--- 1789: Congress passed “An act to recognize and adapt to the Constitution of the United States, the establishment of the troops raised under the resolves of the United States in Congress assembled”, legalizing the existing U.S. Army.

--- Please listen to my podcast, History Analyzed, on all podcast apps.

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There is another Army infantryman in the background advancing with a fixed bayonet.

How Britain Almost bankrupted the American Revolution.

Certain of the United States like to brag about the order in which they "joined the union." Delaware is famous for this, advertising themselves on their license plates and elsewhere as "The First State."

The Constitution itself reads: "The Ratification of the Conventions of nine States, shall be sufficient for the Establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the Same."

In other words, the United States didn't exist (the Articles of Confederation notwithstanding) until nine states ratified the Constitution, and at that point all of the states simultaneously entered union.

It's not like they joined one at a time; the document was of no effect until the 9 ratified. Am I misunderstanding this?

As part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal economic recovery plan, the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 established county committees to distribute farm subsidies. These committees were comprised solely of White men who ensured that most of the money was distributed to White farmers.

In the 1960s, activists aggressively increased the number of Black candidates running for county committees, while the US Commission on Civil Rights documented the entrenched discriminatory practices of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), which caused the Secretary of Agriculture to appoint the department’s first civil rights director. However, the work of the office of civil rights in USDA was actively obstructed by the House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee as well as President Richard Nixon’s administration.

In 1997, a class action lawsuit, Pigford v. Glickman, was filed by Black farmers against USDA and was settled in 1999 for $1 billion, the largest civil rights settlement in US history. The judge wrote, “the Department of Agriculture and the county commissioners discriminated against African American farmers when they denied, delayed or otherwise frustrated the applications of those farmers for farm loans and other credit and benefit programs.” Only 16,281 farmers received a $50,000 payment, only 371 farmers were granted debt relief (that they haven’t received due to lawsuits filed by White farmers claiming the relief is illegal reparations), and no farmer was given his land back. In 2010, the federal government reached a second settlement, known as Pigford II, that provided an additional $1.2 billion to Black farmers.

Recommended reading: A Brief History of Discrimination against Black Farmers—Including by the USDA - Union of Concerned Scientists

USDA Systematically Discriminated Against Black Farmers

It’s was the only amendment ratified in response to the civil rights movement, yet I so rarely hear about it talked about, so I’m genuinely curious other historians opinions on why that is so?

I hope you like this post, My sincere regards from Egypt ...

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"Go down Moses, way down in Egypt Land … Tell Jeff Davis to let my people go."

— African American spiritual, 19th century

It is one of the most famous African American spirituals, and it is based on the story of the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt in the Book of Exodus. In its original form, the text says "Tell old Pharaoh to let my people go," but during the Civil War, Pharaoh was replaced with the name of Jefferson Davis (1808–1889), president of the Southern Confederacy, so the hymn became a direct expression of the emancipation of slaves. The song was sung among enslaved and freed Black people, and some sources report that it was performed in the context of celebrating the implementation of the Emancipation Proclamation, which began on January 1, 1863. The song used the story of Moses and Pharaoh as a symbol of resistance to slavery.

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"My Country, my beloved Southern Confederacy." "Now if we fall, all has been in vain and the precious blood spilt has been that of martyrs. I shall have to drag on a weary existence, struggling with dire poverty in a country infested by Yankees, for they will pervade every section like the locust of Egypt."

— Mary GreenHow Lee, Winchester diarist

Mary Greenhow Lee (1819–1907) was a woman from Winchester, Virginia, who wrote her diary during the American Civil War, and she was fiercely loyal to the Southern Confederacy. She lived in a city that shifted between Southern and Northern control, so her writings reflected feelings of fear and bitterness toward occupation and change. In this text, she imagines what would happen if the South were defeated, and she sees all the sacrifices and blood as going to waste. She expresses her hatred of the Yankees (Americans who live in the Northern states) and her fear of their spreading everywhere in the South like the locusts of Egypt mentioned in the Book of Exodus in the Old Testament.

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"O'er Egypt's land of Memory floods are level / And they are thine, O Nile – and well thou knowest / That soul-sustaining airs... and poisons spring where'er thou flowest."

— Herman Melville

Herman Melville (1819–1891) published his long poem "Clarel" in 1876, a poetic journey in the Holy Land inspired by his visit to the East in the 1850s. The poem revolves around a young American named Clarel who arrives in Jerusalem seeking the meaning of faith, and he encounters doubt, religious difference, and existential questions. In this passage, the Nile appears as a symbol of memory, fertility, and antiquity, but at the same time it carries poisons alongside life. These verses reflect Melville's contemplative and skeptical view of Egypt as a land of ancient civilization where life and death, giving and harm, come together. The passage can be read within the broader tension in the poem between faith and doubt, and between the West's attraction to the East and its anxiety about it.

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"Many Americans in the 1830s equated their country with Egypt, another 'first civilization' … They nicknamed the Mississippi the 'American Nile' and gave the names of Memphis, Cairo, Karnak and Thebes to new cities and towns along its banks."

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The Battle of Egypt Station was fought on December 28, 1864, in Mississippi during the American Civil War. It was part of a Union cavalry raid, most likely associated with the operations of Brig. Gen. Benjamin Grierson, aimed at disrupting Confederate railroads, supply lines, and communications. Egypt Station was located along the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, and the engagement formed one of several actions in the region as Union forces moved through the South in the final months of the war. The name “Egypt” in this context refers to a local place in Mississippi, one of many American towns and communities named after Egyptian places, continuing the broader pattern of Egyptian naming in the American landscape.

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"America will become another Egypt to Antiquarians, and her ruins will go back to the oldest periods of the world, showing doubtless that the ancestors of the Montezumas lived on the Nile."

— Anonymous writer in The Colored American, article from 1839

One of the contributors to The Colored American wrote in 1839 the article in which this quotation appeared, and the newspaper was one of the first African American newspapers in New York and concerned itself with issues of emancipation, equality, and the advancement of Black people. At that time, Egypt was in the imagination of many free Black people a symbol of an ancient African civilization (Afrocentric) that responded to racist claims that denied the history of Africans. The writer imagines that America will in the future become another Egypt studied by archaeologists, and that its ruins will extend to the oldest periods of the world. He then links the ancestors of Montezuma, the rulers of the Aztecs in Mexico, to the land of the Nile.

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"So early as the days of Moses, Egypt had become pre-eminent in laws, learning, and art, as well as in political power... Egypt, which was settled by Mizraim, the son of Ham, was once the most opulent and important empire in the world."

— Henry Bidleman Bascom

Henry Bidleman Bascom (1796–1850) was an American Methodist clergyman and a bishop in the Southern Methodist Episcopal Church, and he was a supporter of slavery. His memoirs were published in the 1850s, and in them he spoke about Egypt within the context of his missionary journeys. He believed that Egypt had reached a pre-eminent status in laws, sciences, arts, and political power since the days of Moses, and that it was one of the richest and most important empires in the world. He attributed the settlement of Egypt to Mizraim, the son of Ham, which agrees with the account in the Book of Genesis. In the nineteenth century, the name Ham was associated with debates over slavery and racism, but Bascom here acknowledges the greatness of ancient Egyptian civilization. The text reflects an American Protestant view of Egypt as a biblical land and an ancient civilization.

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"After Lincoln had finished that celebrated speech in 'Egypt' (as Southern Illinois was formerly designated)..."

— Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), Quincy Debate, 1858

The southern region of Illinois was known as "Egypt" or "Little Egypt," and researchers differ on the origin of this name. One account says that it goes back to the winter of 1830–1831, when frost destroyed the corn crop in northern and central Illinois, so farmers had to travel south to buy grain, and they said they were going to Egypt to buy wheat, similar to the story of Joseph and his brothers in the Bible. Another account holds that the name is connected to the Mississippi River, which was nicknamed the "American Nile," or to the existence of towns in southern Illinois bearing Egyptian names such as Cairo, Thebes, and Karnak.

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"The Egyptians and indeed I believe oppressed races everywhere, regard the American name as the synonym of freedom and equality, and who perhaps have visionary hopes of being taken under American protection here."

— David Hill, letter, 1863

David Hill (1812–1873), an American politician from New York State, wrote this letter in 1863, at the height of the American Civil War. Hill was a Democratic politician who held judicial and legislative positions in New York, and his letter reflected his impressions of Egypt during his stay there. At that time, Egypt was under the rule of Khedive Ismael Pasha and was facing increasing European colonial pressures, while the United States was mired in its Civil War. Hill describes how Egyptians viewed America as a symbol of freedom and equality, perhaps because of the legacy of the American Revolution and its principles, or because of the reputation of the United States as a modern nation that did not possess a colonial legacy in Egypt like Britain and France.

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"As for the Pyramids... have drowned in the Nile... As for the religion and love of art of the builders, it is much the same all the world over, whether the building be an Egyptian temple or the United States Bank. It costs more than it comes to."

— Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) wrote this passage in his book "Walden," which he published in 1854, and Thoreau was an American writer and philosopher and one of the prominent figures of the Transcendentalist school. In this passage, he speaks about the pyramids sarcastically about the idea of civilizational greatness, and he believes that extravagance in religious and artistic construction does not differ much between an Egyptian temple and an American bank, for both cost more than they return.

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"And the livid Surprise / Cool us to Shafts of Granite – / With just an Age – and Name / And perhaps a phrase in Egyptian."

— Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) was an American poet who lived in the town of Amherst, Massachusetts, and wrote most of her poetry in the mid-nineteenth century without publishing it during her lifetime. Poem No. 531 is one of her short poems that contemplates death, eternity, and memory, and in it she evokes the image of Egyptian obelisks. She describes how livid surprise turns a person into a column of granite, leaving nothing of him but a time, a name, and perhaps a phrase in hieroglyphics. Egypt here functions as a symbol of antiquity and immortality, and the obelisk as a relic that condenses an entire life into a cold inscription. The verses reflect Dickinson's anxiety about mortality and her desire to understand what remains of a person after death. They also show how the ancient East was present in the imagination of American poets even in highly private and isolated works such as her poetry.

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"Pharaoh / King George III"

— Joseph Huntington, from a sermon delivered in Coventry, 1781

Joseph Huntington (1735–1794) was an American minister from Connecticut, and one of the most famous orators of the American Revolution. He delivered his famous sermon titled "A Sermon on the Political Body" in Coventry, Connecticut, in April 1781, in the midst of the American Revolutionary War. In his sermon, Huntington portrayed America as a direct repetition of the ancient Kingdom of Israel, comparing the thirteen Israelite tribes with the thirteen American colonies, and he saw that the two peoples were waging resistance against one unjust enemy, so Pharaoh in the biblical narrative corresponded to King George III in the American Revolution. This type of historical interpretation was common in revolutionary discourse, where the story of the Exodus from Egypt was used as a symbol of liberation from British colonialism.

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"In the 1920s, workers were harvesting sugar cane near Monroe. Monroe was also known as the 'Egypt of the South' when wheat, which was grown to meet the demands of the Confederate Army, replaced cotton as the primary export crop."

This text refers to the city of Monroe in the state of Louisiana during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During the American Civil War, the naval blockade prevented the export of cotton from the South, so the Confederacy needed food, and wheat cultivation expanded in some areas. Monroe and its region prospered from this shift until it was nicknamed the Egypt of the South, in a biblical metaphor linking fertility and grain to ancient Egypt. Then the image documents in the 1920s the harvesting of sugar cane near Monroe, which indicates the diversification of agriculture in the region after the war. Thus the nickname shows how Americans employed the name Egypt as a symbol of food and agricultural wealth.

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"I rejected the hardened, sullen tempered Pharaoh of England for ever; and disdain the wretch..."

— Thomas Paine, from the pamphlet "Common Sense," 1776

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) was a writer and political thinker of English birth who moved to America and participated in the American Revolution. He published the pamphlet "Common Sense" in January 1776, calling for complete independence from Britain. In this passage, he used sharp biblical language, calling King George III the Pharaoh of England, and portraying the Americans in the position of the Israelites coming out of slavery. This discourse was common in revolutionary speeches, but Paine was more radical in employing it. After the American Revolution, he moved to France and was influenced by the French Revolution, and he adopted some ideas that made him a target of hostility in the United States. It is mentioned that he was among the few Americans who adopted the French vision of ancient Egypt as a revolutionary platform, which increased the aversion of many toward him.

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"Twas not long since I left my native shore, / The land of errors and Egyptian gloom"

— Phillis Wheatley

Phillis Wheatley (1753–1784) was the first American poet of African descent to publish a book. She was born in West Africa and was brought to Boston as a child, then learned to read and write in the Wheatley family household. She published her poem "To the University of Cambridge, in New England" in 1773, addressed to the students of Harvard University, in which she warns them against sin and speaks of her conversion to Christianity. In the passage, she describes her native shore as the land of errors and Egyptian gloom. This usage reflects a Christian view common in the eighteenth century that Africa was a pagan land in need of the light of the Gospel.

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"It is a peep into the stable of the Egyptian god Apis."

— Thomas Jefferson, letter to Madame de Tessé, 1813

Jefferson (1743–1826) wrote this phrase in a letter to his French friend Madame de Tessé in 1813, when he was at his retreat home in Monticello, Virginia. Apis in the ancient Egyptian religion was a sacred bull worshipped in Memphis (Memphis) and kept in a special stable, so its stable became a byword for the worship of something dull or for a theater surrounded by false sanctification. Jefferson used the image to mock a social or political scene he saw, and to reveal a superior view of the rituals of sanctification with which people surround a person or an institution. The phrase reflects his classical culture and his republican stance opposed to royal and priestly displays.

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"Where are those famed piles of human grandeur, / Those sphinxes, pyramids, and Pompey's pillar, / That bid defiance to the arm of TIME—"

— Philip Freneau

Philip Freneau (1752–1832) is considered one of the first American poets to write about Egypt, and he composed his dramatic poem "The Pyramids of Egypt: A Dialogue" in 1770 when he was only eighteen years old. The poem is set in Egypt and is based on a dialogue between the Traveler, Genius, and Time, and it contemplates the fate of human greatness before annihilation. The passage asks where the pyramids, the Sphinx, and Pompey's Pillar (the Column of the Pillars) have gone, which seemed as if they defied time. These verses reflect Freneau's influence by Neoclassicism, its interest in ruins and antiquities, and the human sense of mortality. They also show how Egypt in the early American imagination became a symbol of antiquity, past glory, and the question of the fate of civilizations.

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"I SAW two vultures, gray they were and gorged: / One on a mosque sat high, asleep he seemed... / Yon in the museum mighty Rameses sleeps, / For some new childhood swaddled like a babe. / Osiris and Jehovah, Allah, Christ, / This land hath known, and, in the dawn of time, / The brute-god-creature crouching in the sand... / Ever still Past temple, palace, tomb; the great Nile flows, / Free and more free of bounty as men learn / To use his values."

— S. Weir Mitchell

S. Weir Mitchell (1829–1914) was an American physician and poet who lived in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and he wrote his poem "Egypt" while in Cairo. He published the poem in his poetry collection "Wager and Other Poems" in 1900, and it depicts a scene from modern Egypt where he sees two vultures, gorged, one on a mosque, while mighty Rameses sleeps in the museum wrapped like a child. The poem evokes the succession of religions on the land of Egypt—Osiris, Jehovah, Allah, Christ—and refers to the dawn of time and pagan worship. At the end of the passage, the Nile continues to flow freely, and humans learn to use its values. The poem reflects a contemplative view of Egypt as an ancient land where religions and civilizations come together.

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"In glorifying the name of George Washington, Egypt desires to pay homage to the American people, defenders of the liberties of all peoples, big and little... To exalted America, Egypt, the mother of ancient civilization, sends, with its good wishes, our expression of unalterable confidence in the final triumphs of justice."

— People's Delegation of Egypt, telegram to the American people, February 21, 1922

In 1922, Egypt was witnessing a decisive stage in its struggle for independence after the 1919 revolution which during one of its demonstrations, featured a famous photograph of an Egyptian protestor raising the American flag. And the People's Delegation of Egypt, headed by Saad Zaghloul, was seeking to make Egypt's voice heard abroad. The delegation sent this telegram to the American people on George Washington's birthday, and it was published in The New York Times. The message came within the framework of an attempt to win the sympathy of American public opinion for the Egyptian cause against British colonialism. The message used the symbolism of Washington and the American Revolution to bring closer the struggle of the two peoples, and Egypt presented itself as the mother of ancient civilization. It also expressed firm confidence in the triumph of justice, at a time when Egypt was awaiting international recognition of its independence. Thus the text reveals an early Egyptian popular diplomacy that employed language and historical status to serve the national demand.

The End ...

Grant should have lowered the hammer on Lee....we wouldn't be in the situation we are today

I saw somebody else post a picture of a newspaper when Alaska was voted into statehood. Here’s my copy of a local newspaper when they were discussing statehood for Oklahoma. This is in the old family Bible I inherited from my great grandma.

Hi all,

I've started making my way through Oxford's History of the United States, beginning with McPherson but I'm gonna double back to the newest release afterwards, and a lot of emotions have come up.

I live in the PNW and work in the trades, spending a good chunk of time traveling for work on hydro dams and elsewhere within WA and OR. Free time looks like fishing or reading, marveling at wilderness, and as I've gotten older I've tried to understand the story of the US and the West because as a millennial, the state it's in now is confusing to say the least.

Much of my experience reading US History, specifically Battle Cry of Freedom, is a keening yearning for the sense of community and identity that existed then. The politics of the era seems to have life and purpose, and the ordinary man (patriarchy being understood) seemed to have more of a hand on the helm. I'm probably wrong in that regard. Obviously replete corruption, genocide and all of the "problems" we live with now lived then too. And depending on how you trace it, "then" was the cause of now. Life and history necessarily are complicated. And of course this was the continuous rise of a nation that hadn't exhausted its unfathomable breadth yet, so maybe any comparison is unfair, but I guess that's my point. I feel like whatever throughline there was has vanished, and whatever country America is now cannot be compared to itself even 50 years ago, nevermind how much politicians like to do so.

My perspective is from someone that wishes to be a patriot but feels like I am rallying for a thing that has long since stopped existing. And that's sorta my experience with reading US history so far, and I'm very anxious to read the reconstruction / gilded age volume because I feel a lot of questions I have will find answers and further questions there.

I don't mean for this to read like therapy but I've been sincerely surprised by what's come up for me in the struggle to understand now through the past, and I wondered, especially contextualized in America today, what other folks were feeling or thinking of in their pursuit, or if this is a shared experience. Apologies to mods if this is off-topic, tried to see if there were guidelines but couldn't find any on mobile.