The other night someone asked me an interesting question; they asked me how much longer I thought America has until it collapses. I told the person who asked me that I’m not very good at making estimates like that, but that I think we’re pretty close to it happening. I guess, however, that question stuck in my head; for when I awoke this morning I had all kinds of stuff floating around in there related to that question… Continue reading →

During President Donald J. Trump’s impeachment trial, we’ll hear a lot of talk about our rules for governing. One frequent claim is that our nation is a democracy. If we’ve become a democracy, it would represent a deep betrayal of our founders, who saw democracy as another form of tyranny. In fact, the word democracy appears nowhere in our nation’s two most fundamental documents, the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. The founders laid the ground rules for a republic as written in the Constitution’s Article IV, Section 4, which guarantees “to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.” Continue reading →

The Alamo was a mission founded in 1718. It ceased to function as a church in 1793. At the time of the famous siege the mission chapel was a roofless ruin, but a high rock wall about three feet thick enclosed an area around the chapel large enough to accommodate 1,000 men. Within that enclosure the battle of the Alamo was fought, with a last stand in the chapel. Continue reading →

“I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch”

On February 23, the Alamo Mission in San Antonio, Texas had been besieged by Mexican forces led by General Antonio López de Santa Anna. Fearing that his small group of men could not withstand an assault, Travis wrote this letter seeking reinforcements and supplies from supporters. The letter closes with Travis’s vow of “Victory or Death!” – an emotion, which has been both praised and derided by historians. Continue reading →

“Lincoln, under no circumstances, would I vote for … So, I say, stand by the ‘Constitution and the Union’, and so long as the laws are enacted and administered according to the Constitution we are safe …“ (emphasis added) Letter from Sam Houston to Colonel A. Daly, August 14, 1860

The 1860 Election was still 3 months in the future and Houston had no inclination to pre-judge the new sectarian party that might be brought to power in Washington City. He was wrapping himself, as he always did, with a Jeffersonian understanding of constitutional liberty and wanted Texas protected by that same banner of Law. He was clear-sighted what might happen but remained a Jacksonian Dreamer. He knew the cherished Union of Jackson and his forefathers. Their dreams embodied his. Continue reading →

… but it was not about slavery!

During the war, the Confederate States of America established an entity called the Arizona Territory, which had different boundaries from modern Arizona. Since 1856, settlers in southern New Mexico Territory had sought to split off and organize their own territorial government. Their aspiration got caught up in the growing sectional tensions of the late 1850s and the belief in the U.S. Congress that the impetus to divide New Mexico Territory into two separate northern and southern territories was that the settlers hoped to expand slavery into the southern portion. Continue reading →

Few areas of historical research have provoked such intensive study as the origins and causes of America’s Great Depression. From 1929 to 1933, America suffered the worst economic decline in its history. Real national income fell by 36 percent; unemployment increased from 3 percent to over 25 percent; more than 40 percent of all banks were permanently closed; and international investment and trade declined dramatically. Continue reading →