Colonial Williamsburg's curator of zooarcheaology, Joanne Bowen, talks about how the bones left behind from kitchen waste can reveal information about the foodways of people from colonial days through the 19th century.
Louise Kale, director of the Historic Campus, outlines the history and restoration of the College of William and Mary's Wren Building, completed in 1700.
Inspiration intersects with means in a partnership that resurrects a city. Character interpreter Ed Way discusses W.A.R. Goodwin, founder of Colonial Williamsburg.
The new media of the times has always affected how presidents (and others) reach out to the public.
Internet communication played an important role in the 2008 presidential campaign. If candidates didn't start their run for the office with a strong web presence, the success of president-elect Barack Obama's online outreach led other contenders to re-examine its usefulness. Current statistics from an October 31 Pew Research Center article compare the internet as a major source of campaign news with other media.
Hardly a week in office in 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt created radio fireside chats which continued through 1945 to reassure the public during the Depression and to explain his hopes and plans for the nation. (Audio files of these chats are widely available on the internet, including The Internet Archive, and the National Endowment for the Humanities Edsitement offers the lesson plan, FDR's Fireside Chats: The Power of Words).
In 1960, the first televised debate between presidential candidates Senator John Kennedy and Republican Vice President Richard Nixon initiated the influence of television in election campaigns. Historian Liette Gidlow explains that "part of the reason that John F. Kennedy captured the presidency was the way he performed in a series of televised debates against his Republican opponent, Richard M. Nixon." (The Great Debate: Kennedy, Nixon, and Television in the 1960 Race for the Presidency in History Now, Gilder Lehrman Institute) Clips from the debate appear on YouTube, including "JFK vs. Nixon: The 1960 debates."
Two Hundred Years Ago
And in the 19th century, President Abraham Lincoln turned to the developing field of photography to broaden his public presence.
A new exhibit, One Life: The Mask of Lincoln, at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, and the companion online exhibit show the role of media—in this case, presidential photography and portraiture—200 years ago.
Many of the images are familiar; Lincoln realized that photographs were a way of maintaining a public presence, and the exhibit demonstrates how media technology of the 19th century began to enable this process. As the caption accompanying the 1861 Alexander Gardner photograph states, "Although Lincoln knew, and joked about, the fact that he was a difficult subject, he was not camera-shy, producing a continuous portrait record of his time in office. Attuned to public opinion, Lincoln used portraits to keep himself in the eye of his fellow citizens." The exhibit leads to analysis of how he did this and what the images reveal.
Covering more than presidential campaigns, the 31 images of Lincoln, 18571865, in the gallery exhibit are reproduced in the web exhibit as well as additional photographs of Lincoln's contemporaries. Accompanying text and excerpts from Lincoln's speeches and writings caption the images, including Matthew Brady and Alexander Gardner photographs.
Six downloadable mp3 files from prominent scholars discuss the portraits, their artistic presentation, and the events they commemorate. The audio files are also available via cell phone for visitors to the exhibition.
A helpful review of the exhibit appeared in the Washington Post on November 8, 2008. The exhibit is on view at the National Portrait Gallery through July 5, 2009.
(This news item is a continuing series on materials related to the celebration of the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth. See this news item for other resources.)
[FREE AND SUBSCRIPTION]
These 22 exhibits present free access to a wealth of texts and images on a variety of subjects dealing with 19th-century American history. Each section provides illustrations, articles, editorials, and overviews. Materials include four exhibits on politics and elections, including the impeachment of Andrew Johnson. Six exhibits deal with race and ethnicity, including slavery and Chinese Americans. Three exhibits offer material on business and consumer culture, such as advertising history and tobacco.
Additional exhibits include "The American West"; "A Sampler of Civil War Literature"; "Russian-American Relations, 18631905"; and "The World of Thomas Nast." A subscription-based website presents the entire run of Harper's Weekly. With free registration, Nineteenth-Century Advertising presents an archive of 40,000 advertisements that appeared in Harper's Weekly.
The Engagement at Honey Springs (called the Affair at Elk Creek by the Confederates) was the largest of more than 107 documented hostile encounters in the Indian Territory. The engagement took place on a rainy Friday, July 17, 1863, between the 1st Division, Army of the Frontier, commanded by Maj. Gen. James G. Blunt and the Confederate Indian Brigade led by Brig. Gen. Douglas H. Cooper. Cherokee and Creek regiments fought on both sides. There were approximately 9,000 men involved, including other Native Americans, veteran Texas regiments, and the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteers (the first black regiment in the Union army). The 1,100 acre site has six walking trails with a total of 55 interpretive signs.
The site offers occasional living history events and other educational and recreational programs.
When the Territory of Kansas was created in 1854, its boundary was set at the 37th parallel. When Texas came into the union, being a slave state, it could not extend its sovereignty over any territory north of 36° 30' North. The Missouri Compromise specified that territory North of this line would be free-state territory. This situation left a narrow strip of land 34 miles wide between Kansas and Texas extending from the 100th parallel on the East to the 103rd parallel on the West, a total of 168 miles in length. Since the area was claimed by no state, it was soon given the name of No Man's Land. In the mid-1880s, drought and depression caused many to leave heavily mortgaged farmlands in western Kansas. They became squatters in what was in time to become the Oklahoma Panhandle. While the settlers could not receive legal title to the land they settled, precedents in other territorial regions indicated the Federal Government would in time recognize "Squatter's Rights." No Man's Land Museum chronicles the struggles of the settlers as they established their own government and developed their communities.
The museum offers exhibits.
The Heritage Society of Washington County seeks to preserve and share the architecture and history of Washington County, Texas. To this end, the society operates the 1869 Giddings Stone Mansion and 1843 Giddings Wilkin House Museum. Both residences are furnished to period. The owner of both properties, Jabez Deming Giddings, was involved in real estate, cattle, banking, and the railway systems.
The society offers period rooms and tours. Reservations are required.
The 30-acre Belle Meade Plantation holds the Federal-style 1853 Belle Meade mansion and seven other historic buildings, including a stable and carriage house. The plantation was founded by John Harding in 1807. Harding was a devoted thoroughbred breeder and racer, as were many gentlemen from the South during his time. Tenneessee thoroughbred breeding became less common after the Civil War, as the state saw extensive troop movement. The mansion facade includes Greek Revival elements added in 1853, and the interior is furnished with 19th-century pieces. The plantation owned more slaves than the majority of antebellum Nashville plantations. Some of these slaves served as horse grooms and jockeys.
The plantation offers period rooms, 45-minute guided mansion tours, five educational program options for students, summer camps, home school days, traveling trunks, toddler programs, a student book club with online interactive activities, a junior docent program, culinary guided tours, and a restaurant. Reservations are required for groups of 15 or more. The second floor is not wheelchair accessible.
According to BackStory:
"We don’t think of Civil War hospitals as the most poetic of places, given the realities of 19th century medicine and the war’s high casualty rates. But the poet Walt Whitman spent five years of his life in them, caring for wounded soldiers. He wrote that “The expression of American personality through this war is not to be looked for in the great campaign and the battle-fights. It is to be looked for in the hospitals, among the wounded.” In this special “Civil War 150th” podcast, BackStory correspondent Catherine Moore collects segments of The Good Grey Poet’s Civil War memoirs, diary entries, and poetry to tell the story of Walt Whitman’s encounter with America’s wounded."