Free Republic

An Italian exchange student once asked me what he should know in order to understand America. The best I could come up with on the spot was the U.S. Constitution, jazz and baseball. Later it would come to me that to study each of those only in the abstract, as just a rule book or a series of notes on a page, would be less than useful to someone trying to understand America. The notes would be there, but not the music. The rules of the game would be there, but not the spirit. That spirit cannot be appreciated...

Washington, Dec. 8, 1860Library of CongressGate and north portico of the White House, circa 1859-61 Five Southern gentlemen came calling, anxious to speak with the president of what was, as far as they were concerned, on the brink of becoming a foreign country. For the moment, they all remained American citizens – and members of Congress, no less. But that was a mere technicality. As they strode up the steps to James Buchanan’s second-floor office, they carried themselves with a dignity befitting the founding fathers of a new nation: the independent Republic of South Carolina.The Carolinians’ mission that Saturday was...