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The past is never dead. It's not even past

Not Even Past

The Prisoner of Events in Vietnam

by Mark Atwood Lawrence

In the months following his resounding electoral triumph over Barry Goldwater in November 1964, President Lyndon Baines Johnson made momentous decisions to escalate U.S. military involvement in Vietnam.  Most consequentially, he ordered the bombing of North Vietnam: first retaliatory strikes following a National Liberation Front attack on the U.S. base at Pleiku and then a sustained bombing campaign called Operation Rolling Thunder.  Critics of the administration’s decision-making feared that these steps would commit the United States to a difficult and unnecessary war and appealed urgently for a change of course.  One such appeal came from Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, who focused not just on geostrategic dangers but also, more unusually, on the domestic political risks.  In a memorandum to the president ten days after the Pleiku attack, Humphrey warned that the American public had little enthusiasm for a major war and that escalation might damage the administration and the Democratic Party more generally.  Although there is no definitive evidence that Johnson read the memo, one of Johnson’s aides, Bill Moyers, later stated that he had given it to the president.

I would like to share with you my views on the political consequences of certain courses of action that have been proposed in regard to U.S. policy in Southeast Asia. I refer both to the domestic political consequences here in the United States and to the international political consequences.

A. Domestic Political Consequences.

1. 1964 Campaign.

Although the question of U.S. involvement in Vietnam is and should be a non-partisan question, there have always been significant differences in approach to the Asian question between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. These came out in the 1964 campaign. The Republicans represented both by Goldwater, and the top Republican leaders in Congress, favored a quick, total military solution in Vietnam, to be achieved through military escalation of the war.

The Democratic position emphasized the complexity of a Vietnam situation involving both political, social and military factors; the necessity of staying in Vietnam as long as necessary; recognition that the war will be won or lost chiefly in South Vietnam.

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In Vietnam, as in Korea, the Republicans have attacked the Democrats either for failure to use our military power to “win” a total victory, or alternatively for losing the country to the Communists. The Democratic position has always been one of firmness in the face of Communist pressure but restraint in the use of military force; it has sought to obtain the best possible settlement without provoking a nuclear World War III; it has sought to leave open face-saving options to an opponent when necessary to avoid a nuclear show-down. When grave risks have been necessary, as in the case of Cuba, they have been taken. But here again a face-saving option was permitted the opponent. In all instances the Democratic position has included a balancing of both political and military factors.

Today the Administration is being charged by some of its critics with adopting the Goldwater position on Vietnam. While this is not true of the Administration’s position as defined by the President, it is true that many key advisors in the Government are advocating a policy markedly similar to the Republican policy as defined by Goldwater.

2. Consequences for other policies advocated by a Democratic Administration.

The Johnson Administration is associated both at home and abroad with a policy of progress toward detente with the Soviet bloc, a policy of limited arms control, and a policy of new initiatives for peace. A full-scale military attack on North Vietnam – with the attendant risk of an open military clash with Communist China – would risk gravely undermining other U.S. policies. It would eliminate for the time being any possible exchange between the President and Soviet leaders; it would postpone any progress on arms control; it would encourage the Soviet Union and China to end their rift; it would seriously hamper our efforts to strengthen relations with our European allies; it would weaken our position in the United Nations; it might require a call-up of reservists if we were to get involved in a large-scale land war–and a consequent increase in defense expenditures; it would tend to shift the Administration’s emphasis from its Great Society oriented programs to further military outlays; finally and most important it would damage the image of the President of the United States – and that of the United States itself.

800px-Lyndon_Johnson_greets_American_troops_in_Vietnam_19663. Involvement in a full scale war with North Vietnam would not make sense to the majority of the American people.

American wars have to be politically understandable by the American public. There has to be a cogent, convincing case if we are to have sustained public support. In World Wars I and II we had this. In Korea we were moving under UN auspices to defend South Korea against dramatic, across-the-border conventional aggression. Yet even with those advantages, we could not sustain American political support for fighting the Chinese in Korea in 1952.

Today in Vietnam we lack the very advantages we had in Korea. The public is worried and confused. Our rationale for action has shifted away now even from the notion that we are there as advisors on request of a free government – to the simple argument of our “national interest.” We have not succeeded in making this “national interest” interesting enough at home or abroad to generate support.

4. From a political viewpoint, the American people find it hard to understand why we risk World War III by enlarging a war under terms we found unacceptable 12 years ago in Korea, particularly since the chances of success are slimmer….

5. Absence of confidence in the Government of South Vietnam.

Politically, people can’t understand why we would run grave risks to support a country which is totally unable to put its own house in order. The chronic instability in Saigon directly undermines American political support for our policy.

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6. Politically, it is hard to justify over a long period of time sustained, large-scale U.S. air bombardments across a border as a response to camouflaged, often non-sensational, elusive, small-scale terror which has been going on for 10 years in what looks like a civil war in the South.

7. Politically, in Washington and across the country, the opposition is more Democratic than Republican.

8. Politically, it is always hard to cut losses. But the Johnson Administration is in a stronger position to do so than any Administration in this century. 1965 is the year of minimum political risk for the Johnson Administration. Indeed it is the first year when we can face the Vietnam problem without being preoccupied with the political repercussions from the Republican right. As indicated earlier, the political problems are likely to come from new and different sources if we pursue an enlarged military policy very long (Democratic liberals, Independents, Labor, Church groups).

9. Politically, we now risk creating the impression that we are the prisoner of events in Vietnam. This blurs the Administration’s leadership role and has spill-over effects across the board. It also helps erode confidence and credibility in our policies.

10. The President is personally identified with, and admired for, political ingenuity. He will be expected to put all his great political sense to work now for international political solutions. People will be counting upon him to use on the world scene his unrivalled talents as a political leader.

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They will be watching to see how he makes this transition. The best possible outcome a year from now would be a Vietnam settlement which turns out to be better than was in the cards because the President’s political talents for the first time came to grips with a fateful world crisis and so successfully. It goes without saying that the subsequent domestic political benefits of such an outcome, and such a new dimension for the President, would be enormous.

11. If on the other hand, we find ourselves leading from frustration to escalation, and end up short of a war with China but embroiled deeper in fighting with Vietnam over the next few months, political opposition will steadily mount. It will underwrite all the negativism and disillusionment which we already have about foreign involvement generally – with direct spill-over effects politically for all the Democratic internationalist programs to which we are committed – AID, UN, disarmament, and activist world policies generally.

B. International Political Implications of Vietnam.

1. What is our goal, our ultimate objective in Vietnam? Is our goal to restore a military balance between North and South Vietnam so as to go to the conference table later to negotiate a settlement? I believe it is the latter. If so, what is the optimum time for achieving the most favorable combination of factors to achieve this goal?

If ultimately a negotiated settlement is our aim, when do we start developing a political track, in addition to the military one, that might lead us to the conference table? I believe we should develop the political track earlier rather than later. We should take the initiative on the political side and not end up being dragged to a conference as an unwilling participant. This does not mean we should cease all programs of military pressure. But we should distinguish carefully between those military actions necessary to reach our political goal of a negotiated settlement, and those likely to provoke open Chinese military intervention.

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We should not underestimate the likelihood of Chinese intervention and repeat the mistake of the Korean War. If we begin to bomb further north in Vietnam, the likelihood is great of an encounter with the Chinese Air Force operating from sanctuary bases across the border. Once the Chinese Air Force is involved, Peking’s full prestige will be involved as she cannot afford to permit her Air Force to be destroyed. To do so would undermine, if not end, her role as a great power in Asia.

Confrontation with the Chinese Air Force can easily lead to massive retaliation by the Chinese in South Vietnam. What is our response to this? Do we bomb Chinese air bases and nuclear installations? If so, will not the Soviet Union honor its treaty of friendship and come to China’s assistance? I believe there is a good chance that it would–thereby involving us in a war with both China and the Soviet Union. Here again, we must remember the consequences for the Soviet Union of not intervening if China’s military power is destroyed by the U.S.

 

Photo Credits:

Lyndon Johnson examining a model of the Khe Sanh region of Vietnam in the White House Situation Room, 1968 (Image courtesy of the U.S. Federal Government)

President Johnson meets U.S. troops in Vietnam, 1966 (Image courtesy of the U.S. Department of State)

Man surveying the damage from a Viet Cong bomb attack against a multi-story U.S. officers billet in Saigon, 1966 (Image courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration)

Members of the 101st Airborn Division aboard a USAF C-130 at Pham Thiet Air Base, Republic of Vietnam, for airlift to Phi Troung Air Base (Image courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration)

U.S. pilots bomb a military target over North Vietnam, 1966 (Image courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration)

 

Counterfactual History in a New Video Game

By Robert Whitaker

BioShock Infinite
Irrational Games

I have spent most of the last year applying for jobs, which means that I have spent most of the last year analyzing, constructing, rewriting, and generally just staring at my résumé. Writing a résumé is similar to creating a historical narrative – there is a protagonist (you), a cast of characters (employers and recommenders), a beginning, an end, a series of events in the middle, and a whole set of details that can be added or removed to suit particular audiences. Given the economy right now, there is pressure to make this narrative as broadly appealing as possible. Some career advisors have even encouraged me to engage in “creative truth-telling” to help me land a position. This practice, they tell me, isn’t lying, per se, but rather a gentle embellishment of the facts.

As an historian, however, this practice gives me the heebie jeebies. It reminds me too much of the push by some to make a selective reading of American history the standard for teaching the subject. American History, in many ways, represents the nation’s résumé. It is a catalog of achievements and events – some good, some regrettable – that are used to encourage citizens and outsiders to buy into the nation. As with my own personal narrative, the stakes for this résumé are high. There is the same pressure to embellish this history – both through addition and omission. But we must ask if it is really beneficial to avoid all the nasty bits when studying the past? When we consider our own personal failures, we often say that we learn from our mistakes. How can we learn from the nation’s mistakes if we remove them from our history? 

BioShock Infinite is a game that uses a counterfactual history of the United States to force players to consider some of these mistakes. Set in 1912, the game takes place in Columbia, a floating city hovering over the United States. You play as Booker DeWitt, a veteran of the 7th Cavalry Regiment and a former member of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, who is sent to Columbia to retrieve a girl named Elizabeth in order to absolve his debt.  Booker is racked by guilt for his participation in the Wounded Knee Massacre and for his role in putting down worker strikes as a Pinkerton agent. His personal remorse has driven him to drinking and gambling. Booker embodies several Progressive Era sensibilities, including the awareness of past wrongs, and the desire for redemption and reform.

In Columbia, however, Booker faces an unrepentant Gilded Age society led by firebrand preacher Zachary Comstock – a man who shares much of Booker’s personal history, but none of his remorse. Styling himself as a modern day Noah, Comstock sees Columbia as “another ark, for another time,” a place where he can preserve his vision of America while planning the destruction of “the Sodom below.” Comstock’s America is built upon a perverse worship of the Founding Fathers and rejection of the political and social developments in American society since the Civil War. Columbian society is committed to racial purity, religious zealotry, and unfettered capitalism, and promotes these philosophies through a set of distorted Sears Roebuck advertisements plastered around the city. Museums in the city present John Wilkes Booth as a hero and the Wounded Knee Massacre as a national triumph. The personal histories of DeWitt and Comstock reminds players not only of particular historical events, but also how the memories of those events can be perverted to attain political goals.

This sort of stylistic use of history is familiar territory for Irrational Games and its creative director, Ken Levine. The original BioShock, published in 2007, used Ayn Rand’s objectivist philosophy as the basis for a story set in the underwater city of Rapture. Levine’s BioShock games share many similarities in terms of plot and theme. Both games feature an antagonist bent on creating a utopian society based on warpedBioshock_infinite_screenshot_motorized_patriot notions of exceptionalism and capitalism. These antagonists are opposed in both instances by a group made up of dissatisfied, working class civilians, led by Frank Fontaine in BioShock and Daisy Fitzroy in Infinite. Thematically, the BioShock series grapples with the age old question of free will versus destiny, and stresses the potential role of the state in determining the answer.

Both BioShock games offer easy parallels with the present division between neoliberal capitalists and the Occupy Movement, yet these parallels become murky as both games progress. While the capitalist appears as the initial antagonist in both games, the player comes to learn that the opposition is capable of just as much destruction and violence. Levine’s message, then, is not a simple liberal critique of current politics, but rather a general warning about extremism in politics, whether that extremism comes from the left or the right. Writing as an historian of the 20th century, this is a warning that cannot be repeated too many times.

In addition to the plot and themes, BioShock Infinite encourages historicism through its music and gameplay. For reasons that become clear through the story, Infinite contains a jukebox musical score that features ragtime versions of popular twentieth-century hits, including songs by the Beach Boys, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Cyndi Lauper, Lead Belly, Soft Cell, and Tears for Fears. Additionally, Infinite’s gameplay often encourages the player to take on the role of historian. Major elements of the game’s narrative are left unexplained in cut scenes, but can be found by the player in voice recordings and kinetoscopes scattered throughout the city. These recordings and logs are not always easy to find, meaning that each player can come away with a different sense of the storyline depending on which, or how many, recordings they discovered. One of the game’s major side quests, then, is an oral history scavenger hunt.

ColumbiaThis sort of detailed work would be lost on most players without exciting gameplay to draw them in. Infinite, however, builds upon traditional first-person action in interesting ways. In particular, it takes advantage of the game’s setting in the clouds, allowing players to move around the environment using skylines and zeppelins. This freedom of movement gives the combat sequences a frenetic feel and prevents them from becoming predictable. Unfortunately, this novelty is diminished by the rote nature of the game’s violence. The current debate on graphic content in video games is all too applicable here. Infinite’s storyline, including the player’s interactions with their companion Elizabeth, are best experienced by the reader themselves. The plot is a bit more precocious than profound, but it is well paced, matching the action of the game.

The BioShock series has become something of a bellwether for the video game industry and the release of Infinite has led to several “state of the medium” pieces online (listed below). What, then, does BioShock Infinite indicate about the future course of video games? On the one hand, we see a familiar reliance on violence and the first-person perspective, but on the other hand, we see a game that engages with complex, historically laced themes. Certainly, Infinite presents these themes in an exaggerated manner, but the fact that the game deals with them at all is encouraging. This further maturation of video games can only be seen as a good thing, for historians and players alike.

Photo Credits:

Promotional Photos of Bioshock Infinite (Images courtesy of Irrational Games and 2K Games)

Images used under Fair Use Guidelines

If you’d like to read more about Bioshock Infinite:

Leigh Alexander writes that Infinite represents “a crucial moment in

canon,” but not one without flaws.

Giantbomb.com editor Alex Navarro collects and discusses the major threads of criticism that Infinite has encouraged in the gaming press.

Gamespot.com interview with Ken Levine on the development of Infinite and the current state of the video game industry.

CIA Study: “Consequences to the US of Communist Domination of Mainland Southeast Asia,” October 13, 1950

by Mark Atwood Lawrence

Before 1948, the Cold War was largely confined to Europe and the Middle East, areas that both U.S. and Soviet leaders considered vital to their nations’ core foreign policy objectives after the Second World War.  By 1950, however, the Cold War had spread to Asia.  First, Mao Zedong’s communist armies prevailed in the long-running Chinese civil war in October 1949, making the world’s most populous country part of the communist bloc.  Then, on July 25, 1950, communist North Korea invaded Western-oriented South Korea, igniting a bloody war and intensifying the mood of global crisis.  U.S. officials assumed that Stalin and Mao were behind the North Korean attack and feared that the assault marked the start of a broader offensive in other parts of the continent.  Even as they sent troops to defend South Korea, U.S. leaders pumped money and weapons into the region to help bolster friendly forces.  Underlying such behavior was a strong sense, illustrated in the following analysis by the Central Intelligence Agency, that losing the region to the communist bloc would have an array of devastating strategic, economic, military, and psychological repercussions extending far beyond Southeast Asia.

Communist domination of mainland Southeast Asia would not be critical to US security interests but would have serious immediate and direct consequences.  The gravest of such consequences would be a spreading of doubt and fear among other threatened non-Communist countries as to the ability of the US to back up its proclaimed intention to halt Communist expansion everywhere.  Unless offset by positive additions to the security of non-Communist countries in other sensitive areas of the world, the psychological effect of the loss of mainland Southeast Asia would not only strengthen Communist propaganda that the advance of Communism is inexorable but would encourage countries vulnerable to Soviet pressure to adopt “neutral” attitudes in the cold war, or possibly even lead them to an accommodation with Communism.

Domination of the Southeast Asian mainland would increase the threat to such Western outposts in the Pacific as the island chain extending from Japan to Australia and New Zealand.  The extension of Communist control, via Burma, to the borders of India and Pakistan would augment the slowly developing Communist threat to the Indian subcontinent.  The fall of the Southeast Asian mainland would increase the feeling of insecurity already present in Japan as a result of Communist successes in China and would further underline the apparent economic advantages to the Japanese of association with a communist-dominated Asian sphere.

PRCFoundingThe countries of mainland Southeast Asia produce such materials on the US strategic list as rubber, tin, shellac, kapok, and teak in substantial volume. Although access to these countries is not considered to be “absolutely essential in an emergency” by the National Security Resources Board, US access to this area is considered “desirable.”  Unlimited Soviet access to the strategic materials of Southeast Asia would probably be “desirable” for the USSR but would not be “absolutely essential in an emergency” and therefore denial of the resources of the area to the Soviet Union would not be essential to the US strategic position. Communist control over the rice surpluses of the Southeast Asian mainland would, however, provide the USSR with considerable bargaining power in its relations with other countries of the Far East.

Loss of the area would indirectly affect US security interests through its important economic consequences for countries aligned with the US. Loss of Malaya would deprive the UK of its greatest net dollar earner. An immediate consequence of the loss of Indochina might be a strengthening of the defense of Western Europe since French expenditures for men and materiel in Indochina would be available to fulfill other commitments. Exclusion of Japan from trade with Southeast Asia would seriously frustrate Japanese prospects for economic recovery.

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Communist domination of mainland Southeast Asia would place unfriendly forces astride the most direct and best-developed sea and air routes between the Western Pacific and India and the Near East.  The denial to the US of intermediate routes in mainland Southeast Asia would be significant because communications between the US and India and the Near East would be essential in a global war.  In the event of such a war, the development of Soviet submarine and air bases in mainland Southeast Asia probably would compel the detour of US and allied shipping and air transportation in the Southeast Asia region via considerably longer alternate routes to the south.  This extension of friendly lines of communication would hamper US strategic movements in this region and tend to isolate the major non-Communist bases In the Far East – the offshore island chain and Australia – from existing bases in East Africa and the Near and Middle East, as well as from potential bases on the Indian sub-continent.

Besides disrupting established lines of communication in the area, the denial of actual military facilities in mainland Southeast Asia – in particular, the loss of the major naval operating bases at Singapore – would compel the utilization of less desirable peripheral bases. Soviet exploitation of the naval and air bases in mainland Southeast Asia probably would be limited by the difficulties of logistic support but would, nevertheless, increase the threat to existing lines of communication.imageThe loss of any portion of mainland Southeast Asia would increase possibilities for the extension of Communist control over the remainder.  The fall of Indochina would provide the Communists with a staging area in addition to China for military operations against the rest of mainland Southeast Asia, and this threat might well inspire accommodation in both Thailand and Burma.  Assuming Thailand’s loss, the already considerable difficulty faced by the British in maintaining security in Malaya would be greatly aggravated.  Assuming Burma’s internal collapse, unfavorable trends in India would be accelerated.  If Burma were overcome by external aggression, however, a stiffening of the attitude of the Government of India toward International Communism could be anticipated.

Source:  http://www.foia.cia.gov/docs/DOC_0000258837/DOC_0000258837.pdf

Photo Credits: 

Mao Zedong proclaiming the founding of the People’s Republic of China in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, October 1, 1949 (Image courtesy of the People’s Republic of China)

South Korean refugees flee south to escape the North Korean army, 1950 (Image courtesy of the United States Government)

U.S. air and ground Marines fighting Chinese forces in Korea, 1950 (Image courtesy of the United States Federal Government)

Lady Bird Johnson, In Her Own Words

by Michael L. Gillette

Between 1977 and 1991, Michael L. Gillette, executive director of Humanities Texas and former director of the LBJ Library Oral History Program, sat down with Lady Bird Johnson to discuss her childhood, family life and experiences as First Lady. For the first time anywhere, Not Even Past is publishing audio segments from these incredible conversations.

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Lady Bird, 1915 (Image courtesy of the LBJ Library)

What happened when a young Lady Bird and a friend traveled to New York City in June 1934? Hear her impressions of Chinatown, Depression era poverty and a “museum for fish” she visited.

How did Lady Bird and LBJ meet? In this segment, she describes their very, very brief courtship and Lyndon’s almost immediate proposal.

After LBJ’s proposal, Lady Bird went out to San Marcos to meet Lyndon’s parents. Here she talks about first meeting Mr. and Mrs. Johnson and her impressions of the old Texas family.

“You’ve brought a lot of boys home, and this time you’ve brought a man.” These were the words of Lady Bird’s father after meeting Lyndon for the first time. Hear more about that initial encounter and life at the “Brick House,” Lady Bird’s family home in Karnack, TX.

Credits:

Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson Oral History Interviews, by Michael L. Gillette, LBJ Library

Could a Muslim – or a Catholic or a Jew – Be President? A 1788 Constitutional Debate

by Denise A. Spellberg

The Constitution’s ban on religious tests prompted the nation’s first debate in 1788 about whether a Muslim – or a Catholic or a Jew – might one day become president of the United States.  William Lancaster, a delegate to the North Carolina convention to ratify the Constitution, worried: “But let us remember that we form a government for millions not yet in existence. I have not the art of divination. In the course of four or five hundred years, I do not know how it will work. This is most certain, that Papists may occupy that chair, and Mahometans may take it.”

Lancaster asserted these future fears of a “certain” Catholic or Muslim president on July 30, 1788 as part of a day-long debate on the Constitution’s Article VI, section 3: “… no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”  His views are preserved as the final utterance in the most detailed attack on – and defense of – a uniquely American ideal of religious pluralism, one that included Muslims at the founding.

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Thomas Jefferson’s 1764 copy of The Koran (Image courtesy of the Library of Congress)

The Constitution’s no religious test clause, intended to end strife among Protestants of varied denominations, also theoretically ended exclusive Protestant control over federal appointed and elected offices. An Anti-Federalist, Lancaster and the majority of delegates to the North Carolina convention, opposed not just all non-Protestant participation in the federal government but the Constitution itself. (Anti-Federalists would eventually defeat ratification by a landslide 184 to 84 vote.) Henry Abbot, an Anti-Federalist, worried at the beginning of the day’s debate that Protestant rights of conscience were not sufficiently protected: “They suppose that if there be no religious test required, pagans, deists, and Mahometans might obtain offices among us…”

For Federalists in North Carolina, support for the Constitution thus also included an inadvertent defense of the political equality of Muslims, Catholics, and Jews. James Iredell, later appointed to the Supreme Court by President George Washington in 1790, countered Abbot’s anxieties in the 1788 debate. He included Muslims in his country’s new blueprint: “But it is to be objected that the people of America may, perhaps, choose representatives who have no religion at all, and that pagans and Mahometans may be admitted into offices. But how is it possible to exclude any set of men, without taking away that principle of religious freedom which we ourselves so warmly contend for?”

JamesIredellJames Iredell, a prominent Federalist and Supreme Court Justice who expressed support for the incorporation of Muslims into American society (Image courtesy of the U.S. Government)

Iredell’s universally inclusive stance shocked his listeners. At the time, there were 2,000 Jews in the United States and 25,000 Catholics; both were despised minorities. Catholics were perceived as dangerous because of their past persecution of Protestants in Europe and their allegiance to the Pope. All the delegates to the North Carolina ratification convention were, by law, Protestant, but seemingly none were aware of the thousands of enslaved West African adherents of Islam then in the United States.

The Muslim slave Omar ibn Said, for example, lived in Fayetteville, North Carolina from 1811 until his death in 1863, two years before the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution would have granted him his freedom. Omar is famous for writing his autobiography in Arabic, which is preserved still. A mosque in Fayetteville now bears his name. James Iredell, a slave owner, might argue for the rights of future Muslim citizens in theory, but even he assumed these “Mahometans” remained an exclusively foreign population.  The majority of Americans associated Muslims with sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Ottoman Turkish military incursions in Europe. North African pirates remained a more immediate problem for Americans. In 1784, they began seizing American commercial shipping in the Mediterranean, left defenseless without British naval protection it the wake of Independence.

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Omar ibn Said, a Muslim slave from Fayetteville, North Carolina (Image courtesy of UNC University Libraries)

At home, the fate of all non-Protestants, Muslims, Catholics, and Jews remained linked together in debate on the Constitution. The idea of Muslims and Jews as citizens with rights was not invented in the United States. John Locke, the English political theorist, first asserted the possibility in his 1689 tract on toleration. In 1776, Thomas Jefferson, who considered Locke his hero, copied this precedent: ““he sais ‘neither Pagan nor Mahomedan nor Jew ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the Commonwealth because of his religion.’”  What Jefferson noted in Locke as theory, James Iredell first asserted in actual political debate in support of a Constitution that legally protected the equality of male Muslim, Catholic, and Jewish believers.

If you’d like to learn more: 

The complete transcript of the North Carolina debate may be found online in Elliot’s Debates, The Debate in the Several States Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, volume 4, pp. 191-215, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwed.html. This brief discussion is based on the author’s article “Could a Muslim Be President? An Eighteenth-Century Constitutional Debate,” Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 39, no. 4 (2006), pp. 485-506 and her forthcoming book, Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an: Islam and the Founders, which will be published by Knopf in October 2013.

“Her Program’s Progress”

This Associated Press photograph was taken in 1966 to accompany an article by Frances Lewine about Lady Bird Johnson’s beautification project, entitled, “Her Program’s Progress.”

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“Mrs. Lyndon Johnson has begun a national movement to eradicate blighted and ugly scenery from America, feeling ‘ugliness is an eroding force on the people of the land.’  On visits to small towns, large cities, national parks and points of scenic and historic interest, she related such visits to the benefits of natural beauty. She has been instrumental in legislation and donations to improve, clean up or renovate national eyesores everywhere. Here, before a backdrop of Lake Powell, Mrs. Lyndon Johnson speaks at dedication ceremonies of the Glen Canyon Dam near Page, Arizona, in late September 1966.”

When Lady Bird took the podium, as one of a host of national and local politicians, she pointed out that the region surrounding the dam “consists of eons of time laid bare – on stone pages and in the treasure troves of Indian myths and artifacts” that would make the resulting Lake Powell “a magnet for tourists.” Evoking the genius of technology, the conservation of water, and the spirituality of nature, she remarked, “To me, the appealing genius of conservation is that it combines the energetic feats of technology – like this dam – with the gentle humility that leaves some corners of the earth untouched – alone – free of technology – to be a spiritual touchstone and a recreation asset.”

Only a decade earlier, the area that Lake Powell flooded had been a vast, arid desert, peppered with ancient American Indian cliff dwellings and majestic rock structures, like Rainbow Bridge. The resulting reservoir was impressive given that it filled up a network of side, slot, and crater canyons measuring more than 150 miles long and with a shoreline longer than the east coast of the United States. The dam — a barrier of five million cubic yards of reinforced concrete (more concrete than was used in Hoover Dam) — was hailed as one the “the engineering wonders of the world” by the Bureau of Reclamation as well as local newspapers, and state and local officials in both Arizona and Utah. It was honored as “the outstanding engineering project” by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Yet, among environmentalists it was (and is) considered one of the nation’s most controversial projects. Flooding the canyon disrupted the free flow of the Colorado River, destroyed the original natural beauty of the site, and made dozens of plant and wildlife species extinct.

Clearly, beautification was in the eye of the beholder. For Lady Bird Johnson, as well as many other Americans, technology did not necessarily ruin nature. Later on this leg of her 1966 Beautification tour, she also paid a brief visit to San Ildefonso Indian Pueblo, dedicating a highway and a park and planting seedlings. All of this earned her the nickname: “Our First Lady of National Beautification” from the New York News on November 13, 1966.

Often when thinking about Lady Bird Johnson’s Beautification Program, we overlook the ways she celebrated technology as much as nature — especially if it aided people’s access to nature or natural resources.

For more, see Erika Bsumek’s book: The Foundations of Glen Canyon Dam: Infrastructures of Dispossession on the Colorado Plateau (University of Texas Press, 2023)

The text of the speech may be found: Lady Bird Johnson, “Glen Canyon Dam Dedication Ceremony,” item display 75982, Cline Library, Northern Arizona University.

Photograph: from the author’s private collection.

Einstein, Relativity and Myths

by Alberto A. Martínez

We’ve all heard of the theory of relativity, but what factors really led Einstein to that famous work? In this fascinating talk, Professor Al Martinez discusses how young Einstein formulated relativity, by focusing on debunking several historical myths. His talk is based on his books: Science Secrets: The Truth About Darwin’s Finches, Einstein’s Wife, and Other Myths (2011), and Kinematics: The Lost of Origins and Einstein’s Relativity (2009).

Al Martínez’s piece about Einstein’s religious beliefs

Michael Stoff’s piece about the evocative “Einstein Letter”

“You have died of dysentery” – History According to Video Games

Right now millions of people worldwide are reliving the American Revolution through a new historical fiction. This fictionalized revolution, however, is not televised on PBS, nor is it directed by Steven Spielberg or written by Ken Follett. Instead, this version of the Revolution comes to us through a video game called Assassin’s Creed III. Developed and published by the French gaming company Ubisoft, Assassin’s Creed III follows the story of Connor Kenway, a half-English and half-Mohawk assassin battling the British and the Knights Templar (don’t worry, I’ll explain later) during the period of the US Revolution. From Connor’s perspective, players are able to interact with famous historical figures such as George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, and explore virtual recreations of colonial cities such as Boston, New York and Philadelphia. The game, released on October 30, has already met with critical acclaim from gaming journalists and it promises to become the most consumed and financially successful historical fiction, in any medium, this year.

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The video game is a relatively new medium, but it has a long record of using history to tell stories like the one found in Assassin’s Creed. Given the mass popularity of video games and gaming culture, it seems appropriate that we begin to analyze the history portrayed in this medium in the same way we consider a historical novel or period film. Why and how is history used in video games? How has this use of history changed over time? How does the use of history in video games compare to the use of history in other media? Finally, are these uses of history merely a pretense for entertainment or do they offer a real opportunity to learn about the past?

Early examples of history in video games came from titles designed explicitly for classroom use. Probably the best and most famous of these is The Oregon Trail. Developed by a group of teachers and released by the Minnesota Educational Company Consortium (MECC) in 1974, The Oregon Trail positions players as American settlers leading their families from Independence, Missouri to Oregon in 1848. While on the trail, players are required to manage their provisions as well as a number of impromptu crises, including broken wagon wheels, spoiled food, overworked oxen, and the sudden death of caravan members (usually from dysentery).Success is not guaranteed and the player’s expedition will end in failure without careful planning. Despite its rudimentary visuals and gameplay, The Oregon Trail gives players a rather accurate sense of the difficulty of transcontinental travel in the nineteenth century. It also provides players with something they cannot get from a book or film: an understanding of the past introduced through direct interaction. This interaction, however, is limited to the journey on the trail, and leaves the surrounding historical context (e.g. motivations for the journey, relations with Native Americans, etc.) up to the players, or their teacher, to fill in.

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As The Oregon Trail and its imitators proliferated in classrooms during the 1980s and 90s, commercial games also began to adopt historical settings and topics. Early ventures in this genre included adaptations of historically themed board games, such as Axis and Allies, Diplomacy, and Risk, as well as digital versions of turn-based, tactical military games focused on the campaigns of the Second World War. These games were joined later by a large number of real-time strategy games (RTSs), including The Ancient Art of War, as well as games from the Total War and Age of Empires series. Like the vast majority of historical novels and films, these games focus on high politics and military history. Unlike these media, however, video games often range across long historical time periods and allow players to engage with a wide variety of subjects and events.

A key example of this type of work is the Civilization series, which debuted in 1991. Developed by the legendary Sid Meier, Civilization puts the player in charge of one of the world’s civilizations in 4000 B.C.E., with the objective of establishing and maintaining an empire until they reach either the game’s time limit (the game usually ends in the early 21st century) or one of several victory conditions (conquer all other civilizations by force, establish a colony on Alpha Centauri, be elected leader of the United Nations, or establish cultural hegemony). Players determine nearly every facet of their civilizations: agriculture, construction, demographics, diplomacy, economic policy, religion, and scientific research. The player’s civilization faces challenges from not only computer controlled competitors, but also from unhappy citizens and random natural disasters.

The Civilization series, in many respects, reflects a triumphalist, neoliberal conception of world history. Playable civilizations include crude stereotypes of current nation states, with many civilizations being completely out of place at the beginning of the game in 4000 B.C.E. For example, gamers can choose to play as the United States “civilization,” complete with an Abraham Lincoln avatar, dressed in a bearskin toga. Players often find that the game’s victory conditions are easier to achieve if they maintain a civilization that is democratic, culturally liberal, and secular. Play at all difficulty levels rewards aggressive foreign policy and the military conquest of neighboring civilizations is often a simpler path to victory than diplomatic or financial incentives. An aggressive foreign policy, however, can end in disaster if competing nations have nuclear weapons.

These problems aside, the Civilization series has much to recommend it from a historian’s perspective. It is the only history game that offers a global perspective on the past as well as an appreciation of contingency in history. The game does not follow the historical record – a player could successfully lead the Carthaginian Empire past Rome and begin the Industrial Revolution in Africa in the seventeenth century. Moreover, players can use a custom map or other modifications to create counterfactual situations in order to test variables. How different would European history be if the British Isles were connected to the continent? What if societies in the Americas had access to horses before contact with Europe? Civilization encourages players to consider the longue durée of cultural, economic, and ecological structures. And for players who seek a deeper knowledge of the game’s concepts, each edition of Civilization provides a “Civilopedia” with encyclopedia-size synopses of historical events and figures.

Though the Civilization series remains popular today, the most popular and profitable history video games of recent years come from the first-person shooter (FPS) genre. Beginning with 1992’s Wolfenstein 3D and continuing with the Call of Duty series in the 2000s, FPS games use the history of the Second World War as window dressing for what are essentially action movie simulators. Players take the role of a soldier from one of the Allied powers and shoot their way through levels filled with either German or Japanese enemy soldiers. These games make no effort to contextualize the player’s actions or to consider the moral implications of those actions. Moreover, the Second World War portrayed in these games remains firmly entrenched in the “Good War” narrative: Allied soldiers in these shooters are always heroic and righteous.

Other recent games, including the FPS series BioShock and the strategy series Command and Conquer: Red Alert, use history as the basis for adventures in counterfactuals. The first BioShock places the player in the city of Rapture, a submerged metropolis under the Atlantic Ocean built in the 1940s by a Howard Hughes-esque industrialist who hoped to create a utopian society based on Randian, or Objectivist philosophy (spoiler: it didn’t turn out so well). BioShock: Infinite, scheduled for release next year, is set in the floating city of Columbus in 1912, and will see the player engaging with Progressive Era ideas of American empire, eugenics, and exceptionalism.  Command and Conquer: Red Alert begins with Albert Einstein using time travel to murder Adolf Hitler in 1924 in order to prevent the Second World War. Unfortunately, this event creates a parallel timeline in which the Soviet Union embarks on world domination during the 1950s.

The Assassin’s Creed series, which debuted in 2007, also revels in counterfactual fantasies, but attempts to place these stories in realistic historical settings. In Assassin’s Creed, players take the role of Desmond Miles, a modern day bartender who is kidnapped by a shadowy multinational corporation called Abstergo Industries. Abstergo forces Desmond to use a virtual reality machine called the Animus, which allows the user to relive the lives of their ancestors using their DNA (hold on, it gets crazier). During the first game of the series, Desmond relives the life of his ancestor Altaïr ibn-La’Ahad, a Syrian assassin who lived during the third Crusade. The second installment of the series finds Desmond reliving the life of Ezio Auditore da Firenze, a fifteenth-century Italian assassin. Eventually, Desmond learns that Abstergo is the modern incarnation of the Knights Templar and that the organization is using Desmond’s ancestral memories to search for the “Pieces of Eden,” objects of immense supernatural power (think the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark). Famous historical figures make appearances throughout the series. Assassin’s Creed II, for instance, sees Leonardo Da Vinci, act as an early modern Q to the player’s James Bond, providing the protagonist with an assortment of gadgets, including his famous tank and flying machine models.

The story in Assassin’s Creed – the Illuminati meets Ancestry.com – has much in common with the conspiratorial history seen in the fiction of Dan Brown and Neal Stephenson. This fantastical story, however, is couched in a largely accurate and detailed historical setting. The first installment of the series, set in Palestine, features period recreations of Acre, Damascus, and Jerusalem. Assassin’s Creed II, set in Italy, provides recreations of Florence, Monteriggioni, Venice, and Rome.

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This game also adds historical descriptions to the buildings players encounter (and climb) while playing, including St. Mark’s Basilica, Santa Maria del Fiore, Santa Croce, and the Ponte Vecchio. A direct sequel to Assassin’s Creed II, called Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, takes place in Istanbul and provides a similar level of detail. Developer Ubisoft’s effort at recreation also extends to the human characters who populate the game world. Careful attention is paid to clothing, demeanor, and language.  In pre-release coverage for the third game, creative director Alexander Hutchinson described the process of research and consulting that went into creating a Native American protagonist. Hutchison boasts of reading Wikipedia entries and watching documentaries, but his company also relies on a multinational group of professional historians and in-house researchers.

Of course, Ubisoft’s recreations are far from perfect and not always completely accurate. Yet their work demonstrates the potential for video games to provide consumers with history that is both interactive and instructive. To be sure, this history continues to focus on blood and guts, but a desire for different stories is emerging. For instance, Xav de Matos of Joystiq.com suggested last month that developers create a game focused on Harriet Tubman and the abolitionist movement. The recent growth in the popularity of video games has forced the industry and traditional gamers to begin to confront some of their biggest demons regarding racism, violence, and, most importantly, sexism. Ubisoft, for its part, published a portable game called Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation, which follows the life of a female African-French Assassin in eighteenth century New Orleans. If this trend continues, there is little doubt that new and different video game histories will emerge, and it will be exciting to see if those narratives lead to better opportunities for learning about the past.

The author would like to thank Dr. John Harney for his comments on an earlier draft of this essay.

You might also like:

Keith Stuart, “Assassin’s Creed and the Appropriation of History,” The Guardian

Here on Not Even Past: Joan Neuberger, “Telling Stories, Writing History: Novel Week on NEP.“

A free version of the original Civilization is available here

For ideas on using video games in the classroom, see Jeremiah McCall’s Gaming the Past: Using Video Games to Teach Secondary History (2011)

More by Bob Whitaker on gaming can be found on twitter @whitakeralmanac and his Playstation, Steam, and Xbox gamertag is hookem1883.

Images used under Fair Use Guidelines: See Wikipedia:Non-free content.

Henry Wiencek Sr on Thomas Jefferson, Slave owner

Laura Miller begins her review of Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves, with this:

“No founding father wrote more eloquently on behalf of liberty and human rights than Thomas Jefferson, and none has a more troubling record when it comes to the “peculiar institution” of slavery. At present, the popular understanding of Jefferson’s shilly-shallying on this issue doesn’t extend much deeper than knowing smirks about Sally Hemings and the (unacknowledged) children Jefferson fathered with her. We tend to assume that the dirtiest secrets of the past have to do with sex. But, as Henry Wiencek explains in his new book, “Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves,” the real filth is in the ledger books.”

510z-LgDm1LOn Friday, October 26, 2012, Mr Wiencek visited us at the UT History department to discuss the new book with Professors Jacqueline Jones and Robert Olwell and answer questions from the audience. Listen to the discussion here or click the link above.

Henry Wiencek, “The Dark Side of Thomas Jefferson,” Smithsonian, October 2012

Laura Miller, Master of the Mountain reviewed, Salon, October 14, 2012.

Posted Monday, November 5, 2012

An Architectural History of Garrison Hall

By Henry Wiencek

As students and faculty members resume their classwork at Garrison Hall this semester, it is worth examining the iconic building’s colorful history and architectural conception. The first stages of Garrison’s development began in 1922 as the Board of Regents sought a new campus plan for the university. Although the Board had been employing the eminent New York City architect Cass Gilbert—whose achievements include the U.S. Supreme Court building, the Woolworth Building and various state capitols—pressure from local architects to patronize a Texas firm resulted in Gilbert’s termination. Subsequently, the University hired Herbert M. Greene of Dallas, James White of Illinois and Robert Leon White of Austin, who collaborated on a 1924 campus plan that included the future Garrison Hall.

Architects Tag for Garrison Hall at the University of Texas at Austin

Construction began in 1925 and finished the following year, producing the 54,069 square foot edifice at a cost of $370,000. Initially known as the “Recitation” building the new structure eventually borrowed its name from George Pierce Garrison (1853–1910), the history department’s first chair and a founding member of the Texas State Historical Association. Hired by the university in 1884, Garrison assumed responsibility for teaching the entire history curriculum and earned a reputation for domineering style. Even after the department hired additional faculty in 1891, Garrison refused to allow his colleagues to teach any U.S. subjects.

Blueprint of the architectural drawing of Garrison Hall at the University of Texas at Austin

The building’s design blended classical aesthetics with Texas iconography—pairing wide archways and Ionic flourishes with renderings of cacti, steer skulls and 32 Texas cattle brands. Texas pride is also evident on the second floor’s exterior, which is adorned with the names of prominent state figures: [Stephen F.] Austin, [William Barret] Travis, [David G.] Burnet, [Sam] Houston, [Mirabeau B.] Lamar, and [Anson] Jones.

Detail on the blueprints of the architectural drawings of Garrison Hall at the University of Texas at Austin

Throughout its existence, Garrison has accommodated numerous departments, including English, government, psychology, sociology, philosophy, economics and history—its only continuous occupant. However, Garrison has also housed other, less desirable, elements of the university as well. William Battle, Chairman of the Faculty Building Committee, described these “residents” in an October 1931 letter to Goldwin Goldsmith, the Architecture Department’s Chair: “I noticed that the north entrance to Garrison Hall is a harboring place for bats. It is evident to the senses of both sight and smell.” Responding one week later, Goldsmith lamented that “I do not see how to protect the entrances from these loathsome creatures, but Miss Gearing tells me that the Comptroller’s office has an excellent way of dealing with them. It is apparently by using fire-extinguishing apparatus.” Fortunately for Garrison’s present occupants, the University resolved this unintended infestation.

Details of the Skull Freize on the blueprints of the architectural drawings of Garrison Hall at the University of Texas at Austin

In 2008, Garrison underwent an extensive renovation that modernized its facilities while restoring its historic features. In addition to its remodeled interior, the building also resides amidst a very different University of Texas. The UT tower, completed in 1937, now dominates the campus; and no longer do students use the halls for “loitering and smoking” as history professor Walter Prescott Webb (1888–1963) once observed. Nonetheless, Garrison maintains a strong continuity with its history and functions as both a figurative and literal time capsule: the building’s hollow cornerstone contains university newspapers, correspondence and ephemera dating back to the early 20th century.

All photos courtesy of:

The University of Texas Buildings Collection
The Alexander Architectural Archive
The University of Texas Libraries
The University of Texas at Austin

Works Cited:

Nicar, Jim, Texas Exes, UT Heritage Society, and UT History Central, “An Ode to Garrison Hall”
Steinbock-Pratt, Sarah, “Some Notable Personalities in the History Department”


The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

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