Free Republic

The election of Donald Trump—and his presidency thus far—did not create the social and political divide tearing America apart. The forces aligned on the right and the left were already doing that long before Trump or Barack Obama or George W. Bush entered the political arena. But the conflict that has erupted since Trump’s victory has exposed the chasm that divides us more dramatically than any event in the last 150 years. Americans hardly think any more about the motto that adorns our currency: “E Pluribus Unum”—an example of the dreams of national unity—“From many, one.” Today those dreams...

The two sets of inscribed plates that Strang claimed to have found in Wisconsin and Michigan beginning in 1845 almost certainly existed. Milo Quaife's early, standard biography of Strang reflects that, while Strang's angelic visitations "may have had only a subjective existence in the brain of the man who reported them, the metallic plates possessed a very material objective reality." And they were almost certainly forgeries. The first set, the three "Voree" or "Rajah Manchou" plates, were dug up by four "witnesses" whom Strang had taken to the plates' burial place. Illustrated and inscribed on both sides, the Rajah Manchou...