Pageant Magazine

Articles from Pageant Magazine

Tolerance at the Polls (Pageant Magazine, 1953)

Speaking of thawing ice:

In 1942 Roper Poll found only 42 per cent of Americans saying ‘yes‘ to the question ‘Are Negroes as intelligent as Whites and can they learn just as quickly if given education and training?‘ After W.W. II the number rose to 57 per cent.

‘Beginner’s Guide to the Civil War” (Pageant Magazine, 1958)

As the one-hundredth anniversary of the War Between the States grew ever nearer, a Pulitzer Prize winning Civil War Historian, Bruce Catton, wrote the attached article concerning the overwhelming popularity that the nation was finding in their study of that remarkable contest:

The requirements for becoming a Civil War Buff are very simple. All you need is a desire to join. If you are interested in the Civil War, you’re in… You may get to the point where you want to join a Civil War Round Table. [Overtime] commonplace words like Appomattox and Antietam and Perryville take on a new meaning for you; a good deal of the monotony and routine of modern life somehow evaporates, as you escape into a period of profound and haunting significance.

All in all, it’s quite an experience.
Welcome to the Army!

The Bad Generals (Pageant Magazine, 1958)

Attached herein is a list the five lamest Generals of the American Civil War.


This two page compilation is made up of thumbnail descriptions outlining just how far from awesome these men were, and why, one hundred years later, they continue to be recognized as failures to the succeeding generations of Civil War historians.

The Lot of the Fighting Man (Pageant Magazine, 1958)

Both Northern and Southern armies were composed predominantly of very young men. Almost all the generals were highly bewhiskered, but the enlisted men were almost all too young to shave.


Both sides carried a muzzle-loading rifle, cumbersome by modern standards, but nevertheless a highly effective weapon. It would kill at more than half a mile, and was deadly when used by veterans…

Forty Years of Women Voting (Pageant Magazine, 1960)

In the fourth decade of women’s suffrage, researchers had discovered that there were more women than men listed on the voting registries. Republican Party executive Clare Williams noted:

Women now hold the balance of power.

A Righteous Gentile (Pageant Magazine, 1964)

With daring and resourcefulness Father Benoit built up an efficient organization to smuggle Jews and other anti-Nazi refugees into Spain…He found an old hand press in the basement and, with the aid of a Jewish printer-engraver, turned out thousands of passports. Then he summoned a number of Swiss, Hungarian and Rumanian consuls and convinced them in the name of God and our common humanity to sign the crudely made documents.

The Smiths in America (Pageant Magazine, 1959)

We were surprised to learn that even in this multicultural era of unenforced immigration laws – the last name Smith still stands as the most common surname in the United States – and as of 2021 there are 2,627,141 people with this last name living today. This article points out that there is always at any given time a Smith serving in Congress (currently that duty falls on the shoulders of Representative Chris Smith, who hails from the 4th District of New Jersey).

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