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US Historical Flags Remember when TV stations used to sign off for the day? If you don't, you are probably under 30. Before 24/7 cable, a station ended its day - late at night or early in the morning - usually with a short, but inspiring or patriotic video. And one such sign-off video (shown below) plays to the appropriate tune, The Star Spangled Banner, as it shows the evolution of the American flag throughout our history - from Jamestown (1607) to the moon landing (1969). http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=F5bdonWlbL8 And that clip above is both quite a historical and an educational tribute to Flag...

IN DECEMBER 1862, from his military headquarters in Mississippi, Major General Ulysses S. Grant issued a directive expelling "Jews as a class" from the immense war zone known as the Department of the Tennessee. General Orders No. 11 was the most notorious anti-Jewish edict ever issued by an official of the US government, and it was overruled by the commander-in-chief -- President Abraham Lincoln -- as soon as he learned of it in Washington. Notwithstanding its sweeping terms, the order turned out to have little immediate impact on the thousands of Jews living in the area under Grant's command. Only...

History is not simply dates, events and results. Instead, it's people's lives, their hopes and dreams, their situation and their outcomes based on their and other people's actions. While history is learned by looking backward, knowing the outcome, life is lived marching forward, unsure of what might happen. To understand history, it helps to understand the circumstances of the time. How did people live, who was in charge, who had rights, power and money? What is commonplace in one time and place would be unthinkable in another. For example, most Americans understand that by law, they have individual rights....

Huntington Bank discovers original checks signed by Lincoln, Washington, Edison, Twain and others (photo gallery) President Abraham Lincoln made out this First National Bank printed check to "self" for $800 on April 13, 1865, two days before he died. BROOKLYN -- Dozens of personal checks -- some 150 to 200 years old and signed by the likes of Abraham Lincoln, Charles Dickens, George Washington and Thomas Edison - have been unearthed by Huntington Bank. Some of the historic checks, all signed by U.S. presidents, were unveiled Tuesday and are on display at Huntington's newest branch in Brooklyn. The display is...

At Christmas families celebrate a Savior descending to redeem fallen man. Gifts get no bigger, but for holiday fun, let’s right some nagging worldly wrongs. Without claiming to have been good, here’s my Christmas list: •More Inequality •Less Government I’d eliminate poverty too, but capitalism already has. Shepherds and stable boys fare better materially than anyone except perhaps tax collectors when Christ came. The lingering poor are primarily recent immigrants or fresh graduates only beginning to savor the fruits of market bounty; people enslaved to addictions or those Washington pays to remain perpetually destitute. Caesar continues taxing us onerously and...

Seventy years ago today, America was brutally attacked at Pearl Harbor by an enemy that used planes as suicide bombs. A lesser nation would have been devastated. But America was no lesser nation. America was an exceptional nation. And so President Roosevelt vowed on December 8, 1941 that “the American people in their righteous might” would rise up and “win through to absolute victory.” America’s “Greatest Generation,” in their “righteous might,” turned that day of devastation into the first day of the American Century. A century in which the “righteous power” of America would become the greatest power in world...

Those who still think that it's a good idea for government to "spread the wealth around" must think they're "wiser than God." That's what Plymouth Governor William Bradford concluded nearly 400 years ago after one of America's first socialist experiments led not to shared wealth, but pooled poverty. The Pilgrims, whom we remember at Thanksgiving, started life in the New World with a system of common ownership forced on them by Plymouth colony investors. That quasi-socialist arrangement proved disastrous, and had to be scrapped for one which gave these first Americans the right to keep the fruits of their labor...

In late 1620, Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower reached the New World to found what would become Plymouth Colony. Governed by the Mayflower Compact—the representative government established through it—they thanked God for their safe voyage and disembarked the vessel with a cold winter before them. The winter of 1620-1621 was a brutal one for the Pilgrims. Almost half of the Pilgrims died from disease so that by winter’s end, there were just over 50 left to keep the colony viable. When the “first Thanksgiving” was celebrated after harvest time in November of 1621, the survivors were grateful for life and limb,...

(Full Title) FDR Goes to War: How Expanded Executive Power, Spiraling National Debt, and Restricted Civil Liberties Shaped Wartime America Release Date:October 11, 2011 Reviews:"FDR Goes to War is a page-turning tour de force -- and a scholarly one, at that -- of the politics and economics of America's involvement in WWII. Be prepared to rethink much of what you think you know about FDR, the war, and the post-Depression U.S. economy." --Don Bordreaux, Chairman of the Department of Economics at George Mason University "In New Deal or Raw Deal? Burt Folsom exposed FDR's failed policies during the Great Depression....

WASHINGTON—The alleged liaison between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings entered a new phase upon the release of an updated scholarly report at the National Press Club on Sept. 1. The “Jefferson-Hemings Controversy: Report of the Scholars Commission” seeks to overturn the widely held belief that the author of the Declaration of Independence and third president of the United States had an affair with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings, and was the father of one or more of her children. The liaison has gained acceptance and notoriety in popular culture. In February 2000, “Sally Hemings: An American Scandal” was shown...

President Barack Obama has taken a decidedly low-key approach to racial issues since he became America’s first black president two years ago. But in a hallway outside the Oval Office, he has placed a head-turning painting depicting one of the ugliest racial episodes in U.S. history. Norman Rockwell’s “The Problem We All Live With,” installed in the White House last month, shows U.S. marshals escorting Ruby Bridges, a 6-year-old African-American girl, into a New Orleans elementary school in 1960 as court-ordered integration met with an angry and defiant response from the white community. The thrust of the painting is not...

As if the education system in Massachusetts couldn’t be any further slanted to the left, we received word today that State Senate Democrats have voted to keep American History out of the classroom. This is an obvious attempt by the liberal ‘intelligentsia’, who have had oligarchic control over MA for generations, to ensure power by dumbing down the electorate. Here in Massachusetts, public school students must past the MCAS (Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System) test in order to receive a high school diploma. The MCAS is a general knowledge test that was created in order to: To inform/improve curriculum and instruction;...

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann’s suggestion Saturday that the Revolutionary War began in Concord, N.H., rather than Lexington and Concord, Mass., marks the third time in recent months that the potential GOP presidential hopeful has committed a puzzling gaffe about history and current affairs. Making her first trek to New Hampshire as a 2012 prospect, Bachmann told a GOP crowd in Manchester: “You’re the state where the shot was heard around the world at Lexington and Concord.” The Revolutionary War began, not in New Hampshire’s capital, but in the famous two towns more than 50 miles away in...

One hundred and fifty years after the Civil War began, we're still fighting it -- or at least fighting over its history. I've polled thousands of high school history teachers and spoken about the war to audiences across the country, and there is little agreement even on why the South seceded. Was it over slavery? States' rights? Tariffs and taxes? As the nation begins to commemorate the anniversaries of the war's various battles -- from Fort Sumter to Appomattox -- let's first dispense with some of the more prevalent myths about why it all began. 1. The South seceded over...

Sam Sumner retired as a schoolteacher, left his Hawaii home and recently moved to North Carolina, all for the purpose of solving the mystery of the Lost Colony. The answer lies not in Buxton where experts and amateur sleuths have searched for decades, he says, but at Mackay Island National Wildlife Refuge in Currituck County, a site that leaves experts skeptical. A 1923 map in the lobby of Mackay Island ranger station shows an image on the ground next to the Currituck Sound that looks just like an old drawing of Fort Raleigh. "I looked at that map and I...

This article gives another perspective on liberals, libertarians and conservatives. The history both Lincoln and Sherman has been written by the victors and beyond reproach. Do we want to restore honor in this country? Can we restore honor by bringing up subjects over 100 years old? Comments are encouraged. Randy's Right aka Randy Dye NC Freedom The American Lenin by L. Neil Smith lneil@lneilsmith.org It’s harder and harder these days to tell a liberal from a conservative — given the former category’s increasingly blatant hostility toward the First Amendment, and the latter’s prissy new disdain for the Second Amendment —...

La rentrée is what the French call this time of year: the re-entry. Everything comes to a stop in August; it is too hot to work, and the whole country slows down during the late summer dog days. Then, come September, we come back from the beach, from the cabin in the woods, or wherever we’ve been, and the life of the working world starts up. The air turns crisp; apples from the new harvest replace melons, berries, peaches and apricots in the produce aisle. On the first cool nights of September, we remember: there is such a thing as...

I didn't see any comments about Glenn Beck's 1st words on his Friday TV show. He talked about the "Black Robe Regiment", and said that Brits largely blamed churches/preachers for fomenting the Revolution. Then he said as a result, when the Redcoats came here upon the war starting, they burned churches because of this. Then he said they even "locked up people inside and burned them".

We have been happy with our homeschool curriculum to date using the K-12 Curriculum. But we just hit American History before 1865. It is pabablum about Native Americans respecting the land blah blah. Don't even need to read the rest. Glancing thru the rest, it seems like a pretty standard left-wing treatment of the subject. So my question is, do any FREEPERS have recommendations for American History Curricula and are solidly conservative and factual. Appropriate for a bright 5th or 6th grader. We like to teach off a curriculum if possible rather than a text book or scattered books.

STEPPING BACK IN TIME... Note: The following text is a quote: May 4, 2009 - Introduced in House. This is the original text of the bill as it was written by its sponsor and submitted to the House for consideration. This is the latest version of the bill currently available on GovTrack. HRES 397 IH 111th CONGRESS 1st Session H. RES. 397 Affirming the rich spiritual and religious history of our Nation’s founding and subsequent history and expressing support for designation of the first week in May as ‘America’s Spiritual Heritage Week’ for the appreciation of and education on America’s...