As Hawthorne knew, the iconoclastic impulse is ultimately ungovernable. In his story and in our own historical moment, the would-be societal purifiers’ appetite for destruction proves to be insatiable. Continue Reading »
On a “what if” radio program sixty years ago, I heard the newly inaugurated President Lincoln persuade Robert E. Lee that his loyalty to the United States Army should outweigh his allegiance to the state of Virginia. In short order, Lee quells the rebellion; in 1868 he is elected to succeed . . . . Continue Reading »
The Romanticism of nineteenth-century America provides crucial context for today’s Confederate-monument debates. Continue Reading »
The Dean of the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., which is an Episcopal Church institution but serves as a place for national religious pageantry, wants to remove two over sixty-year-old stained glass windows honoring Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. “There is . . . . Continue Reading »
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