Free Republic

SAN ANTONIO —The Alamo needs a makeover; on that, at least, everyone agrees. Plaster is flaking off the walls of the nearly 300-year-old former Spanish mission, the most revered battle site in Texas history... ...A $450 million plan to renovate the site has devolved into a five-year brawl over whether to focus narrowly on the 1836 battle or present a fuller view that delves into the site’s Indigenous history and the role of slavery in the Texas Revolution...

Any mother who has had to bury her child — one of the most devastating and enduring tragedies of motherhood — can take heart on Mother’s Day. You are not alone. The mother who was the very inspiration for the holiday, Ann Marie Reeves Jarvis, lost seven of her 11 children during the mid-1800s in rural Virginia. The dedication to honoring and supporting mothers displayed by Ann Marie Reeves Jarvis inspired her daughter Anna Jarvis, who never married or had children, to lobby for a holiday to honor “the best mother who ever lived — your mother.” After a few...

We’re so damned stupid. For the second year in a row progressives in America have taken to retroactively trying historical figures in the 2020-2021 social justice tribunals. All historical context is expunged and those in the dock are judged as if plucked off the streets this year rather than when they lived their lives hundreds of years ago, when a lot of other stuff was going on. Now it is Hannah Duston who faces justice. There is a statue of her wielding an axe in Haverhill, Massachusetts. Last year, every self-important progressive did what they could to declare their virtuousness...

The left fears elementary students loving the United States and believing in the principles of life and liberty established by the founding fathers and endowed by God himself.Prager University’s short and informative video content used to focus on college-aged students. Now they are also providing materials to kids in high school, middle, and elementary schools.The nonprofit organization recently announced PragerU Resources for Educators and Parents (PREP) to help children “think critically and combat the leftist lessons on gender fluidity, identity politics and defunding the police—among others—that students are forced to learn in many American public and private schools.”In the wake...

Approaching history with condescending arrogance, as the woke movement does, merely highlights the smallness of the examiners.“In times of change and danger,” wrote the novelist John Dos Passos, “a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present.” For the battalions of social justice warriors battling for racial and gender politics, nothing could be further from the truth. Instead, it demonizes the American past as a story of unrelenting injustice and recently has launched a series of campaigns against it.The California Board of Education just nixed its history curriculum due to a purported...

The French and Indian War ended in 1763 with the French forced to cede to the British all of Canada and the land from the Appalachian Mountains west to the Mississippi River. Read as PDF ... The French had cultivated friendly relations with the Indians by giving them gifts, but the new British Commander-in-Chief in North America, Jeffery Amherst, treated the Indians as conquered peoples. Disgruntled tribes united against the British: Ottawas, Ojibwas, Potawatomis, Hurons, Miamis, Weas, Kickapoos, Mascoutens, Piankashaws, Delawares, Shawnees, Wyandots, Mingos, and some Iroquois. As the most prominent leader was Ottawa chief Pontiac, it was called Pontiac's...

We have just the perfect solution for American kids' deep ignorance about their nation's founding principles, system of government, and history. It's making them into political activists!It’s deja vu all over again. A coalition of government- and billionaire-funded nonprofits has a “bipartisan” plan for national curriculum goals, this time concerning U.S. history and government. Today this “state-led” coalition is releasing a major report they hope will get the attention of the Biden administration and state governors to “collaboratively” enact their vision nationwide. Remember, these sorts of national plans are supported by people on the right and left, so there can...

Identity politics will drive us straight back into the tyranny and subjugation our Founders and subsequent generations fought so hard to escape.For something as seemingly mundane as a government report on civics, the “1776 Commission Report” has been a surprisingly hot topic.The report was posted to the White House website on a Monday around 5:30 p.m. ET. It was one of the last actions of the Trump administration. Less than 48 hours later, in one of the very first acts of the Biden administration, it was taken down. Fortunately, a handful of organizations posted it on their own websites so...

The New Yorker interview with San Francisco's school board president reveals how political ideology has replaced knowledge among especially younger American leftists.Last week, The New Yorker ran an interview with San Francisco school board President Gabriela López, a 30-year-old former teacher leading the district’s charge to bury American history. It’s eye-opening, to say the least.López was elected on a campaign to cancel history. Under her leadership, the nation’s seventh-largest school district has spent its time not teaching its 57,000 students — who have been “learning” online for nearly a full year — but plotting to take the names of historic...

One of former President Trump's longtime allies in the Senate said Sunday that Trump would be remembered for his role in the events leading up to the deadly riot that overtook the Capitol on Jan. 6. Speaking on CBS's "Face the Nation," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) indicated that he thought history would judge Trump's responsibility for the siege that resulted in the deaths of several people, including one Capitol Police officer, but added that he did not think it was the Senate's role to convict the former president for inciting the riot. "Well, I mean, he’s going to have a...

In the mid-1940s, Edmund S. Morgan, a mild-mannered young historian, was teaching at Brown and making a name in the quiet field of early American studies. Having published a slim, well-received collection of essays on the New England Puritans, he might have seemed the very model of the unassuming scholar at the outset of a modest career, satisfied to refine the work of great forebears in a narrow field. That wasn’t Edmund Morgan. The Second World War was over. The United States was developing an energetic vision, which would come to fruition in 1960 with the election of John F....

Considered one of the five greatest Senators in U.S. history, Daniel Webster's statue stands in the U.S. Capitol's Statuary Hall, placed there by the State of New Hampshire. His career spanned almost four decades, serving as Secretary of State for Presidents William Harrison, John Tyler and Millard Fillmore. Daniel Webster was born JANUARY 18, 1782, on a farm in New Hampshire. He attended Dartmouth College, the 9th-oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. It was founded in 1769 by the Great Awakening preacher Rev. Eleazar Wheelock to educate Native Americans in the Christian faith and train Congregationalist Christian...

The aftermath of the 2020 election finds the nation unsettled, with legitimate concerns about election fraud overshadowed by the capitol riot and kooky conspiracy theories.The presidential election was close. Only 84 Electoral College votes separated the contenders. Widespread allegations of ballot fraud were claimed by national party chairmen in 11 states, with court challenges lasting into the middle of the year following the election. Changing the results in just two states would flip the election.The fraud allegations were serious, including dead people voting and votes far in excess of registered voters in some counties. Yet partisan election boards quickly certified...

The '1776 principles have led to a tremendously successful country and overcome great national trials,' Rollins noted. They 'helped make us more peaceful, more just and more prosperousIf you’ve read any leftist coverage of President Trump’s 1776 Commission, you’d have been surprised to listen in on its first meeting Tuesday. It was brief, orderly, included a wide range of voices and life experiences united by a commitment to American ideals, and commission members repeatedly emphasized their interest in avoiding partisanship and reaching out to Americans of all backgrounds and walks of life. Their goal is to unite Americans, as Trump’s...

“Our mission is to defend the legacy of America’s founding, the virtue of America’s heroes, and the nobility of the American character. We must clear away the twisted web of lies in our schools and out classrooms, and teach our children the magnificent truth about our country. We want our sons and daughters to know that they are the citizens of the most exceptional nation in the history of the world.” -Donald Trump on the 1776 Commission Why America Needs Patriotic Education Standards This past week, President Trump announced the creation of the 1776 Commission. Made up of a board...

Revisionist histories are nearly always written (or posted to the internet) with an agenda in mind — it's no different for the Pilgrims and Thanksgiving.Four hundred years after the Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts in November 1620, this Thanksgiving promises to be the most isolated celebration in living memory. Thanks to the internet, however, virtual gatherings will be possible. Thanksgiving in the age of the internet also means, for many amateur historians, debunking the many myths surrounding the story of the original Thanksgiving. This project of correcting the Thanksgiving legend has picked up steam in recent years. It is part of...

During the days of America's founding, colonies would declare: days of prayer when times were bad; days of fasting when times were real bad; and days of thanksgiving when things turned around. This developed into many colonies, like New Hampshire and Massachusetts, having annual days of fasting, often on Good Friday. This is evidence that colonists were not deists, who believed God set the laws of nature in place and then let the world run on its own. America's founders believed in a living relationship with God, where: if people sinned, He would call them to repent; if they did...

On NOVEMBER 21, 1620 (NS), the Pilgrims signed the Mayflower Compact and began their Plymouth Colony. Of the 102 Pilgrims, only 47 survived till Spring. At one point, only a half dozen were healthy enough to care for the rest. In the Spring of 1621, the Indian Squanto came among them, and showed them how to catch fish, plant corn, trap beaver, and was their interpreter with the other Indian tribes. Governor William Bradford described Squanto as "a special instrument sent of God for their good beyond their expectation." Bradford added: "The settlers ... began to plant their corn, in...

Full title: How the 'radical left' canceled the Pilgrims: Senator Tom Cotton says US ignored the 400th anniversary of The Mayflower's arrival because of the 'charlatans' at the 1619 Project who want to 'rewrite history' November 21, 2020 is the 400th anniversary of the day the Mayflower arrived at what we now know as Plymouth, Massachusetts. The event is arguably the most important date in American history, marking the day the first Pilgrims came onto America's shores to establish the 13 Colonies/ Celebrations commemorating the event were postponed or canceled earlier this year due to the coronavirus pandemic. But the...

Once upon a time, prairie was the primary ecosystem in Indiana, but in the last 200 years, almost all of it has been plowed under for agriculture. Today, less than 1 percent of original, native prairie remains. The Nature Conservancy has been working to convert 7000 acres of row-crop farmland back into diverse prairie for the last 20 years. There are now over 750 species of plants and 250 species of butterflies on the newly restored chunk of prairie, called the Kankakee Sands Nature Preserve. Most of the native plants and insects were able to find their way back “home”...