by W.J. Cash (pictured) FOR years it has been the fashion with historians to explain the white cracker of the South as simply the product of degenerate blood-strains from Europe — the progeny of the convict-servants and redemptioners of Old Virginia. But the theory defies logic and the known facts. Actually, the source of the cracker is identical with that Continue Reading →
by H.L. Mencken A review of Meet General Grant by W. E. Woodward (Horace Liverwright, publishers); The American Mercury, 1928 THE DREADFUL title of this book is not the least of its felicities. If they had been saying such things in his day it seems unquestionable that Grant would have said, “Meet the wife.” He was precisely that sort of Continue Reading →
by H.L. Mencken The American Mercury, September 1930 NO AMERICAN historian, so far as I know, has ever tried to work out the probable consequences if Grant instead of Lee had been on the hot spot at Appomattox. How long would the victorious Confederacy have endured? Could it have surmounted the difficulties inherent in the doctrine of States’ Rights, so Continue Reading →