was to take guns and ammunition, as well as approximately 300 Cuban rebels to Cuba, with the intent of fighting the Spanish army for Cuban Independence. Unfortunately, the mission failed when the ship was intercepted by the Spanish warship Tornado. Captain Fry and his crew were taken to Santiago de Cuba and given a hasty trial and before a British warship Commander, hearing of the incident, could intervene, they were sentenced to death. After thanking the members of his crew for their service, Captain Fry and fifty-three members of his crew were put to death by firing squad, and were then decapitated and trampled upon by the Spanish soldiers. However, the British Commander Sir Lambton Lorraine of HMS Niobe did manage to save the lives of a few of the remaining crewmembers and rebels.

The time has come to realize that the interracial drama acted out on the American continent has not only created a new black man, it has created a new white man, too. No road whatever will lead Americans back to the simplicity of this European village where white men still have the luxury of looking on me as a stranger. I am not, really, a stranger any longer for any American alive. One of the things that distinguishes Americans from other people is that no other people has ever been so deeply involved in the lives of black men, and vice versa. This fact faced, with all its implications, it can be seen that the history of the American Negro problem is not merely shameful, it is also something of an achievement. For even when the worst has been said, it must also be added that the perpetual challenge posed by this problem was always, somehow, perpetually met. It is precisely this black-white experience which may prove of indispensable value to us in the world we face today. This world is white no longer, and it will never be white again.

This is a time of change,” the Shaman said. “This is a time of enormous power.

The use of ghosts as a means of social control predated the Klan. Slave owners employed so-called patterollers, usually poor whites, who would patrol the countryside at night; such patrols would regularlyuse spook stories, among other tactics, to help keep enslaved people from escaping. "The fraudulent ghost," [Gladys-Marie] Fry writes, "was the first in a gradually developed system of night-riding creatures, the fear of which was fostered by white for the purpose of slave control." A man in a white sheet on horseback riding ominously through a forest could help substantiate rumers that the forest was haunted and that those who valued their lives best avoid it. By spreading ghost stories, Southern whites hoped to limit the unauthorized movement of black people. If cemeteries, crossroads, and forests came to be known particularly as haunted, it's because they presented the easiest means of escape and had to be patrolled. Now it's common to think of such places as the provenance of spirits. We have stories for such places: a tragic death, forlorn lovers, a devil waiting to make a deal -- stories that reflect a rich tradition of American folklore. But all this might have come much later, and these places might have first earned their haunted reputation through much more deviant methods. In the ghost-haunting legacies of many of these public spaces lies a hidden history of patrolling and limiting access.

The woman's march of today have deep roots and shoud be respected. Our country must find unification and not division, with men as well as women of all parties rallying around their cause!" Captain Hank Bracker, author of "The Exciting Story of Cuba.

Third, resistance is a tradition of building blocks; a continuum of action that may not have dislodged injustice in its own time, but whose revolutionary founders left behind the framework and tools for a subsequent generation to take up, and ultimately carry out its vision. We can stand back and admire certain laws and protections now—child labor laws, voter enfranchisement for all, an eight-hour work day, clean water, for example—and appreciate the irreversible process of resistance that not only guaranteed their formation, but fought off the innumerable attacks that once kept them from rising.

This is not our fight,' the old man said. 'British or American, that is not the choice. You must choose your own side, find your road through the valley of darkness that will lead you to the river Jordan.

The tongue and pen are great outlets for wrath and resentment. (1849)

The United States became engaged in hostilities with North Vietnam on November 1, 1955, when President Eisenhower deployed the Military Assistance Advisory Group as advisors to train the army of South Vietnam, better known as the Army of the Republic of Vietnam. Things escalated in 1960, which was about the same time that Cuba established diplomatic relations with Vietnam, the communist country at war with the United States. In May of 1961 President Kennedy sent 400 United States Army Special Forces personnel to South Vietnam for the purpose of training South Vietnamese troops. By November of 1963 when he was killed, President Kennedy had increased the number of military personnel from the original 400 to 900 troops for training purposes. Direct U.S. intervention started with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in August of 1964. As things heated up, the number of American troops started including combat units and escalated to 16,000 troops, just before Kennedy’s death. During the early hours of April 30, 1975, the fighting ended abruptly, as South Vietnamese President Duong Van Minh delivered an unconditional surrender to the Communists. Between 195,000 to 430,000 South Vietnamese civilians died in the war and 50,000 to 65,000 North Vietnamese civilians died. The Army of the Republic of Vietnam lost somewhere between 171,331 and 220,357 men during the war. The Communist military forces lost approximately 444,000 men. It is estimated that between 200,000 and 300,000 Cambodians died and another 60,000 Laotians died during this war. In all 58,220 U.S. service members were killed. The last two American servicemen to die in Vietnam were killed during the evacuation of Saigon, when their helicopter crashed. After the United States pulled out of South Vietnam, the two sections of the country came together under Communist rule. Vietnam has since become Cuba’s largest trading partner next to China, and the United States has also returned to a normalized trade relationship with Vietnam.

The United States inherited a seemingly inexhaustible fortune in natural resources, yet it has responded to its environment with a dismaying mixture of materialism and inertia. The nation was virtually founded upon a ubiquitous desire for access to land and its contents. Its amazing growth during the nineteenth century was based directly upon the exploitation—immediate, unplanned, full use of soils, minerals, forests, and rivers. Equitable access to these natural bounties rather than constitutional guarantees would be the practical basis for democracy. Subsequently, political institutions were shaped in such a way that they could facilitate the disposition of the public domain. But that expectation, as later generations ruefully observed, did not materialize. The combination of economics and government had instead produced a handful of owners and policy makers who were beyond the control of the ballot box.

This slice of life happened during the depression era, late 1920’s and early 1930’s in Hoboken, NJ. Will such hard times happen again as the “Rich get richer and the poor get poorer?” “Fischer & Koenig’s factory building had been built in a wedge of filled-in land between the cliff side road of the palisades and the railroad tracks. Although some unwieldy power tools had already been invented, and were in use since the end of the nineteenth century, they were seldom used at home or in small factories such as the one where my father worked. As in most shops of that era, everything was custom-made. My father did almost everything by hand, including the staining, polishing and finishing work of furniture, tabletops and caskets. It was an era when things were still done the old-fashioned way. With jobs scarce and difficult to find, he worked long hours in the cold building with nothing more than an open steel drum outside the door, in which scrap wood was burned so that the workers could occasionally warm their hands. Under these horrid conditions, it didn’t take long for his nose to run, his hands to become raw and cracked, and his lips to become chapped. It seemed that he constantly had a cold and problems with his feet. Studying the faces of people back then, you could see the intense hardship in their weathered faces.

This was, after all, New Orleans in 1890- the Crescent City of the Gilded Age, where aliases of convenience and unconventional living arrangements were anything but out of the ordinary, at least in certain parts of town. Identities were fluid here, and names and appearances weren't always the best guide to telling who was who.

To celebrate freedom and democracy while forgetting American's origins in a slavery economy is patriotism à la carte.

Thunderbird ascended on the heady currents of air that bore her high above the vast landscape of Túwaqachi. She stretched her broad wings, the heat lifting her through the silence, her glossy brown feathers shimmering in the sunlight.

Those who suffer terrible wars have a finer sense of when they begin and when they end.

To remind him, and perhaps myself, that any hope for the future depends on our ability to reclaim the narrative of a long con- tinuum of resistance that has been the foundation of our country and the bulwark against the very forces that have threatened our democracy since its founding.

Tomás Estrada Palma was a Cuban-born American citizen, who was a moderate and had worked with José Martí in New York. He became the leader of the Cuban Revolutionary Party after Marti’s death. On December 31, 1901, Tomás Estrada Palma was duly elected to become the first President of Cuba. Estrada Palma and the Cuban Congress assumed governance on May 20, 1902, which then became the official birthdate of the Cuban Republic. In 1906, Estrada Palma appealed to the United States to intervene in the revolt that threatened his second term. As Secretary of War during the Roosevelt administration, William Howard Taft was sent to Cuba, after having been the first civilian Governor-General of the Philippines. For the short period of time from September 29, 1906, until October 13, 1906, Taft was the Provisional Governor of Cuba. During this time, 5,600 U.S. Army troops were sent to Cuba to reassert American authority, giving Taft the muscle to set up another provisional government. Later, on March 4, 1909, Taft was elected the 27th President of the United States.

To the early American his state government was at least on a par with the federal government in his esteem. Illustrative is the following incident: President Washington was about to arrive at Boston on a visit, and Governor Hancock was perturbed over a matter of protocol; would he be compromising the dignity of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts if he went to meet the “father of his country” on arrival, or would it be more proper that the President call at the state Capitol? The Governor finally settled the problem by pleading illness…. The sequel to that incident is worth noting. President Washington was asked to review the Massachusetts militia; he refused on the ground that the militia was the military arm of the state, not the federal government; after all, the tacit understanding in those days was that the militia might be called upon to face the federal army.

We the People . . . The People of the Long House.