Jane Shaw Stroup’s Commentaries

The first 300 years of Christianity were troubled times. As Christians, inspired by their new faith, created churches all over the Roman Empire, they were persecuted and often cruelly executed because they refused to make sacrifices to the Roman gods. The persecutions were not continuous, and some Roman governors made a point of tolerating Christians, but the threat was always there.

One threat they did not face, however, was persecution by other Christians. Christianity was such a fledgling religion that it had no clear hierarchy or even ruling group immediately after the Apostles died. It had no orthodoxy and no political power in those early years.

That would change.

“Infantry wins battles; logistics wins wars.” This statement is attributed to World War I commanding general John J. Pershing (although I have yet to find the source). Military logistics means getting soldiers and equipment in place for battle or replacing causalities and destroyed equipment.

Postcard above shows Biltmore Estate in 1915. From the Karl Larson Photograph Collection (PhC.205), courtesy of the State Archives of NC. It makes a good story. In the late 1800s demand for wood was insatiable—for houses, for ships, for fuel, for railroad ties....

You’ve probably heard that Henry Ford II resigned from the board of the Ford Foundation because it had veered far away from its donor’s intent.  In his 1976 resignation letter, Ford (grandson of Ford Sr.) wrote: “In effect, the foundation is a creature of capitalism—a...

My last post, “Land Grants or Land Grabs,” revealed that most federal land that started land-grant universities had been taken from Indians. I  received some constructive pushback. But that feedback reminded me of a question, Why did the Europeans invade the New World in the first place and conquer Native Americans, rather than Native Americans invading Europe and conquering Europeans?

You may have seen a statement similar to this one on a university website: “NC State University . . . respectfully acknowledges that the lands within and surrounding present-day Raleigh are the traditional homelands and gathering places of many Indigenous peoples, including eight federally and state-recognized tribes. . . .” Such statements are not purely the result of gracious sentiments. NC State’s acknowledgment and many others were added after a troubling study appeared. It was “Land-Grab Universities,” published in 2020 by High Country News, an environmentally oriented nonprofit newspaper in the West.

If you grew up in the United States, you probably took a course in middle school or junior high about your state’s history. I don’t remember a thing about my class except a frantic late-night scramble to finish my “Missouri Scrapbook,” full of notes, photographs, postcards, mementos, etc. My guess is that you didn’t learn a lot from state history classes, either. Am I wrong?

This is a guest column by Jay Schalin, senior fellow at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal. Born in Pennsylvania, he responded to my request for “state stories.” The uplands of northern Pennsylvania were a wild and wooly place in the early years of our...