What I've been promising to do for three weeks now and what I probably should have done three

years ago:

The American Pageant 1. Several billion years ago, that whirling speck of dust known as the earth, fifth in size among the planets, came into being. (4) 2. Columbus returned to the Caribbean island of Hispanola in 1493 with seventeen ships that unloaded twelve hundred men and a virtual Noahs Ark of cattle, swine, and horses. (15) 3. Francisco Coronado, in quest of fabled golden cities that turned out to be adobe pueblos, wandered with a clanking cavalcade through Arizona and New Mexico. (17) 4. The conquistadors first fell upon their knees and then fell upon the aborigines. (19) 5. We Spanish suffer from a strange disease of the heart, Cortes allegedly informed the emissaries, for which the only known cure is gold. (20) 6. European immigrants were not attracted in great numbers to a site where the soil was so stony- and the sermons so sulfurous. (81) 7. Dukes dont emigrate. (82) 8. It was said, somewhat unfairly, that the Scotch-Irish kept the Sabbath- and all else they could lay their hands on. Pugnacious, lawless, and individualistic, they brought with them the Scottish secrets of whiskey distilling. (86) 9. The Middle Colonies: Seemingly the farmer had only to tickle the soil with a hoe and it would laugh with the harvest. (91) 10. One of Englands greatest actors of the day commented enviously that Whitefield could make audiences weep merely by pronouncing the word Mesopotamia and said that he would give a hundred guineas if I could say O! like Mr. Whitefield. (97) 11. The worst of the group was probably impoverished Lord Corbury, first cousin of Queen Anne, who was made governor of New York and New Jersey in 1702. He proved to be a drunkard, a spendthrift, a grafter, an embezzler, a religious bigot, and a vain fool, who was accused (probably inaccurately) of dressing as a woman. (102) 12. While the French hawk had been hovering in the North and West, the colonial chicks had been forced to cling close to the wings of their British mother hen. Now that the hawk was killed, they could range far afield in the spirit of independence.(117) 13. Lordly Britons, whose suddenly swollen empire had tended to produce swollen heads, were in no mood for back talk. (121) 14. Control of the British ministry was now seized by the gifted but erratic Champagne Charley Townshend, a man who could deliver brilliant speeches even when drunk. Rashly promising to pluck feathers from the colonial goose with a minimum of squawking, he persuaded Parliament in 1767 to pass the Townshend Acts. (129) 15. Giving new meaning to the proverbial tempest in a teapot, a group of 126 Boston women signed an agreement [announcing their boycott of tea]. (129) 16. On the Boston Tea Party: The crowd watched approvingly as salty tea was brewed for the fish. (133)

17. British armies took every city of any size, but like a boxer punching a feather pillow, they made little more than a dent in the entire country. (136) 18. On Baron von Steuben: He soon taught his men that bayonets were not for broiling beefsteaks over open fires. (138) 19. When ones house is on fire, one does not inquire too closely at the background of those who carry the water buckets. (156) 20. To say that America, with some French aid, defeated Britain is like saying, Daddy and I killed the bear. (157) 21. A weak America- like a horse sturdy enough to plow but not vigorous enough to kickwould be easier to manage in promoting French interests and policy. (161) 22. People do not chop off heads so readily when they can chop down trees. (170) 23. War-baby American industries, in particular, suffered industrial colic from such ruthless competition. (171) 24. Above all, they were nationalists, more concerned with strengthening the young Republic than in further stirring the roiling cauldron of democracy. (178) 25. Americas ship of state did not spread its sails in the most favorable of breezes. (190) 26. On the French Revolution: God-fearing Federalist aristocrats nervously fingered their tender white necks, and eyed the Jeffersonian masses apprehensively. (199) 27. Sober-minded Jeffersonians regretted the bloodshed. But they felt, with Jefferson, that one could not expect to be carried from despotism to liberty on a feather bed and that a few thousand aristocratic heads were a cheap price to pay for freedom. (199) 28. Adams: The heady wine of popularity did not sway his final judgment. (205) 29. The war scare had petered out and the country was left with an all-dressed-up-but-noplace-to-go feeling. (212) 30. Burrs pistol blew out the brightest brain of the Federalist Party and destroyed its one remaining hope of effective leadership. His political career as dead as Hamiltons, Burr turned his disunionist plottings to the trans-Mississippi West. (224) 31. Britain ruled the waves and waived the rules. (225) 32. The scholarly Madison was small of stature, light of weight, bald of head, and weak of voice. (228) 33. I prefer the troubled sea of war, demanded by the honor and independence of this country, with all ifs calamities and desolation, to the tranquil and putrescent pool of peace.- Henry Clay (Henry of the West) (229) 34. [Britains] brilliant defensive operations were led by the inspired British general Isaac Brock and assisted (in the American camp) by General Mud and General Confusion. (234) 35. The United States, which had so brashly provoked war behind the protective skirts of Napoleon, was left to face the music alone. (234) 36. The woods were full of presidential timber as James Monroe completed his second term. (257) 37. John Randolph of Virginia publicly assailed the alliance between the Puritan [Adams] and the black-leg Clay who, he added shines and stinks like a rotten mackerel by moonlight (258) 38. John Quincy Adams was a chip off the old family glacier. Short, thickset, and billiardbald, he was even more frigidly austere than his presidential father, John Adams. (259)

39. With the dawning age of backslapping and baby-kissing democracy, [Adams] cold-fish son could hardly hope for success at the polls. (259) 40. [John Quincy Adams] was even accused of having procured a servant girl for the lust of the Russian tsar- in short, of having served as a pimp. (260) 41. The [spoils] system had already secured a firm hold on New York and Pennsylvania, where well-greased machines ladled out the gravy of office. (262) 42. Most of the newspaper editors, some of them bought with Biddles bank loans, dipped their pens in acid when they wrote of Jackson. (271) 43. The Panic of 1837: There were not enough rabbits in the Little Magicians tall silk hat. (274) 44. Texas: Among the adventurers were Davy Crocket and Jim Bowie, the presumed inventor of the murderous knife that bears his name. Bowies blade was widely known in the Southwest as the genuine Arkansas toothpick. (276) 45. Taking full advantage of the Mexican siesta, the Texans wiped out the pursuing force and captured Santa Anna, who was found cowering in the tall grass near the battlefield. Confronted with thirsty bowie knives, the quaking dictator was speedily induced to sign two treaties. (277) 46. Old Tip he wears a homespun shirt, He has no ruffled shirt, wirt, wirt 47. But Matt, he has the golden plate, and hes a little squirt, wirt wirt.(281) 48. Bawling Whigs, stimulated by fortified cider, rolled huge inflated balls from village to village and state to state- balls that represented the snowballing majority for Tippecanoe and Tyler Too. (281) 49. Van Buren was washed out of Washington on a wave of apple juice. (282) 50. The Devil hates the Methodist 51. Because they sing and shout the best (322) 52. Schoolteachers, most of them men in this era, were too often ill trained, ill tempered, and ill paid. They frequently put more stress on lickin (with a hickory stick) then on larnin. The knights of the blackboard often boarded around in the community, and some knew scarecely more than their older pupils. They usually taught only the three Rs- readin, ritin, and rithmetic. To many rugged Americans, suspicious of book larnin, this was enough. (325) 53. In their eyes, Cotton was King, the gin was his throne, and the black bondsmen were his henchmen. (351) 54. British magazines added fuel to the flames when, enlarging on the travel books, they launched sneering attacks on Yankee shortcomings. American journals struck back with youre another arguments, thus touching off The Third War with England. Fortunately, this British-American war was only fought with paper broadsides, and only ink was spilled. British authors, including Charles Dickens, entered the fray with galldipped pens, for they were being denied rich royalties by the absence of an American copyright law. (373) 55. If Mexy backd by secret foes,/Still talks of getting you, gal;/Why we can lick em all you know/And then annex em too, gal (375) 56. What other power would have spurned the imperial domain of Texas? The bride was so near, so rich, so fair, so willing. Whatever the peculiar circumstances of the Texas revolution, the United States can hardly be accused of unseemly haste in achieving

annexation. Nine long years were surely a decent wait between the beginning of the courtship and the consummation of the marriage. (375) 57. Yet delay seemed dangerous, for the claws of the British lion might snatch the ripening California fruit from the talons of the American eagle. (383) 58. Stephen Douglas: A squat, bull-necked, and heavy-chested figure, the Little Giant radiated the energy and breezy optimism for the self-made man. (405) 59. A veritable steam engine in breeches, Douglas threw himself behind a legislative scheme that would enlist the support of the reluctant South. (405) 60. Republicans fell behind Fremont with the zeal of crusaders. Shouting We Follow the Pathfinder and We are Buck Hunting, they organized glee clubs, which sang (to the tune of the Marseillaise) Arise, arise ye brave! /And let our war cry be, /Free speech, free press, free soil, free men / Fre-mont and liberty! 61. And free love, sneered the Buchanan supporters (Buchaneers). (416) 62. Their high-pitched Rebel yell (yeeeahhh) was designed to strike terror into the hearts of fuzz-chinned Yankee recruits. (438) 63. Wave the stars and stripes high oer us, Let every freeman singOld King Cottons head and buried: And brave young Corn is king (442) 64. Americans did not feel that they could offend their great and good friend, the tsar, by hurling his walrus-covered icebergs back into his face. (496) 65. Republicans could not take future victories for Granted. (503) 66. A few skunks can pollute a large area. Although the great majority of businesspeople and government officials continued to conduct their affairs with decency and honor, the whole postwar atmosphere was fetid. The Man in the Moon, it was said, had to hold his nose when passing over America. (503) 67. Burly Boss Tweed-240 pounds of rascality- employed bribery, graft, and fraudulent elections to milk the metropolis of as much as $200 million. (504) 68. In the mud-splattered campaign that followed, regular Republicans denounced Greeley as an atheist, a communist, a free-lover, a vegetarian, a brown-bread eater, and a cosigner of Jefferson Daviss bail bond. Democrats derided Grant as an ignoramus, a drunkard, and a swindler. (506) 69. Latter-day punsters gibed that the Mugwumps were priggish politicians who sat on the fence with their mugs on one side and their wumps on the other. 70. Into this tense cockpit stepped the new Republican Speaker of the House, Thomas B. Reed. A hulking figure who towered six feet three inches, he was renowned as a master debater. He spoke with a harsh nasal drawl and wielded a verbal harpoon of sarcasm. To one congressman who quoted Henry Clay that he would rather be right than president, Reed caustically retorted that he would never be either. Opponents cringed at the crack of his quip. (520) 71. The wedding of the rails was finally consummated near Ogden, Utah, in 1869, as two locomotives- facing on a single track, half a world behind each back-gently kissed cowcatchers. The colorful ceremony included the breaking of champagne bottles and the driving of the last ceremonial (golden) spike, with ex-governor Leland Stanford clumsily wielding a silver sledgehammer. (531) 72. J.P. Morgan: An impressive figure of a man, with massive shoulders, shaggy brows, piercing eyes, and a bulbous, acne-cursed red noseThe chronic skin disorder on his nose inspired the taunt, Johnny Morgans nasal organ has a purple hue. (539)

73. Carnegie: Mounting the ladder of success to fast that he was said to have scorched the rungs, he forged ahead by working hard, doing the extra chore, cheerfully assuming responsibility, and smoothly cultivating influential people. (539) 74. In pursuing its nativist goals, the APA urged voting against Roman Catholic candidates for office and sponsored the publication of lustful fantasies about runaway nuns. (569) 75. Post Civil-War Americans devoured millions of dime novels, usually depicting the wilds of the wooly West. Paint-bedaubed Indians and quick-triggered gunman like Deadwood Dick shot off vast quantities of powder, and virtue invariably triumphed. These lurid paperbacks were frowned upon by parents, but goggle-eyed youths read them in haylofts or in schools behind the broad covers of geography books. (578) 76. A new Moses suddenly appeared in the person of William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska. Then only thirty-six years of age and known as the Boy Orator of the Platte, he stepped confidently onto the platform before fifteen thousand people. (One contemporary sneered that Bryan, like the Platte River in his home state of Nebraska, was six inches deep and six miles wide at the mouth.) (617) 77. Prairie avenger, mountain lion. Bryan, Bryan, Bryan, Bryan,/Gigantic troubadour, speaking like a siege gun,/Smashing Plymouth Rock with his boulders from the West (617) 78. His masterful presence was set off by a peninsular jaw and raven-black hair. (617) 79. The tide of silver heresy rapidly receded, and the Popocratic fish were left gasping high and dry on a gold-sanded beach. (621) 80. The hesitant chief executive was condemned by jingoes as Wobbly Willie McKinley, while fight-hungry Theodore Roosevelt reportedly snarled that the white-livered occupant of the White House did not have the backbone of a chocolate clair. (630) 81. Oh, dewy was the morning/Upon the first of May,/And Dewey was the admiral,/Down in Manila Bay./And dewy were the Spaniards eyes,/Them orbs of black and blue;/And do we feel discouraged?/I dew not think we dew! (632) 82. In essence, the Spanish-American War was a kind of colossal coming-out party.(639) 83. In its second year [The Philippine Commission] was headed by future president William H. Taft, an able and amiable lawyer-judge from Ohio who weighed about 350 pounds. Forming a strong attachment to the Filipinos, he called them his little brown brothers and danced light-footedly with their tiny women. (647) 84. Like caged hawks, they beat against their gilded bars until they finally got their freedom, on the Fourth of July, 1946. (648) 85. Under such dubious midwifery was the infant [Open Door Note] born, and no one should have been surprised when the child proved to be sickly and relatively short-lived. (649) 86. Content with good times, the country anticipated four more years of a full dinner pail crammed with fried chicken. (653) 87. What manner of man was Theodore Roosevelt, the red-blooded blue blood? (653) 88. A barrel-chested five feet ten inches, with prominent teeth, squinty eyes, droopy mustache, and piercing voice. (654) 89. He never ceased to preach the virile virtues and to denounce civilized softness, with its pacifists and other flubdubs and mollycoddles. (654) 90. He stood just a little left of center and bared his mule-like molars at liberals and reactionaries alike. (654)

91. After visiting him, a journalist wrote You go home and wring the personality out of your clothes. (654) 92. Yet as the war dragged on, Japan began to run short of men and yen- a weakness it did not want to betray to the enemy. (659) 93. To many Americans, the Japanese were getting too big for their kimonos. (659) 94. TRs enthusiasm and perpetual youthfulness, like an overgrown Boy Scouts, appealed to the young of all ages. You must always remember, a British diplomat cautioned his colleagues, that the president is about six. (683) 95. [TR] therefore invited the entire San Francisco Board of Education, headed by a bassoon-plating mayor under indictment for graft, to come to the White House. (660) 96. Mary had a little lamb,/And when she saw it sicken,/She shipped it off to Packingtown,/And now its labeled chicken (675) 97. Roosevelt pined to preserve the nations shrinking forests. (677) 98. Taft: A Round Peg in a Square Hole (683) 99. As heir apparent, he had been called on to sit on the lid- all 350 pounds of him. (682) 100. Everyone loves a fat man, the saying goes, and the jovial Taft, with mirthquakes of laughter bubbling up from his abundant abdomen, was personally popular. (683) 101. Exuberantly [Roosevelt] cried, My hat is in the ring! and The fight is on and I am stripped to the buff! (685) 102. Roosevelt was applauded tumultuously as he cried in a vehement speech, We stand at Armageddon and we battle for the Lord! The hosanna spirit of a religious revival suffused the convention as the hoarse delegates sang Onward Christian Soldiers and Battle Hymn of the Republic. William Allen White, the caustic Kansas journalist, later wrote, Roosevelt bit me and I went mad.(688) 103. Roosevelt boasted that he felt as strong as a bull moose, and the bull moose took its place with the donkey and the elephant in the American political zoo. (688) 104. I want to be a Bull Moose,/And with the Bull Moose stand/ With antlers on my forehead/And with a big stick in my hand. (688) 105. Death alone can take me out now, cried the once-jovial Taft, as he branded Roosevelt a dangerous egotist and a demagogue. Roosevelt, fighting mad, assailed Taft as a fathead with the brain of a guinea pig. (688) 106. Wilson: As a lifelong student of finely chiseled words, he turned out to be a phraseocrat who coined many noble epigrams. Someone has remarked that he was born halfway between the Bible and the dictionary and never strayed far from either. (690) 107. With his villainous upturned mustache, Kaiser Wilhelm seemed the embodiment of arrogant autocracy. (697) 108. The cigar-shaped marauders posed a dire threat to the United States. (699) 109. The thick-whiskered Hughes (an animated feather-duster) left the bench for the campaign stump, where he was not at home. (701) 110. Hang-the-kaiser movies, carrying such titles as The Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin and To Hell with the Kaiser, revealed the helmeted Hun at his bloodiest. (708) 111. [Wilson] was much like the mother who had to throw her sickly younger children to the pursuing wolves to save her sturdy firstborn. (722)

112. One Democratic senator angrily charged that the president had strangled his own brainchild with its own palsied hands rather than let the Senate straighten its crooked limbs. (724) 113. Knights of the Invisible Empire included among their officials Imperial Wizards, Grand Goblins, King Kleagles, and other horrendous kreatures. The most impressive displays were konclaves and huge flag-waving parades. (730) 114. Slaking thirst became a cherished personal liberty, and many ardent wets believed that the way to bring about repeal was to violate the law on a large enough scale. (733) 115. Flaming youth of the jazz age thought it smart to swill bootleg liquor- liquid tonsillectomies. Millions of older citizens likewise found forbidden fruit fascinating, as they engaged in bar hunts. (733) 116. Home brew and bathtub gin became popular, as law-evading adults engaged in alky cooking with toy stills. The worst of the homemade rotgut produced blindness, even death. The affable bootlegger worked in silent partnership with the friendly undertaker. (736) 117. The lush profits of illegal alcohol led to bribery of the police, many of whom were induced to see and smell no evil. (736) 118. Rival triggermen used their sawed-off shotguns and chattering typewriters (machine guns) to erase bootlegging competitors who were trying to muscle in on their racket. (736) 119. And the pistols red glare,/The bombs bursting in air,/Give proof through the night/That Chicagos still there (736) 120. By the late 1920s, Americans owned more cars than bathtubs. I cant go to town in a bathtub, one homemaker explained. (742) 121. Teapot Dome, no tempest in a teapot, finally came to a whistling boil. (759) 122. [Coolidges] dour, serious visage prompted the observation that he had been weaned on a pickle. (760) 123. Teapot Dome had scalded the Republican party badly, but so transparently honest was the vinegary Vermonter that the scandalous oil did not rub off on him. (760) 124. His logical successor was super-Secretary Herbert Hoover, unpopular with the political bosses but the much-admired darling of the masses, who asked Hoo but Hoover? (764) 125. Al(cohol) Smith was soakingly and drippingly wet at a time when the country was still devoted to the noble experiment of prohibition. (764) 126. Jauntily sporting a brown derby and a big cigar, Smith the Happy Warrior, tried to carry alcohol on one shoulder and water on the other. (765) 127. Herbert Hoover may have won the 1928 election by promising a chicken in every pot, but three years later that chicken seemed to have laid a discharge slip in every pay envelope. (777) 128. No one, as Al Smith remarked, shoots at Santa Claus. (798) 129. But in [FDRs] eyes, the cloistered old men on the supreme bench, like fossilized stumbling blocks, stood stubbornly in the pathway of progress. (798) 130. Adolf Hitler: A fanatic with a toothbrush mustache (809) 131. It was as plain as the mustache on Stalins face that the wily Soviet dictator was plotting to turn his German accomplice against the Western democracies. (813)

132. But like a drunken reveler calling for madder music and stronger wine, Hitler could not stop. (813) 133. Isolationist Senator Taft (who was reputed to have the finest mind in Washington until he made it up) retorted that lending arms was like lending chewing gum: You dont want it back. Who wants a chewed-up tank? (821) 134. Japans fanatics forgot that whoever stabs a king must stab to kill. A wounded but still potent American giant pulled itself out of the mud of Pearl Harbor determined to avenge the bloody treachery. (827) 135. American song titles after Pearl Harbor combined nationalism with unabashed racism: We Are the Sons of the Rising Guns, Oh, You Little Son of an Oriental, To Be Specific, Its Our Pacific, The Sun Will Soon Be Setting on the Land of the Rising Sun, and Were Gonna Find a Fellow Who Is Yellow and Beat Him Red, White, and Blue. (829) 136. [Deweys] shortness and youth- he was only forty-two- had caused one veteran New Dealer to sneer that the candidate had cast his diaper into the ring. (847) 137. The dapper Dewey, cruelly dubbed the little man on top of the wedding cake, had spoken smoothly of international cooperation, but his running mate, Bricker, implanted serious doubts. (848) 138. As the gusher of postwar prosperity poured forth its riches, Americans drank deeply from the gilded goblet. (860) 139. As the oversize postwar generation grew to maturity, it was destined- like the fabled pig passing through the python- to strain and distort many aspects of American life. (866) 140. But gradually [Truman] evolved from a shrinking pipsqueak to a scrappy little cuss, gaining confidence to the point of cockiness. (866) 141. A smallish man thrust suddenly into a giant job, Truman permitted designing old associates of the Missouri Gang to gather around him and, like Grant, was stubbornly loyal to them when they were caught with cream on their whiskers. (867) 142. The British-Appearing Secretary of State, Dean Acheson 143. [The Republicans] noisily renominated warmed-over New York governor Thomas E. Dewey, still as debonair as if he had stepped out of a bandbox. (881) 144. The cold, smug Dewey confined himself to dispensing soothing-syrup trivialities such as our future lies before us. (881) 145. President Dewey had embarrassingly snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. (882) 146. Incoming secretary of state John Foster Dulles- a pious churchgoer whose sanctimonious manner was lampooned by critics as Dull, Duller, Dulles promised not merely to stem the red tide but to roll back its gains and liberate captive peoples. (899) 147. But despite the GOP national chairmans boast that any jockey would look good riding Ike, the generals coattails this time were not so stiff or broad. (902) 148. The concord of Camp David was replaced with the grapes of wrath. (905) 149. To the question, Why is television called a medium? pundits replied, Because its never rare or well-done. (911) 150. Rock was crossover music, carrying its heavy beat and driving rhythms across the cultural divide that separated black and white musical traditions. Listening and

dancing to it became a kind of religious rite for many baby boomers coming of age in the 1950s, and Presley- with his fleshy face, pouting lips, and antic, sexually suggestive gyrations, was its high priest. (912) 151. He could move mountains or checkmate opponents as the occasion demanded, using what came to be known as the Johnson treatment- a flashing display of backslapping, flesh-pressing, and arm-twisting that overbore friend and foe alike. (927) 152. The Tonkin Gulf Resolution, Johnson boasted, was like grandmas nightshirt- it covered everything. (929) 153. A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that it is true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not. Ronald Reagan (986)