[Homer_J_Simpson]

Free Republic University, Department of History presents U.S. History, 1855-1860: Seminar and Discussion Forum
Bleeding Kansas, Dred Scott, Lincoln-Douglas, Harper’s Ferry, the election of 1860, secession – all the events leading up to the Civil War, as seen through news reports of the time and later historical accounts

First session: November 21, 2015. Last date to add: Sometime in the future.
Reading: Self-assigned. Recommendations made and welcomed.

Posting history, in reverse order

To add this class to or drop it from your schedule notify Admissions and Records (Attn: Homer_J_Simpson) by reply or freepmail.

Link to previous New York Times thread

[Homer_J_Simpson]

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[Stosh]

From the last paragraph on the page 2 article on the slave trade:

“The United States have risen from the rank of a remote and struggling colony into that of a first class Power”.

It’s interesting that they use the plural verb with the United States - in our lifetime, that sentence would start “The United States *has* risen . . .”

On the one hand, it could just be a residual ‘Britishism”. On the other hand the usage given does tend to emphasize some degree of sovereignty of the individual states, while our modern grammatical treatment puts the emphasis squarely on the federal union as an individual entity.

I just wonder how many years after war it was until that change in the grammatical standard took place.