American Victory Research Articles

The Cuban Missile Crisis at 60: Where Do We Stand?

During the past 60 years, our understanding of the Cuban Missile Crisis has evolved from the initial portrayal of the situation as an American victory achieved by brilliant crisis management by John F. Kennedy and his advisors to a more deeply researched and nuanced description of a dangerous draw reached only after misconceptions, miscalculation, last-minute compromise, and good luck.

Disparities in the Medal of Honor Why African American Soldiers Awards were Delayed, and Japanese American Awards were Immediate

The 442nd Infantry Regiment Combat Team, composed mostly of Japanese American soldiers, is the most decorated division in U.S. military history. As a minority combat team motivated by accusations of disloyalty following Pearl Harbor, they sought to demonstrate their patriotism through excellence in battle. President Harry Truman formally recognized the valuable contribution of the 442nd Infantry Team to the Allied victory and assigned a medal of honor to one of the Japanese American soldiers, Private First-Class Sadao S. Munemori, immediately after the war. African American soldiers similarly demonstrated great loyalty and skill in the 332nd Fighter Group, called the Tuskegee Airmen, and the 761st Tank Battalion, also known as the Black Panthers. However, although both units fought with distinction, the granting of medals of honor for African American World War II service was delayed until 1997. Based on memoirs, interviews, and an Army Report Investigation conducted by the Department of Defense, this paper analyzes the reasons for the decades-long discrepancy in the timeline for the acquisition of medals of honor between Japanese American and African American soldiers. The differing experiences and interpretations of discrimination and segregation, both during and after the war, account for the immense positive attention paid to Japanese American efforts compared to the total lack of national honor assigned to African American soldiers. Through their service, Japanese Americans resoundingly exposed the errors of the federal governments decision to intern families of Japanese descent and helped promote a narrative of wrongdoing that the federal government has since acknowledged. In contrast, African American victories, no less impressive than those of Japanese American and white soldiers, were overshadowed by the racial discourse of Jim Crow-era politics. Specifically, African American soldiers continued to face systemic discrimination at home and in the armed forces despite their military accomplishments. It delayed the formal acknowledgement of the significance of African American service.

Considering the Revolution

Considering the Revolution

To the End of the World: Nathanael Greene, Charles Cornwallis, and the Race to the Dan by Andrew Waters

Reviewed by: To the End of the World: Nathanael Greene, Charles Cornwallis, and the Race to the Dan by Andrew Waters Philip Ranlet To the End of the World: Nathanael Greene, Charles Cornwallis, and the Race to the Dan. By Andrew Waters. ( Yardley, Pa.: Westholme, 2020. Pp. xxvi, 264. $30.00, ISBN 978-1-59416-348-7.) Andrew Waters tells the story of Nathanael Greene's "strategic retreat" over North Carolina's Dan River into Virginia (p. xx). This retreat was "designed to inflict a toll on his enemy while conserving his own military options further down the road" (p. xx). Greene was "a chess master, thinking moves ahead, designed to lure his opponent into a trap" (p. xx). Finally, this race to retreat "was responsible for Cornwallis's move to Yorktown" (p. xxi). The first four chapters are introductory material, far too much for a book of this size. More exasperating is how repetitive Waters is. He repeats himself so much that it gets tedious. Did any editor at this publisher read the entire book? The John Marshall who wrote a biography of George Washington was the chief justice of the Supreme Court, not a later "historian" (p. 19). I have never heard of a general with an "inferiority complex" (p. 169). It must be a rare thing indeed. The author suggests Greene had one. If that were true, Greene should have immediately left when he saw the mess Horatio Gates made of the southern army. Regarding the heroic Horatio Gates, he took command in New York only toward the end of John Burgoyne's invasion. Gates did very little to bring about the eventual American victory. If Gates had been any good, he would have still been in the British army. His disaster at the battle of Camden should not therefore surprise. As for Banastre Tarleton's British Legion, the author is wrong when he says it was recruited from northern Loyalists. The legion and Lord Rawdon's Irish Volunteers were created to recruit American prisoners from the New York prison ships. In the South, they recruited from Charleston's prison ships and jails. These units, especially Tarleton's, were known to be "ruthless" (p. 32). The author relates one incident when some of the legion wanted to rape a group of Loyalist women, but some were just "slashed with swords" (p. 75). The actions of Tarleton's men were beyond the pale in that century. British regulars detested them. Throughout the war, the British showed a definite talent in attacking their own supporters. The author is certainly correct when he calls the British government's belief that there were a host of Loyalists in the South "a fiction" (p. 29). [End Page 146] Greene did prepare for a retreat across the Dan, but the hoarded boats were reasonably close to Cornwallis. If Cornwallis had better spies, he could have seized the boats, ending the retreat, and he would not have fallen for the diversion that drew the British away. As it was, a general warned Greene, "Rely on it, my Dear Sir it is possible (for you) to be overtaken before you can cross the Dan even if you had 20 Boats" (p. 189). The British were just twelve hours late. Cornwallis was truly exasperated by North Carolina's rivers. The retreat to the Dan could have been a disaster for the American cause. The Continental army had much experience in retreating, and George Washington has been praised for his Fabian tactics. Greene knew all about the tactics his mentor had been using and had to have been inspired by them. Greene seems less like a chess master and more like a master juggler who managed to keep everything in the air until the ultimate victory. Waters, I believe, has done a service by giving the retreat to the Dan more attention. Philip Ranlet Hunter College Copyright © 2022 The Southern Historical Association

Declared War and American Victory: A Search for Effective Commitment

Abstract This Article argues that the act of formally declaring war entails a measure of explicit commitment on the part of American political actors that raises the cost of failure and motivates politicians to see engagements through to a decisive end, fulfilling the role of a contract or institutional commitment device. It argues that undeclared conflicts, lacking such a device, are more likely to end on less decisive and less favorable terms to the United States. On this basis, it explains the emergence of a decades-long trend of protracted, unsuccessful, and indecisive military engagements by the United States as having emerged from the erosion of a constitutionally established separation of powers with respect to the initiation and administration of foreign military conflicts. In defense of this theory, it uses case studies to assess the relevance of its predictions and to weigh potential objections involving selection bias and imperfect information.

The Papers of James Madison: Presidential Series. Volume 8: July 1814-18 February 1815 ed. by Angela Kreider et al.

Reviewed by: The Papers of James Madison: Presidential Series. Volume 8: July 1814-18 February 1815ed. by Angela Kreider et al. Sandra Moats The Papers of James Madison: Presidential Series. Volume 8:July 1814-18 February 1815. Edited by Angela Kreider et al.(Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2015. Pp. xlii, 711. $95.00, ISBN 978-0-8139-3694-9.) Anyone familiar with early American history will immediately recognize that the dates covered in Volume 8 of James Madison's presidential papers represent "the nadir and zenith" of not only Madison's presidency but also the War of 1812 (p. xxiii). This collection opens in the summer of 1814, when a string of military defeats, on the Great Lakes and in the nation's capital, had made an American victory against the British increasingly unlikely. The humiliating British invasion of Washington, D.C., in August underscored America's weaknesses. However, by February 1815, when this volume ends, American fortunes had changed dramatically. General Andrew Jackson scored an unlikely victory against the British at the battle of New Orleans in January, and a month later, the Treaty of Ghent arrived in America, announcing the war's conclusion on favorable terms. This volume, consisting of letters to and from Madison, his proclamations, his messages to Congress, the battle reports, and the treaties, documents the war's dramatic transformation from near collapse to ultimate success. Madison's voluminous correspondence to and from generals, cabinet officials, and members of Congress offers numerous examples of the problems he [End Page 429]confronted as a wartime president: a lack of qualified military leaders, inconsistent and inadequate funding from Congress, ill-prepared civilian leaders, and regional disagreements about the need for a war with Britain. After dismissing the ineffectual John Armstrong as secretary of war, Madison turned to his Virginia friend James Monroe to serve in this role temporarily. Such an appointment was not necessarily unusual, but Monroe also retained his position as secretary of state. Further enriching discussion of the war's challenges are letters from private citizens. Two of particular interest come from leading inventors and entrepreneurs of the period: Eli Whitney and Robert Fulton. Whitney, who had invented the cotton gin in 1793, makes an appearance as a gun inventor and arms contractor who sought Madison's help in resolving a dispute with the War Department. Fulton helpfully informed Madison that one of Fulton's newly invented steamships "in the Potomac might probably have saved Washington" (pp. 190-91). Presidential proclamations provide a third way to understand the war's failures and successes: one called for a day of prayer and fasting; another urged national unity after the British burned the capital; and a third announced the Senate's ratification of the Treaty of Ghent. While the main events of the War of 1812 may be familiar to most historians, this volume also contains dramatic moments, such as the hasty evacuation of Madison and his wife, Dolley, from the capital. They took refuge in different locations, and several days elapsed before they learned if the other was safe. (A map provides the path of their respective evacuations.) A second dramatic event concerns a presidential dinner party brought to a standstill by disturbing reports from the battle of New Orleans. Two weeks later, on February 3,1815, a gleeful James Monroe provided Madison with "an account of a victory truly glorious" in New Orleans (p. 554). Collections of presidential papers, such as the Papers of James Madisonproject, are invaluable resources for those who study the nation's first presidents. In addition to providing a chronological collection of the letters Madison sent and received, along with his proclamations, addresses, and other official documents, the series editors include detailed footnotes and other explanatory material to guide researchers. With J. C. A. Stagg, author of Mr. Madison's War: Politics, Diplomacy, and Warfare in the Early American Republic, 1783-1830(Princeton, 1983), serving as one of the lead editors, this work is in particularly capable hands. Volume 8 opens with a lively preface that explains the litany of controversies and challenges accompanying the War of 1812. The editors also helpfully provide a chronology of...

Declared War and American Victory: A Search for Effective Commitment

This paper argues that the act of formally declaring war entails a measure of explicit commitment on the part of American political actors that raises the cost of failure and motivates politicians to see engagements through to a decisive end, fulfilling the role of a contract or institutional commitment device. It argues that undeclared conflicts, lacking such a device, are more likely to end on less decisive and less favorable terms to the U.S.. On this basis, it explains the emergence of a decades-long trend of protracted, unsuccessful, and indecisive military engagements by the United States as having emerged from the erosion of a constitutionally established separation of powers with respect to the initiation and administration of foreign military conflicts. In defense of this theory, it uses case studies to assess the relevance of its predictions and to weigh potential objections involving selection bias and imperfect information.

Colliding Worlds: The Disintegration of America in the Cinema of the Coen Brothers

In the cinema of Joel and Ethan Coen, contemporary America is depicted as an incoherent space in which traditional beliefs constantly collide with the new world order. Shaped by the erosion of commonly accepted values and the ubiquitous presence of the media and advertisements, this hybrid America is a world of commerce, consumption, and economic plight. While its cities are plagued by segregation, outbursts of casual violence undermine the myth of an unspoiled life in the countryside. Illustrating postmodern culture's preference for the periphery versus the center, the movies of the Coen brothers find a glimmer of morality remaining on the margin of society. Unimposing and compassionate characters such as the pregnant small-town detective inFargoor the naive yet brilliant protagonist ofThe Hudsucker Proxypersonify an idealistic, innocent America that is about to be displaced by selfish greed. Focusing onFargo,The Big Lebowski, andThe Man Who Wasn't There, my essay argues that the Coens’ visual playfulness, and their tendency to mine various cinematic genres, serve to emphasize their scathing critique of the American victory narrative.

Intestine Enemies: Catholics in Protestant America, 1605–1791 ed. by Robert Emmett Curran

Reviewed by: Intestine Enemies: Catholics in Protestant America, 1605–1791 ed. by Robert Emmett Curran Michael S. Carter Intestine Enemies: Catholics in Protestant America, 1605–1791. Edited by Robert Emmett Curran. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2017. 320 pp. $34.95. Robert Emmett Curran, distinguished scholar of early American Catholic history and a professor emeritus of history at Georgetown, has produced a valuable and effectively-organized single-volume [End Page 100] documentary sourcebook on English-speaking Catholicism in the early modern Atlantic world. Intestine Enemies, drawing on the editor's comprehensive familiarity with the available primary sources, is a welcome contribution to a growing, yet still inadequately studied, field of early British-American Catholic history. Intestine Enemies is organized into ten sections. "Beginnings, 1605–1629" focuses on Jacobean and Carolingian-era English colonies from the perspectives of English Catholic planters in Newfoundland, as well as non-Catholics fearing Catholic inroads into their territories. This section includes documents reflecting Roman Propaganda Fide fears and concerns about anti-popery and the spread of Protestantism into North America. "Peace and a New Order, 1781–1791," the final section dealing with the immediate aftermath of the Revolution, includes familiar texts such as selections from Bishop Carroll's correspondence and the "Address from the Roman Catholics of America" to President Washington, yet also includes more obscure material such as the correspondence of Joseph Mosley with his sister Helen on the subject of his conflicted feelings about the "new order" for Catholics following the American victory. The intervening sections cover the themes of the planning and settlement of Maryland, the establishment of the first instances of religious toleration in the English-speaking world, the upheavals of and effects of the Glorious Revolution upon not only Maryland's Catholic leadership but New York's as well, and debates over Catholic rights and liberties during the Revolutionary era. Of particular value are the sections including material from the British West Indies, often neglected in volumes covering early American Catholic history. The selections also include a diverse array of genres: private letters, newspapers, legal documents, internal political documents, sermons, and others. Likewise, throughout the entire collection a wide variety of authorial and thematic perspectives are included, both Catholic and Protestant, clerical and lay, theological and political, private and public, elite and popular. Admirably, in addition to its more inclusive Atlantic World scope and approach to early American Catholic history, Intestine [End Page 101] Enemies is not conceived from the perspective of "anticipating" the eventual emergence of the U.S. republic, but approaches each period covered on its own terms, reflecting the particular contemporaneous concerns and anxieties of each generation and geographical area treated. Intestine Enemies is obviously intended, as its editor notes, to function as a complement to his excellent recent monograph Papist Devils: Catholics in British America, 1571–1783 (2014). It is ideal for use in both upper-level undergraduate and graduate-level courses in history and religion, either along with Curran's monograph, or without. A great deal of archival material which will be largely unfamiliar to many readers—material not otherwise easily procured—is included in the volume. For its inclusion of a broader geographic and thematic scope, it is like Curran's monograph on the same subject, refreshingly notable if for nothing else. With its historically-rich commentary and contextualization, and its high production values throughout, it is difficult indeed to imagine a better version of this book. [End Page 102] Michael S. Carter University of Dayton Copyright © 2018 American Catholic Historical Society

Reconnaissance in Sonora: Charles D. Poston’s 1854 Exploration of Mexico and the Gadsden Purchase. By C. Gilbert Storms.

Reconnaissance in Sonora: Charles D. Poston’s 1854 Exploration of Mexico and the Gadsden Purchase . By C. Gilbert Storms. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2015. xi + 193 pp. Illustrations, maps, appendix, notes, bibliography, index. $40.00.) The movement of American adventurers and explorers, intent on knowledge and gain, characterized a good part of the early history of North America. During the first half of the nineteenth century, this activity focused on the trans-Mississippi West, including the Southwest, where filibusters journeyed into Spanish, then Mexican, Texas and, after the American victory over Mexico in 1848, northern Mexico. Charles Poston was an American filibuster who sought to take advantage of the anticipated U.S. purchase or annexation of disputed territory in what is today southern Arizona and northern Sonora. … lawsonr{at}bacone.edu

The World the Civil War Made ed. by Gregory P. Downs and Kate Masur

Reviewed by: The World the Civil War Made ed. by Gregory P. Downs and Kate Masur Douglas R. Egerton (bio) The World the Civil War Made. Edited by Gregory P. Downs and Kate Masur. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015. Pp. 378. Paper, $29.95.) Most Confederates put down their arms in 1865, but in some ways the war continued, and not merely in the guise of reactionary night riders. In The World the Civil War Made, editors Gregory P. Downs and Kate Masur argue that the mainstream narrative of the Reconstruction era—ahistorically hammered by generations of historians into a concise 1863-to-1877 window—does not always provide a workable context for understanding every corner of the vast country. Their stated goal is not simply to provide a fresh understanding of the decades after 1865 by juxtaposing distinctly regional stories and historiographical approaches. They wish to recast what they call “the period formerly known as Reconstruction” by examining how four years of violence and enhanced federal power transformed the nation (3). In some cases, these essays succeed marvelously. Ultimately, however, if this volume is effective in recasting the period, it does so by omission, in that it ignores democratization struggles in the northern states. The thick volume consists of twelve chapters. Four turn their focus to labor issues in the West, or to Indian policy. One is international and comparative. Four others chronicle various aspects of life in the South, although of these, only the two crafted by Kidada E. Williams and Crystal N. Feimster feature more traditional examinations of white vigilantism and sexual violence. The editors specifically invited contributors to wrestle with what they dub the “Stockade State,” defined here as a series of outposts that were locally strong but limited in scope, and insightful essays by Laura F. Edwards and Amy Dru Stanley survey questions of postwar governance and the revolution in human rights. An afterward by Steven Hahn eschews the customary summary in favor of a thoughtful counterfactual exercise in how the country might have fared had the Civil War not come. The essays that shift their gaze to the West are especially fresh. Stacey L. Smith unearths the largely forgotten story of the 1867 Anti-Peonage Act and the question of Indian slavery in the lands west of Confederate Texas. As early as January 1863, territorial legislators in New Mexico complained to Congress that the ban on slavery in federal territories would create hardships for farmers and ranchers who owned Navajo war captives. Adopting the rationalizations that southern politicians had employed for decades in response to abolitionists, the assemblymen insisted that liberating the Navajos from the care of their benevolent masters would place them “in a far worse condition than they are now” (50). Republicans in Washington, of course, only thought to overturn Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), but their [End Page 472] actions confronted a centuries-old Spanish labor system based on border raiding and the purchase of Indian slaves captured in the Great Plains. Despite the fact that the same Border South politicians who condemned the Thirteenth Amendment denounced federal action against so-called debt servitude in the West, Andrew Johnson regarded the Anti-Peonage Act to be one of the few Republican bills he could support. The same liberal Republicans who backed that legislation, however, also endorsed statutes to exclude Chinese workers. Even within the West, Smith observes, inconsistent national policies revealed “the contours and limits of federal power, and the illiberal world that persisted after the Civil War remade the nation” (71). Somewhat in comparison, Barbara Krauthamer chronicles the saga of the roughly seven thousand slaves owned by Native American masters in Oklahoma. Because the Emancipation Proclamation did not pertain to Indian Territory, together with the fact that for most of the war the majority of Cherokee slaveholders were allied with the Confederacy, the American victory in 1865 did not immediately free this group of African Americans. Not until Washington renegotiated treaties in 1866 with the Cherokee, Creek, and Choctaw did tribal leaders grudgingly agree to emancipation. Even then they inflicted the sort of violence on their former slaves typically identified with southern Klansmen. Because the 1866 treaties...

Tennesseans at War, 1812-1815: Andrew Jackson, the Creek War, and the Battle of New Orleans by Tom Kanon (review)

Reviewed by: Tennesseans at War, 1812-1815: Andrew Jackson, the Creek War, and the Battle of New Orleans by Tom Kanon Jonathan M. Atkins (bio) Keywords Andrew Jackson, War of 1812, Battle of New Orleans, Tennessee, Creek War Tennesseans at War, 1812-1815: Andrew Jackson, the Creek War, and the Battle of New Orleans. By Tom Kanon. (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2014. Pp. 263. Cloth, $49.95; ebook, $49.95.) The title Tennesseans at War might lead readers to expect a study of the sixteenth state’s homefront during the War of 1812. Tom Kanon, archivist at the Tennessee State Library and Archives, plans instead to address the state’s social and cultural history in a separate volume. Here he presents a ‘‘military and political history of the Old Southwest’’ (2) that focuses on Tennessee soldiers in Andrew Jackson’s armies during the Creek War and at the Battle of New Orleans. These campaigns deeply influenced Tennessee, Kanon argues, because although no fighting occurred in the state, Tennesseans ‘‘participated in more Southern battles than any other state in the region’’ (6–7). Beginning with the observation that the nickname ‘‘Volunteer State’’ dates from the War of 1812—not, as popularly believed, the Mexican War—Kanon’s study opens with an assessment of the conditions that encouraged Tennesseans to fight. Both East and ‘‘West’’ Tennessee (the contemporary term for modern Middle Tennessee) stood as frontier societies at the opening of the nineteenth century. Frequent conflicts with Native Americans arose mainly from the settlers’ conviction that Indians were ‘‘wasting’’ (12) valuable lands, but Tennesseans also blamed Great Britain and Spain for inciting Indian attacks to stop American expansion. European hostility likewise threatened access to New Orleans, the crucial port for shipping their produce; and Spanish possession of the Florida [End Page 488] territories, where several southwestern rivers emptied into the Gulf of Mexico, blocked other potential outlets for trade. Kanon finds that westerners sincerely condemned Britain’s violation of American neutral rights in the Atlantic. Mainly, though, they charged Britain with supposedly instigating the Shawnee chief Tecumseh’s efforts to form a hostile alliance of Native nations. With the onset of war, the Indian threat, British insults to American honor, and the need to assert their worth as descendants of their Revolutionary fathers—as well as peer pressure, opportunities for adventure, and an ‘‘inner drive for ‘fame’ ’’ (43)—convinced Tennesseans of the need to fight. Volunteers expected to participate in an effort to seize Canada, but circumstances instead took them to the southwest. Several themes guide Kanon’s account of the region’s conflict. The sudden abortion of Jackson’s Natchez expedition in late 1812 and early 1813 once again displayed the federal government’s ‘‘utter lack of urgency to western needs’’ and ‘‘encouraged Tennessee to stand on its own when it came to military matters’’ (47). East and West Tennesseans put aside their differences to join forces in the Creek War, though sectional tensions persisted; Jackson eventually ordered the arrest of East Tennessee’s commander, Major General John Cocke, for ‘‘mutinous conduct’’ (95). Shortages of men and supplies constantly plagued Jackson’s efforts, and his army almost dissolved because of confusion over when the volunteers’ terms of service actually expired. The ultimate victory at New Orleans nevertheless confirmed the legend that frontier militiamen and sharpshooters devastated the British army that had defeated Napoleon, though Kanon attributes the result mainly to superior American artillery. ‘‘Regular army soldiers, naval personnel, French Creoles, and Baratarian pirates operated the heavy guns,’’ Kanon concludes, ‘‘and if the Lion’s share of the American victory goes to artillery fire, then these men deserve their just rewards’’ (187). Other studies have well-covered the southwestern campaigns, most notably Frank L. Owsley, Jr., Struggle for the Gulf Borderlands: The Creek War and the Battle of New Orleans, 1812-1815 (Tuscaloosa, AL, 1981) and Robert V. Remini, The Battle of New Orleans: Andrew Jackson and America’s First Military Victory (New York, 1999). Still, Kanon’s well-written and thoughtful account offers a fresh perspective. Especially insightful is the author’s use of letters, diaries, and memoirs left by common soldiers, whose observations displayed the human [End Page 489...

Teaching Democracy: Folkways Records and Cold War Education

By the waning years of the 1940s America had lost much of what remained of its postwar optimism as fears of Communism came to dominate the national political conversation. Left-leaning citizens had particular cause for disillusionment as politicians continued to trample many vestiges of New Deal programs and ideals in their rightward trek. The passage of the antilabor Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 and Progressive Party presidential candidate Henry Wallace's abysmal failure at the polls in the 1948 election hammered more nails into the coffin of leftwing activism. What ultimately caused the Old Left to retreat from mainstream political discourse was, of course, the new ideological war that loomed on the horizon. While U.S. foreign policy focused on containing Communism abroad, local and federal governlnent agencies and civilian vigilante groups rallied to fight suspected communists at home, Government agencies and private organizations compiled lists of alleged subversives, such asRed Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Televisionthat the right-wing publicationCounterattackreleased in 1950. The attacks on those in the media and government were well documented, as news sources reported the trials of iconic groups like the Hollywood Ten and televised the Army-McCarthy hearings. At the same time that anticommunists focused on rooting out subversives in the State Department, organized labor, and the entertainment industry, they also turned their attention to education. Many political leaders, both liberal and conservative, viewed education as the “key factor” in securing American victory in the Cold War; as a result, between the end of WWII and the 1960s, anticommunists devoted an unprecedented amount of scrutiny to public schools, administrators, and teachers.

America's ‘Mysterious “Training Tables”’: British Reactions and Amateur Hypocrisy

In 1895, athletes representing London Athletic Club were whitewashed by those of the New York Athletic Club. British reactions focused on the American commitment to coaching and the provision of funds to subsidize athletes, epitomized by the use of the ‘training table’ in clubs and colleges whereby selected men were provided with quality food in separate dining facilities. Later that year, the Amateur Athletic Union resolved that training tables should be abolished, but with little success. Critical comments appeared again in Britain in 1896 which suggested that British administrators insisted upon ‘purity’ while the ‘mysterious “training tables”’ in America enabled athletes to train and live in luxury at a club's expense. Following the 1900 Amateur Athletic Association Championships one reporter challenged the notion that American victories were due to physical or psychological superiority. They were the result of a scientific system of supervised practice and the institution of the training table, a key factor because it implied the abolition of the British distinction between amateurs and professionals. This paper explores these debates, drawing attention to some of the hypocrisy involved and to the gulf between the rhetoric and the application of amateurism in the field of performance sport.

Why Did So Many Influential Americans Think North Korea Would Collapse?

IntroductionIf your enemy is the sine qua non of effective warfare and diplomacy, the United States has been badly served by those who claim expertise on Korea in Washington. It is now twenty years since a bipartisan consensus emerged inside the Beltway that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) would soon or explode, a mantra that began with Bush I and lasted through Clinton and Bush II, right down to the present. This was the hidden premise of the American pledge to build two light-water reactors to replace the Y¢ongby¢on plutonium complex in the 1994 Framework Agreement: since they wouldn't come onstream for eight or ten years, by then they would belong to the Republic of Korea (ROK).Iraq War architect Paul Wolfowitz journeyed to Seoul in the aftermath of the apparent American victory over Saddam to opine (in June 2003) that North Korea is teetering on the brink of collapse. In intervening years we heard Gen. Gary Luck, commander of U.S. forces in Korea, say (in 1997) that North Korea will disintegrate, possibly in very short order; the only question was whether it would implode or explode.1 In this he was plagiarizing another of our commanders in Korea, Gen. Robert Riscassi, who never tired of saying Pyongyang would soon or explode. (Riscassi retired in 1992.)When does the statute of limitations run out on being systematically wrong? But I know from experience that any attempt by outsiders to break through this Beltway groupthink merely results in polite silence and discrete headshaking. Korea's coming collapse is still the dominant opinion today.2In what follows I want to briefly examine this Washington consensus, and then attempt to explain why the collapse scenario was, is, and will be wrong. But my argument can be stated simply:* Korea is sui generis and not comparable to any other communist regime.* It is much less communist than nationalist, and less nationalist than Korean.* It draws deeply from the well of modern and pre-modern Korean political culture.* Its nationalism traces back 75 years, to a never resolved conflict with Japan.* Its legitimacy is entirely wrapped up with this anti-Japanese struggle.* It is a garrison state the likes of which the world has never seen.* Its military leaders take pride in having faced up to the U.S. military for six decades.* If it probably can't defeat anyone, it is still militarily impregnable.3* No foreign troops have been stationed in the DPRK since 1958.* It has always had close backing from China.* It also got backing from Moscow, but never had close relations with it.* It is run by a gerontocracy of solipsists who care nothing for what the outside world thinks.* This elite proved itself capable of starving hundreds of thousands to death while retaining power.* This elite has proved for more than 60 years that it knows how to hold onto power.Collapse or Overthrow?The leading Washington pundit on Korea is Nicholas Eberstadt, who has been with the American Enterprise Institute for about twenty years, and initially distinguished himself by using demographic data to pinpoint the wretched health care system and dramatic declines in life expectancy of the Soviet Union, several years before it fizzled. Since at least June 1990 he has been predicting the impending collapse of Korea,4 but his views are best sampled in his 1999 book, The End of Korea. (When a New York Times reporter asked John Bolton what the Bush administration's policy was on the DPRK, he strode to his bookshelf and handed him Eberstadt's book: that's our policy, he said.)The flaws in Eberstadt's end-of-North-Korea theme can help us understand the DPRK's post-cold war endurance. He enjoys arguing throughout the book that Korea has been wrong-wrong-wrong in all of its strategies from the word go, but he does not tell the reader that he brings purely liberal and capitalist assumptions to bear on a society that constituted for most of its existence the highly selfconscious anti-capitalist, somewhat as if Milton Friedman were to describe how stupid the Ayatollahs have been for not charging interest on loans. …

Confronting Violence: Answering Questions about the Epidemic Destroying America's Homes and Communities, 3rd edition by George A. Gellert

Other Publications of Note 233 enjoy beauty and play. Laura Lawson tells the history of the American Victory Garden Campaign of World War II, which engaged the American public in producing abundant food in schools as well as back yards. The Rotterdam Environmental Centre, described by Arjen Wals and Marlon van der Waal, serves all ages, including children and youth. The variety of contributions in this volume go a long way toward greening theories of resilience as well as promoting the greening of zones of danger and disaster. Confronting Violence: Answering Questions about the Epidemic Destroying America’s Homes and Communities, 3rd edition George A. Gellert (2010). Washington, D.C.: American Public Health Association, 439 pages. $28.00 (paperback). ISBN: 978-0-87553-196-0. In light of the school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, this third edition of a book that examines violence in the context of American culture has unfortunate new relevance. Its comprehensive review of research is useful for many disciplines. This edition has added discussions of electronic aggression, cyber-bullying, cyberstalking and date rape, as well as expanded treatments of bullying, school and youth violence. It includes sections on child physical and sexual abuse and suicide. In the words of Gellert, a medical doctor in the field of public health, this edition “updates all of the epidemiological, profile, risk factor, situational and outcomes data on the varied forms of interpersonal violence.” The book’s purpose is to provide a one-stop resource for health care, social service, law enforcement and other professionals who work with victims of violence and their families, as well as to give individuals, families and communities the resources they need to understand, cope with and prevent violence. Reviews by Louise Chawla Louise Chawla holds degrees in developmental psychology and environmental psychology, and has been the international coordinator of UNESCO’s Growing Up in Cities project. She is a professor in the Environmental Design Program at the University of Colorado. Previously she was on the faculty at Whitney Young College, an interdisciplinary honors program at Kentucky State University and also served as an adjunct professor in the doctoral program in Environmental Studies at Antioch New England Graduate School in New Hampshire. ...

The Other Harlem Renaissance: Father Divine, Celibate Economics, and the Making of Black Sexuality

The Other Harlem Renaissance:Father Divine, Celibate Economics, and the Making of Black Sexuality Benjamin Kahan (bio) Divine Alternatives In his foreword to Bobby Seale's A Lonely Rage (1978), James Baldwin describes feeling "inept" and "almost presumptuous" in writing an introduction to the autobiography of the co-founder of the Black Panthers. These feelings stem from the differences in generational outlook between the older Baldwin and the younger Seale: The time of my youth was entirely different and the savage irony of hindsight allows me to suggest that the time of my youth was far less hopeful . . . . Our most visible heroes were Father Divine and Joe Louis—we, in the ghetto then, knew very little about Paul Robeson. We knew very little about anything black, in fact, and this was not our fault. ("Stagolee" ix–x) Here, the spiritual leader "Father Divine" and the heavy-weight champion "Joe Louis" seem to signify knowledge about blackness, constituting some of the "little" known "about anything black."1 Langston Hughes similarly flags the importance of Divine and Louis in his distinctly inclusive "The Heart of Harlem" (1945): The buildings in Harlem are brick and stoneAnd the streets are long and wide,But Harlem's much more than these alone,Harlem is what's inside— It's Joe Louis and Dr. W. E. B.A Stevedore, a porter, Marian Anderson, and me.It's Father Divine and the music of Earl Hines,Adam Powell in Congress, our drivers on bus lines. (Collected 311–12) Joe Louis' 1938 defeat of the German Max Schmeling was understood allegorically as an American victory over Nazism. Louis was a national hero and a model for (black) manhood during the fearful time of the Depression and coming war. While much has been written about the importance of Joe Louis in relation to national and international politics,2 it is far less clear what the much-misunderstood and much-maligned Father Divine signifies for black identity in the 1930s and 1940s. Father Divine was an intellectual and religious leader who believed he was God. In the 1930s, when his religion, the Peace Mission Movement, was at its apex, he had a large following both nationally and abroad. In Harlem, he is estimated to have had between three and four thousand core followers, though his appearances drew crowds of ten to fifteen thousand and his newspaper, the Spoken Word, had a national circulation of about thirty thousand (Watts 141–42). The size of his global following in the 1930s is disputed, but was estimated to be in the millions (Griffith 119–20).3 The central ritual of the religion was the banquet table at which Divine lavished abundant and delicious food on thousands of unemployed and hungry people. At the table, Divine impresses the hungry visitors with his overwhelming bounty, quieting their stomachs' grumblings long enough to hear his message. Divine's strong emphasis on celibacy seems at odds with this practice of gluttonous eating, but both practices have the effect of focusing followers' attention on the materiality of his body.4 He organized his followers into communal interracial celibate living situations called kingdoms. Members of these celibate kingdoms broke ties with their families, friends, and spouses, creating an environment in which to meditate on Divine and his teachings, minimizing influences outside the Peace Mission Movement. Divine's own abstinent marriage underwrites rather than undermines this emphasis on celibacy as he considered his marriage sacrificial, marrying so that his followers would not have to suffer the burdens of conjugality. [End Page 38] Despite Father Divine's following and mass appeal, many believed he was a charlatan and a swindler. Hughes' own "Projection of a Day" (1946) imagines Father Divine speaking the truth "when the Savoy / leaps clean over to Seventh Avenue / and starts jitterbugging" (Collected 403–04). Owen Dodson's Divine Comedy (1938) presents a similarly unfavorable portrait of Divine, as does Chester Himes' A Rage in Harlem (1957), where the protagonist analogizes getting conned and believing in Father Divine: "It [the con] hadn't been too hard for him to believe. Other people in Harlem believed that Father Divine was God" (31). Period journalism bolsters these literary depictions...

1812: War with America (review)

1812: War with America. Jon Latimer. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007. Pp 637. Cloth, $35.00; Paper, $18.95.)Reviewed by Jonathon HooksAmerican historians have formulated different theories about the causes of the War of 1812 and its effects on the United States. The conflict has been regarded as a defense of national rights, a battle to protect American mariners, and an attempt to conquer Canada. Evaluations of the struggle's results have ranged from a spectacular American victory to a stalemate that united the republic and proved the need for federally sponsored internal improvements and a national bank. The more optimistic writers have cast the War of 1812 as a Second War for Independence. From the British perspective, the War of 1812 has been viewed as a costly and unprovoked distraction fought while the British Empire labored to defeat French tyranny. Given this attitude toward the second Anglo-American war, it is not surprising that few histories of the confrontation were ever written from the British angle. Jon Latimer, author of Alamein (Cambridge, MA, 2004), Deception in War (New York, 2001), and Buccaneers of the Caribbean: How Piracy Forged an Empire (Cambridge, MA, 2009) greatly adds to our understanding of the English viewpoint with his detailed narrative 1812: War with America.Latimer argues that the only significant outcome of the War of 1812 was Canada's continued existence. Canada, a group of British colonies at the outbreak of hostilities, eventually achieved dominion status and later full independence. As Latimer points out, had the U.S. invasion succeeded, the British provinces would have become additional states rather than a separate country. Latimer stresses that America's premier war aim was Canada's conquest, and based on its failure to achieve this goal, he judges the War of 1812 an American defeat.Latimer also attempts to debunk the long-standing American argument that abrasive British policies caused the war. He defends Britain's disruption of neutral trade with France as part of England's strategy to win a twenty-two-year struggle, and he insists that the British government operated under clearly defined rules regarding contraband and that most seizures of American cargos were justifiable under international law. Latimer also claims that most impressments of sailors serving on American ships were legal because the removals usually involved nativeborn Britons who owed lifetime allegiance to their monarch. While many mariners claimed American nativity by presenting certificates verifying their place of birth (commonly referred to as protections), the market for buying fraudulent protections was so great that British authorities could not accept these documents as legitimate. Of the native-born Americans forced into British service, Latimer notes that many accepted recruitment bounties from the Royal Navy, thus obliging them to serve out their enlistment.Latimer cites bitterness and humiliation as the source of Americans' belief in the righteousness and success of their cause. According to Latimer, the United States's failure to conquer its weaker neighbor resulted in many American political leaders searching for a positive interpretation of events. …

The Road to Safwan: The 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry in the 1991 Persian Gulf War (review)

Reviewed by: The Road to Safwan: The 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry in the 1991 Persian Gulf War Keith Bickel The Road to Safwan: The 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. By Stephen A. Bourque and John W. Burdan III. Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2007. ISBN 978-1-57441-232-1. Figures. Maps. Photographs. Notes. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. Pp. 312. $27.95. Unit histories occupy a unique genre of military history. Often more expository than answer-seeking in approach, they make any fan of von Ranke proud—just the facts, please. The Road to Safwan does not disappoint in this regard. Ostensibly there is a thesis, an argument being addressed, in this work. As stated, it is to refute the idea that the Gulf War “was simply a matter of technological superiority.” Additionally, the authors seek to “recapture the fear, concern, and competence of the soldiers of one small US combat unit.” The latter they accomplish; the former not at all, and this is hardly surprising. One would have thought that the straw-man argument of technology winning the Gulf War would have been expunged from military writing by the time Safwan was printed nearly two decades later. There is no need to re-fight old internecine battles with the Air Force. Not, fortunately, that the authors spend much time doing so. Having blithely offered a thesis, they do not waste their time defending it, except for the occasional reminder that technology has its problems. Instead, in detail drier than the desert sands they fought in, the authors describe their squadron’s preparation for, deployment, in-theater preparation, operations, recovery and redeployment from the first Gulf War. In this short, 250-page book, the first 100 pages are spent on pre-battle logistical preparation, the next 80 on operations, and the remainder on a post-battle anecdote (the Safwan in the title) and recovery back to the United States. There is a chapter on port operations going over, and, well, most of another one coming back. One could be forgiven for thinking that this cavalry history was written by logisticians, not combat operations soldiers. In the all-too brief portion of the book that deals with combat operations against the Iraqis, one cannot help notice an irony related to the stated thesis. Technological superiority emerges as a dominant cause for American victory in battle. This clearly need not have been the case, as the authors just barely point out. Iraqi tactical incompetence surely played a significant role, but the reader hardly gets a feel for that in the all-too brief discussion of combat here. Instead, the combat chapters read like a semi-lost unit (the maps were downright criminally bad) charging from phase line to phase line pointing and shooting anything that came up on the thermal sights. Sound more like a video game? All that is missing—and they are strikingly absent from this work—were the B-52s prepping the Iraqi lines for weeks beforehand. Also, largely lost in this dry discussion is the emotion that surrounded the surprise at how over-matched the Americans were to the Iraqis. Ground combat veterans will tell you about their grave fears facing Soviet-trained veterans, their initial shock that they could hit from far enough away to avoid Soviet “kill-zone” tactics, and then the vehemence with which they drove home their advantage in terms violent enough to make a General Grant proud. Here, we get more of a [End Page 1392] McClellan-esque discussion largely centered on taking ground and becoming lost—right up to a farcical confrontation at a Safwan airfield with leather-clad, beret-wearing Iraqi officer poseurs. To be fair, readers interested in the activity that precedes and follows combat operations will be treated to a well-organized and relatively detailed discussion of the preparation, security, and post-war operations phases that occupied an officer corps going to war for the first time since Vietnam. Of the four phases of war (the fourth being combat), these three phases clearly occupied the attention and concerns of the authors. The myriad frictions they describe occurring, taken thoughtfully, could provide some useful insights...

The U.S. Navy Against the Axis: Surface Combat 1941–1945 (review)

Reviewed by: The U.S. Navy Against the Axis: Surface Combat 1941–1945 Benjamin Armstrong The U.S. Navy Against the Axis: Surface Combat 1941–1945. By Vincent P. O’Hara. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2007. ISBN 1-59114-650-6. Tables. Figures. Maps. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xvi, 364. $36.95. The development of naval air power and the success of submarine patrols have long dominated the naval history of the Second World War. The over the horizon battles of the fast carriers, and the solo heroics of undersea warfare, were the height of technological innovation and have received the lion’s share of the focus. Vincent O’Hara’s The U.S. Navy Against the Axis: Surface Combat 1941–1945 aims to address the missing component of that history: surface warfare. O’Hara questions many of the long standing dogmas of World War II naval history. His book refutes “the widely held notion that the attack on Pearl Harbor [End Page 973] suddenly rendered the battleships, guns, and torpedoes of the fleet obsolete and that aviation and submarines subsequently dominated the Pacific War” (p. 298). O’Hara begins with an efficient and welcome summary of the elements that affected the U.S. Navy throughout the war. While knowledgeable students of naval history will consider this material a review, it is well presented and important for those newer to the field. From there he initiates a string of battle histories, starting with early operations in the East Indies and moving chronologically through the surface battles of the Pacific and Atlantic. He covers both major battles and minor engagements. While other histories have aimed to cover specific battles in detail, O’Hara’s goal is larger. The benefit of covering the breadth of the conflict is that the author demonstrates how the war developed. The reader can see doctrine and tactics changing and the significant differences in how the U.S. and Japanese forces adapted from battle to battle. The inclusion of surface operations in the European theater, including several small engagements with German naval forces, provides a good deal of uncommon history. The highlight of this is an excellent chapter on the Battle of Casablanca between American and Vichy French forces. The book is well documented and annotated throughout, with numerous charts and maps. It also includes a set of appendices with statistical analysis, an extensive bibliography, and index. Much of the history is drawn directly from operational reports and other primary sources. The author does a good job of analyzing these for the inaccuracies that notoriously run through the reports of both American and Japanese officers. He deftly weaves the nuts and bolts of the operational reports with just enough detail from sailors’ personal accounts to create well crafted battle histories. Vincent O’Hara makes a compelling case for his thesis that surface warfare played a vital role in American success in the Pacific. He gives credit to aircraft and submarines where credit is due but illuminates the importance of battleships, cruisers, and destroyers to American victory. The U.S. Navy Against the Axis helps to fill a void in the history of the Second World War and will prove valuable to any student of naval history. Benjamin Armstrong Norfolk, Virginia Copyright © 2008 The Society for Military History