The Tiananmen Tank Man

How does a discussion on the right to bear arms lead one to the events of Tiananmen Square in 1989?

It starts with an understanding the fear held by the 18th-century Framers of professional, standing armies. For them it was no abstract fear. Their experiences with the British military (and Hessian mercenaries) were proof enough of the danger of a military unaccountable to the local population.

The iconic photo of the Tiananmen Tank Man seems a perfect illustration of the threat to individual liberty. Ultimately, it wasn't the tanks that crushed the man, but the authoritarian state. He was whisked away and never heard from again. Many presume he was executed for his act of defiance.

There is another story associated with the Tiananmen Tank Man, and that is the story of the Newsweek photographer, who risked his life to take the photo and had to go to extraordinary measures to get it published.

Most disturbing, is that even with Cole's as a result of government censorship, Chinese college students know nothing of what took place in 1989.



Perhaps its important to remind ourselves that--as much as we like to bash the media--the press has always been, in the word's of George Mason, "one of the great bulwarks of liberty." In the 18th century, a musket hanging over the hearth may haven been enough protection against a despotic government. But today, it may be that the 1st Amendment is probably the most powerful weapon a citizen holds.

Hitler High School

Today in Civil Rights and Liberties class, we began examining the issue of hate speech and the case of RAV v. St. Paul (1992). Since this case begins with teenagers placing a crudely fashioned burning cross on the lawn of an African-American families lawn, we spend a little time exploring the history of that particular image. That led us into a discussion of the history of the KKK and its founder, Nathan Bedford Forrest. The former Confederate general is infamous in most circles for his involvement in the Fort Pillow Massacre and establishment of the KKK, but is still revered in some (mostly southern) communities.

In 2008, a controversy erupted in Jacksonville, Florida, when the Duvall County School Board was petitioned by local residents to change the name of Nathan B. Forrest High School. The school was built in 1955, and its name adopted at the behest of the Daughters of the Confederacy. Given the timing, it was clearly adopted as a statement of defiance to federal mandates to integrate public schools. Keep in mind, this was around the same time when states such as Georgia and South Carolina began flying the Confederate Flag over their state capitols.

This short documentary details the fight over the name change, and the (perhaps not surprising) decision of the school board. But it also reveals that today's students have a very different perspective on race and history than the adults in their community.


In case you thought this issue was over, check out this story on Mississippi's "Nathan Bedford Forrest" license plates.

The Original Balloon Boy

I came across this article in today's Plain Dealer. Can you imagine this ever happening today?

The Letters of John and Abigail Adams

From 1762 to 1801, John and Abigail Adams carried on a remarkable correspondence. Some 1100 letters between the two survive to this day, offering historians a treasure trove of insights into both the dramatic events that occurred during that period (the Revolution, early Republic, and Adams' own tumultuous presidency) and the more mundane aspects of everyday life in a colonial family.

But the Adams' weren't just any colonial couple. They were the ultimate power duo. Think FDR and Eleanor. Bill and Hillary. Barack and Michelle. Abigail Smith Adams was a remarkably well educated woman who was not afraid to voice her opinions.

One of her more famous letters, from March 31, 1776, admonished John--then a delegate at the Second Continental Congress and a staunch advocate of declaring independence from Britain--to consider the rights of women in the new republic:

...in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors.

Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands.

Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.

As an early advocate of women's rights, Abigail Adams was ahead of her time on other issues as well. She opposition to slavery and was a supporter of equal education for boys and girls. During his terms as Vice-President and President, John Adams considered Abigail Adams to be his most trusted advisor.

The Massachusetts Historical Society maintains an excellent online archive of the Adams letters in their digital collection " The Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive."

The letters are fully indexed and can searched by date or keywords. Each letter contains a transcription as well as a digital image of the actual letter and envelope and an automatic citation generator. The perfect place for historians (both new and veteran) to begin research!

The Brown Bess

In the days of lace-ruffles, perukes, and brocade
Brown Bess was a partner whom none could despise --
An out-spoken, flinty-lipped, brazen-faced jade,
With a habit of looking men straight in the eyes --
At Blenheim and Ramillies, fops would confess
They were pierced to the heart by the charms of Brown Bess.

-- Rudyard Kipling

During the Revolutionary War, the standard issue firearm for both the American revolutionaries and the British military, was the barrel-loading flintlock musket. The actual "Brown Bess" refers to the Land Pattern Musket, produced in mass quantities by Britain in 1722. The name remains somewhat of a mystery, but may have been a reference to the walnut stocks (a rich brown color), the anti-rust treatment given to the barrels which resulted in a deep brown appearance to the gun, or a bastardization of the German phrase for strong gun: braun buss.

Although many adaptations were made to this weapon, the generic name "Brown Bess" has been applied generically to all muskets of this type used throughout the 18th century.

The weapon itself weighed nearly 10 pounds, and had limited accuracy, with a range of perhaps 100 yards. Moreover, the loading process was involved (as seen in the video above):

• Bite the cartridge.
• Push the frizzen forward to open the pan and pour a small amount of powder into the flash pan.
• Snap the frizzen back to position covering the flash pan.
• Hold the musket vertically so that the muzzle is up.
• Pour the remaining powder down the barrel.
• Insert the bullet in the barrel.
• Push the cartridge paper into the barrel
• Remove ramrod from pipe under the barrel and use to push wadding and bullet down the barrel.
• Replace the ramrod.
• Raise musket to firing position with the butt against the shoulder.
• Pull back the hammer.
• Aim and fire!

A well trained soldier could load and fire three shots per minute; some accounts suggest that Prussians could volley as many as five in that time...although that seems unlikely. Because of the time it takes to load, soldiers tended to fire in volley.

The video below illustrates how a well regimented soldier would follow commands precisely. Now imagine a line of these soldiers standing their ground while facing an opposing army, as the British did on Bunker Hill in 1775....

Laotian Bomb Hunters

During the Vietnam War, the United States unleashed a bombing campaign of epic proportions. In an effort to disrupt North Vietnamese supply lines along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the US secretly targeted the jungles of neighboring Laos. Although Laos was declared a "neutral country" by the Geneva Convention of 1964, the US launched 580,344 missions over Laos from 1964-1973, dropping an estimated 2 million tons of bombs on Laos alone. To put that into perspective, that number is greater than the total of all bombs dropped on all nations in World War II, including the nuclear weapons detonated at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Among other controversial weapons of the Vietnam era (e.g., napalm and the defoliant Agent Orange), the US deployed "cluster bombs." A cluster bomb was actually a 1,000 to 2,000 lb . canister containing hundreds of smaller bomblets. The canister opened in mid-flight, spreading the bomblets out to maximize the destructive capacity of the weapon.

It is estimated that 30% of the 260 million cluster bombs dropped in Laos failed to explode. Much of this unexploded ordinance (UXO) is embedded just below the earth surface, or hidden under the dense underbrush of the Laotian jungle.

I recently heard this story, about Laotians who continue to be killed by UXO every year. A particularly alarming trend among poor farmers is "hunting" for bombs with metal detectors in order to defuse them and sell them as scrap metal, as this BBC World News story describes.

A plan to detect and destroy UXO has been in effect since the 1990s, but the project may take 50 or more years to locate and detonate the over 90 million unexploded bombs in Laos. In the meantime, an international treaty to ban the use of cluster bombs has been signed by over 100 nations, including the Vatican City. The United States, China, and Russia still have not signed on.

Today's Class: Primary Sources and Martha Ballard's Diary

Today's class was devoted to examining the concept of history. History is not the past, but rather an interpretation of the past based on an analysis of the source material left behind: diaries, records, artifacts, art, statistical data, etc. This is both a science and an art. A historian must be a sound research, but he or she must also possess creativity; it's the ability to look at sources in a new light or see a connection that was previously missed that makes for truly unique history.

Moreover, historians act as gatekeepers of our memory. They, in large part, determine what is significant enough to pass on (and what get's relegated to the "dustbin of history), and it's their skilled analysis of source material that crafts the narrative that we accept as our nations story.

Because historians don't exist in a vacuum, they too carry with them their personal, cultural, and political biases. As a result, there can be significant disagreement among historical interpretations. Furthermore, historical understandings change with the times. In the early 1800s, historians largely ignored the contributions of women or African-Americans; by the 1970s, new research was painting a more complete picture of the lives of minorities and how those experiences contributed to our collective history.

Working with source material (the "raw stuff" of history) is both a joy and a challenge for students. Source material is unfiltered, and therefore more real, and often far more interesting than the Wonder Bread version of history found in most high school textbooks. But it asks more of the student. Rather than giving the answers, sources force students to draw their own conclusions. And sometimes, those sources are just plain hard to read.

We looked at an example today in class: the diary of Martha Ballard.

Martha Ballard was a midwife in Oxford, Maine in the late 17th century. She performed over 816 deliveries between 1785 and 1812. She kept a detailed diary that was discovered by historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and became the basis for the book A Midwife's Tale (Vintage Books, 1991). As Dohistory.org (a website created through a joint venture with Harvard University and George Mason University) points out, through Martha Ballard's diary

"we can learn a great deal about her life as a healer and midwife, mother and wife. We come to realize that Martha Ballard was a respected member of the community, depended upon by the inhabitants of Hallowell, Maine from 1785 until her death in 1812. Through her diary, we can also glimpse the lives of the town's other inhabitants--the ordinary people who are normally invisible to us when we look back into the past. Her diary enriches, deepens, and complicates our understanding of everyday life in early America."

One of the challenges, however, is merely deciphering Ballard's handwriting. In order to understand Ballard's story, Ulrich had to not only learn to read Ballard's writing, but also decode her unique forms of phonetic spelling, dating, accounting and abbreviation used throughout the diary.

As an activity in class, students tried their hand at transcribing a page from the Ballard diary, without much luck (9th period came the closest!). The selection we decoded cryptically referred to a Mrs. Foster, who apparently was on being "abused by unknown persons" who attacked her home with stones.

For the budding young historians who want to know "why," the link to the page in diary is here, so you can continue decoding.

Or, if you want a quicker way of finding out the controversy that Mrs. Foster was caught up in, click here to view a 5-minute video in which historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich explains the episode. It's an instructive look at how one's gender and socioeconomic class play a role in how justice is carried out.