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For over 200 years, the US military has subordinated itself to civilian authority. But in 1783, that authority was challenged. This is the story of how George Washington restored that civilian rule and saved the young republic.
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Scott Rank visits to discuss his podcast Presidential Fight Club, which seeks to answer the question “If all of the presidents fought each other one-on-one, who would win?”
Scott Michael Rank, Ph.D., is the editor of History on the Net and host of the History Unplugged podcast. A historian of the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey, he is a publisher of popular history, a podcaster, and online course creator.
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Interview with General Michael Hayden, former Director of the NSA and CIA, on the dilemmas the Bush Administration faced in the War on Terror.
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The Spanish-American War is at hand and America faces even more temptations towards imperialism in the Philippine-American War.
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Should republics build empires? William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt and the path to the Spanish–American War.
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In our last episode, we discussed President Polk’s unlikely rise to the White House and his success in annexing Texas and settling the Oregon territory. But by late April 1846, he was leading his nation to war with its southern neighbor, Mexico. As a former dark horse candidate with no military experience, many wondered whether Polk had what it took to win the war. And even more questioned whether Polk’s war was a just war. At stake were his presidency and the future of his country. The story of that war and its legacy for our nation is the subject of this episode of This American President, The Great American Conqueror Part II.
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Daguerreotype of Polk attributed to Mathew Brady, 1849.
In this episode we continue the theme of expansion in early America, telling the story of the Mexican-American War and the president who, though largely forgotten and little understood, remains a giant in the annals of American history.
Mexico in 1824. Alta California is the northwestern-most federal territory.
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History often seems inevitable. When we look back at a historical event, we usually look at it with the outcomes or the results in mind. For example, when we think of World War II, we know that it ended in 1945. We know that the Allies won. Our entire view of that war is framed by those two facts. So when we study the year 1944, we know that the end is near, that within a year the war would be over, but that’s not how the people who lived at the time experienced it. They didn’t know that things would turn out that way until they did. They were no sure of the future than we are of our own future. Think about it: how sure are you about how things are going to turn out? How sure are you about who will win the next World Cup or next year’s Academy Awards? How sure are you about who will win the next presidential election or how the crisis in North Korea will turn out? Unless you’ve been given some sort of supernatural insight, you are probably like me and have no clue how things will turn out. You feel a sense of uncertainty about these things. That sense of uncertainty… that’s the same feeling every generation had about the times in which they lived. Rarely did anything seem inevitable. And someday, decades or centuries from now, people will probably look at our time the same way; they will view our time period with a sense of inevitability, with 20/20 hindsight. But when you view history that way, where you know the outcome of an event and you view it with that lens, you lose something. You lose the uncertainty… the contingency of the moment. You lose the perspective of the people alive at the time. You lose the element of risk—the stakes that underpinned every event and every decision.
I’ve always felt that American history is especially susceptible to this. In some ways, our country’s history seems inevitable. It’s like there’s a neat, linear progression to how our country came to be. America declared independence, fought a war, defeated the British, created a government, and elected a president. Then it rose to become a world power. Now that America is a fact of life and has become the most powerful nation in the world, it’s hard to conceive of anything differently. It’s hard to imagine the United States not following that straight path.
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We just lived through the first election in which a woman won the nomination of a major political party to be President of the United States and came close to being elected. To many, this was a sign of major progress . In fact, there are more women today in American government than ever before. But despite the fact that women have had the right to vote for almost a century and the fact that they consist of half of the country’s population, no woman has ever served as President of the United States.
But that doesn’t mean that no woman has ever tried. In fact, many actually have. When Hillary Clinton announced her runs for the presidency in 2008 and 2016, many people discussed the topic of a woman president—what it could mean and how it might play out. But I noticed that few, including those who hoped for a woman president, knew much about the history of women running for President or even knew their names. So, I decided to investigate. Since 1872, there are have been several dozen women who have run, almost all of them long shots with little chance of winning; but that doesn’t mean they weren’t important or interesting. And many of them achieved other firsts in American history. If so many people want a woman president, isn’t it worth knowing the story of how we got to where we are today?
This episode is not a comprehensive history of every woman candidate, but it will focus on those who made the biggest strides to put a woman in the White House: Victoria Woodhull, Margaret Chase Smith, Shirley Chisholm, and Edith Wilson. They were all strong-willed individuals who faced ridicule and resistance. And most of them, by virtue of their background, were unlikely figures in the annals of American history. Their stories—and their dream to attain the nation’s highest office—are the subjects of this episode of This American President: The Women Who Would be President.
The subjects of this episode, from left: Victoria Woodhull, Margaret Chase Smith, Shirley Chisholm, and Edith Wilson (with President Wilson).
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In 1860, Abraham Lincoln was a little-known politician running for president. In February of that year, he was in New York City to deliver a speech at the Cooper Union building. Just before his remarks, Lincoln stopped by the office of photographer Matthew Brady. There, Brady took a photo of Lincoln to mark the occasion of his speech. At Cooper Union, Lincoln then delivered a rousing address where he strongly opposed the extension of slavery. Within weeks, the photograph and the speech were printed in magazines and newspapers across the country. Although awkward and gangly in real life, the photo depicted Lincoln in a statesmanlike pose. This was the first time Americans were introduced to the obscure rail-splitter from Illinois. By the end of the year, Lincoln had won the presidency of the United States. Later, Lincoln said, “Brady and the Cooper Union speech made me President.”
Photo by Mathew Brady, the day of Lincoln’s famous Cooper Union speech.
Stories like these demonstrate the power that photographers have over us and over history. Sometimes, all we remember about a historical event or figure is a single image. Think about World War II in the Pacific and you might picture the famous image of soldiers putting up the flag on Iwo Jima.
But what about the person behind the camera? Who are they and what is it like to document history? How do you capture an iconic image? Well, we are pleased to have one such individual as our guest. His name is Bob Knudsen and he has taken thousands of photographs over the years of many prominent people. And his father, Robert Knudsen, was one of the first official White House photographers, serving six presidents and capturing many iconic moments. We will explore his and his father’s stories on this episode of This American President. Continue reading
