Westward Expansion
From the Archives: Déjà vu All Over Again: Closing the Border
Concerns that immigrants flooding across the border threaten the nation’s basic institutions. Construction of armed posts to defend the border. Passage of new, more restrictive immigration laws. Sound familiar? Welcome to Mexico in 1830. The story began when Mexico won independence from Spain in 1821. At first the newly independent country welcomed settlers from the…
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Running on Railroad Time
I was recently reading an excellent new book on the Battle of Waterloo* in which the author made an off-hand comment about the difficulty of synchronizing accounts even when sources give exact times for events because there was no standardized time. Until the rise of the railroads in the mid-nineteenth century, time was essentially local.…
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From The Archives: Why I Want To Go To Omaha
I currently have my head down trying to finish a big project that I’m excited about. Instead of driving myself crazy trying to write blog posts at the same time or, worse, “going dark” I’ll be running some of my favorite posts from the past for the next little while. Enjoy. And I’ll see you…
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