Articles from 1913
There were several clothing options available for the well-heeled men fortunate enough to (briefly) enjoy Titanic‘s First Class comforts. Dinner suits were not strictly confined to black and there were a number of shirting and accessory choices; this article covers all of them quite thoroughly.
More on men’s fashions can be read here.
How Did the Men in First Class Dress for Dinner? (Vanity Fair, 1913) Read More »
A thumbnail description of Lee’s gamble in the North: the Battle of Antietam:
Lee repeatedly broke and drove back the advancing Union armies. Then in the summer of 1862, he took the aggressive and invaded the North. His eager and victorious soldiers hoped to sweep successfully over the entire country. But they were met in Maryland at Antietam Creek by the Union army commanded by General George McClellan. The battle that ensued was the bloodiest and the most costly single day of strife in all this awful war.
Antietam (Famous Events, 1913) Read More »
Written at the time when the United States was marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, Dudley Miles, a Professor of History at Columbia University, wrote this appreciation concerning one of the lasting virtues of the American Civil War:
The torrent of natural life has swept away the bitter memories of brother struggling with brother. In both North and South faces are turned from the past, and hearts are filled with pride and hope and aspiration for the future of the republic….The magnanimity which Grant displayed at Appomattox, the restraint which even political temper displayed during Reconstruction, stopping short of confiscation of property and the execution of prominent leaders…these things furnish a new chapter in the history of victor and vanquished.
The American Civil War and the Unity it Created (The Sewanee Review, 1913) Read More »
There is much that can be said about President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation
It was argued that slavery in the United States did not end in 1865…
The Emancipation Proclamation (Famous Events, 1913) Read More »
This short article from The Famous Events of the World was written at a time when the Civil War was still fresh in the American memory; and although their lines were thinning, the veterans of that war were still walking the streets. One of the important events of the American Civil War during the year 1864 was the sinking of the Confederate pirate ship, C.S.S. Alabama
After a long course of capturing and destroying Northern merchant ships, the Aabama was caught in a French harbor by the United States frigate Kearsarge. The Kearsarge defied the ALABAMA to battle; and the Confederate ship, accepting the challenge, steamed confidently forth amid salvos of applause from the French and English spectators. The Kearsarge completely outfought her, and sank her.
Click here to read an article about the captain of the ALABAMA, Raphael Semmes.
The Sinking of the C.S.S. Alabama (Famous Events Magazine, 1913) Read More »
Attached is a psychographic essay from Confederate Portraits (1914) by the noted biographer, Gamaliel Bradford (1863 – 1932). It must have been written in order to expose to the reading public that softer, more sensitive Raphael Semmes (1809 – 1877) that no historian ever seems to consider. This vision of the American Civil War pirate comes off as a quiet, pious Renaissance man, with a flare for the dramatic.
Semmes was not only a wide reader in his profession and in lines connected with it, but he loved literature proper, read much poetry and quoted it aptly. He was a singularly sensitive to beauty in any form.
Civil War Pirate Raphael Semmes (Atlantic Monthly, 1913) Read More »
Attached is a psychographic essay from Confederate Portraits (1914) by the noted biographer, Gamaliel Bradford (1863 – 1932). It must have been written in order to expose to the reading public that softer, more sensitive Raphael Semmes (1809 – 1877) that no historian ever seems to consider. This vision of the American Civil War pirate comes off as a quiet, pious Renaissance man, with a flare for the dramatic.
Semmes was not only a wide reader in his profession and in lines connected with it, but he loved literature proper, read much poetry and quoted it aptly. He was a singularly sensitive to beauty in any form.
Civil War Pirate Raphael Semmes (Atlantic Monthly, 1913) Read More »
Writing his review of O Pioneers, DRESS and VANITY FAIR book critic Henry Brinsley wrote:
Miss Willa Cather in O Pioneers! (O title!!) is neither a skilled storyteller nor the least bit of an artist. And yet by the end of the book, something has happened in the readers mind that leaves him grateful…There isn’t a vestige of ‘style’ as such: for page after page one is dazed at the ineptness of the medium and the triviality of the incidents…And the secret of this is the persistence throughout of a single fine quality of the author – her extraordinary sincerity.
Willa Cather Gets a Bad Review (Vanity Fair, 1913) Read More »
A 1913 profile of Dr. Anna Howard Shaw (1847 – 1919), president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and leader in their struggle to secure American women their right to vote. This article primarily deals with her meeting with President Woodrow Wilson and his inability to commit to the question of women’s suffrage.
Having helped to fight the good fight, Dr. Shaw died in 1919, weeks after the U.S. Congress voted to ratify the 19th Amendment.
Dr. Anna Howard Shaw (Literary Digest, 1913) Read More »
Attached is a 1913 article from an American magazine in which the journalist reported on a strong sense of insecurity experienced by France as a result of Imperial German military hubris. The reporter illustrated the point with various quotes from French papers of the day and in a similar vein, sites a number of German papers that express an arrogant contempt for France.
French Insecurity in the Face of German Might (Literary Digest, 1913) Read More »
