Sublime

Conner loaned Eisenhower three works of historical fiction—The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (of Sherlock Holmes fame), The Long Roll by Mary Johnston (granddaughter of Confederate General Joseph Johnston), and The Crisis by American author Winston Churchill (no relation to the more famous Briton of the same name.)

In his letter to The Harvard Crimson, Albizu expressed the hope that Puerto Rico might gain independence and become like Cuba. Albizu’s hope hinged, above all, on one figure, Woodrow Wilson, elected president in 1912. A Southern Democrat, Wilson was a far cry from the three Republican imperialists who had preceded him: William McKinley, Teddy Roose

“Abraham Lincoln seems to me the grandest figure yet, on all the crowded canvas of the Nineteenth Century.”

The 1824 election came down to a contest between a member of the English elite, John Quincy Adams, and a member of the Scots-Irish lower class, Andrew Jackson.

Abraham Lincoln occasionally got fuming mad with a subordinate, one of his generals, even a friend. Rather than taking it out on that person directly, he’d write a long letter, outlining his case why they were wrong and what he wanted them to know. Then Lincoln would fold it up, put the letter in the desk drawer, and never send it. Many of these le