Anyone of my generation who studied history at the university level cannot have survived their college years without reading the work of Arthur M. Schlesinger, one of the great historians of the age.

Schlesinger, who was also an active liberal who worked in the Kennedy Administration, has died.

n his 89 years, Arthur M. Schlesinger was a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, a Kennedy insider, and an influential thinker who helped define mainstream liberalism during the Cold War.

"(He had) enormous stamina and a kind of energy and drive which most people don't have, and it kept him going, all the way through his final hours," Schlesinger's son Stephen said early Thursday morning, hours after his father's death. "He never stopped writing, he never stopped participating in public affairs, he never stopped having his views about politics and his love of this nation."

Schlesinger was dining with family members in Manhattan on Wednesday when he suffered a heart attack, Stephen Schlesinger said. He later died at New York Downtown Hospital.

Schlesinger was among the most famous historians of his time, and was widely respected as learned and readable, with a panoramic vision of American culture and politics. He received a National Book Award for "Robert Kennedy and His Times" and both a National Book Award and a Pulitzer for "A Thousand Days," his memoir/chronicle of President Kennedy's administration. He also won a Pulitzer, in 1946, for "The Age of Jackson," his landmark chronicle of Andrew Jackson's administration.

Indeed, it is the work on the Jackson administration that first introduced me to Schlesinger, some 35 years after it was published. It remains a classic in the field of American history.

Quite frankly, I don't have the words to express the sense of loss I feel upon the passing of this intellectual giant.

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And personally, I'm disappointed that it did so -- over a century and a half after its abolition, when such apologies are nothing but meaningless symbolism.

Meeting on the grounds of the former Confederate Capitol, the Virginia General Assembly voted unanimously Saturday to express "profound regret" for the state's role in slavery.

Sponsors of the resolution say they know of no other state that has apologized for slavery, although Missouri lawmakers are considering such a measure. The resolution does not carry the weight of law but sends an important symbolic message, supporters said.

"This session will be remembered for a lot of things, but 20 years hence I suspect one of those things will be the fact that we came together and passed this resolution," said Delegate A. Donald McEachin, a Democrat who sponsored it in the House of Delegates.

The resolution passed the House 96-0 and cleared the 40-member Senate on a unanimous voice vote. It does not require Gov. Timothy M. Kaine's approval.

The measure also expressed regret for "the exploitation of Native Americans."

The resolution was introduced as Virginia begins its celebration of the 400th anniversary of Jamestown, where the first Africans arrived in 1619. Richmond, home to a popular boulevard lined with statues of Confederate heroes, later became another point of arrival for Africans and a slave-trade hub.

The resolution says government-sanctioned slavery "ranks as the most horrendous of all depredations of human rights and violations of our founding ideals in our nation's history, and the abolition of slavery was followed by systematic discrimination, enforced segregation, and other insidious institutions and practices toward Americans of African descent that were rooted in racism, racial bias, and racial misunderstanding."

In Virginia, black voter turnout was suppressed with a poll tax and literacy tests before those practices were struck down by federal courts, and state leaders responded to federally ordered school desegregation with a "Massive Resistance" movement in the 1950s and early '60s. Some communities created exclusive whites-only schools.

Personally, I would have abstained from any vote.

I owned no slaves.

My ancestors owned no slaves.

My political party actively opposed slavery and segregation.

On the other hand, I would have encouraged every Democrat to vote for the resolution -- but only if they had the integrity to include a condemnation of the DemocratICK Party and its paramilitary terrorist wing, the KKK, in the resolution. After all, their membership in that party indelibly tars them with its sins.

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A new movie, Amazing Grace, opens today, all about the efforts of William Wilberforce to bring about the abolition of slavery in Great Britain. It stands as a pointed reminder of the power of religious faith for motivating social change.

Joseph Loconte has this to say about the abolition movement and the message it should hold for those who express hostility to the involvement of people of faith in the political process.

A convert to evangelical Christianity, Wilberforce is greatly admired in religious circles today, if not always imitated. Early in his parliamentary career, he made a vow to avoid the corruptions of political influence — and kept it. He was known for his intellectual seriousness and personal charm. French author Madame de Stael confessed her surprise after dining with him: "I have always heard that he was the most religious, but I now find that he is the wittiest man in England."

Wilberforce sought to change hearts and minds, not just laws. So he organized boycotts and petitions, staged demonstrations and commissioned artwork to mobilize public opinion on a national scale. Wilberforce suffered many setbacks — his abolition bills were repeatedly killed in committee or defeated in the House of Commons — but he kept on.

Most important, he was unafraid to invoke the Gospel to challenge the consciences of slavers and their supporters in Parliament. In his "Letter on the Abolition of the Slave Trade," published in January 1807, Wilberforce placed the brutish facts of human trafficking against the backdrop of Christian compassion and divine justice.

"We must believe," he warned, "that a continued course of wickedness, oppression and cruelty, obstinately maintained in spite of the fullest knowledge and the loudest warnings, must infallibly bring down upon us the heaviest judgments of the Almighty." A month later, on Feb. 23, the House of Commons voted 283 to 16 to abolish the slave trade.

In our post-Sept. 11 era, there's suspicion and antagonism toward religious belief, especially when it mixes with politics. Secularists such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris describe the beliefs of the faithful as a "delusion" and akin to "insanity." Wilberforce endured similar scorn. He was lampooned for his "damnable doctrine" and dismissed as a "treacherous fanatic."

Modern skeptics should remember that the great campaign against the international slave trade was not led by atheists. It was fought by people with deep Christian convictions about the dignity and freedom of every person made in the image of God.

In my lifetime, we have seen a civil rights movement that centered around the churches of America, black and white, for support, and a host of other efforts by people of Christian faith to be salt and light in the world. And yet all too often those efforts have clashed with the secular ideology of opinion elites, who have then attempted to delegitimize the efforts of those who, like Wilberforce, seek to denounce the moral evils of the day and bring about solutions to them.

We ignore and marginalize such voices at our peril.

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It is one of the most important documents of the Revolutionary period, but has been in private hands and out of public view since it the speech it contains was given at the very beginning of the our nation's independence. It is the speech that set the precedent that the military would be under civilian control -- and likely also kept this country from being ruled by a king or a Caesar.

It was a speech so moving the crowd wept. It was a speech so personally important George Washington's hand shook as he read it until he had to hold the paper still with both hands. After the ceremony, he handed the thing to a friend and sped out the door of the State House in Annapolis, riding off by horse.

For centuries, his words have resonated in American democracy even as the speech itself -- the small piece of paper that shook in his hands that day -- was quietly put away, out of the public eye and largely forgotten.

Today, however, amid festivities celebrating his birthday, Maryland officials plan to unveil the original document -- worth $1.5 million -- after acquiring it in a private sale from a family in Maryland who had kept it all these years. It took two years to negotiate the deal and raise money for the speech, which experts consider the most significant Washington document to change hands in the past 50 years.

The speech, scholars say, was a turning point in U.S. history. As the Revolutionary War was winding down, some wanted to make Washington king. Some whispered conspiracy, trying to seduce him with the trappings of power. But Washington renounced them all.

By resigning his commission as commander in chief to the Continental Congress -- then housed at the Annapolis capitol -- Washington laid the cornerstone for an American principle that persists today: Civilians, not generals, are ultimately in charge of military power.

It would have been very easy for Washington, as head of the Continental Army, to have become the de facto ruler of the newly formed United States. Instead he placed the needs of the country first and retired, however temporarily, from public life. In doing so he earned the respect even of his erstwhile enemy, King George III, whose comment upon his impending resignation to the painter Benjamin West upon hearing the news was "If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world."

And indeed, we were fortunate that t this critical juncture of American history, Washington was clearly one of a number of American patriots who could qualify for that title.

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Today's "Founder's Quote" was the following, expressing a notion I take great pains to teach my students when we talk about the founding principles of this country.

Natural rights [are] the objects for the protection of which society is formed and municipal laws established.
-- Thomas Jefferson (Letter to James Monroe, 1791)

Seems to me to be a good one for folks to discuss here -- do you agree or disagree?

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Well, we may have some definitive word on the cause of death of Napoleon Bonaparte, erstwhile Emperor of France.

Napoleon Bonaparte died a more prosaic death than some people would like to think, succumbing to stomach cancer rather than arsenic poisoning, according to new research into what killed the French emperor.

Theories that Napoleon was poisoned with arsenic have abounded since 1961, when an analysis of his hair showed elevated levels of the toxic element.

But the latest review of the 1821 autopsy report just after he died concludes the official cause of death -- stomach cancer -- is correct.

The autopsy describes a tumor in his stomach that was 4 inches long. Comparing that description to modern cases, main author Dr. Robert M. Genta of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas and an international team of researchers surmised that a growth so extensive could not have been a benign stomach ulcer.

"I have never seen an ulcer of that size that is not cancer," said Genta, a professor of pathology and internal medicine.

Further analysis suggested that his stomach cancer had reached a stage that is virtually incurable even with modern medical technology. People with similar cancers today usually die within a year.

The autopsy and other historical sources indicate that the rotund French leader had lost about 20 pounds in the last few months of his life, another sign of stomach cancer. His stomach also contained a dark material similar to coffee grounds, a telltale sign of extensive bleeding in the digestive tract. The massive bleeding was likely the immediate cause of death, Genta and his colleagues concluded.

I wish I'd seen this article when it came out, right in the midst of my unit on the French Revolution and Napoleon. It would have made a real interesting tidbit to hare with my students.

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Some folks just donÂ’t learn the lessons of history.

• "Last year, some believed that cutting back our military assistance to the South Vietnamese Government would induce negotiations for a political settlement. Instead, the opposite has happened. North Vietnam is refusing negotiations and is increasing its military pressure."-- Gerald Ford, "Special Message to the Congress Requesting Supplemental Assistance for the Republic of Vietnam and Cambodia," Jan. 28, 1975

• "I want to make it very clear that we need to threaten the Iraqi government, that we're going to take money away from their troops, not our troops who still lack body armor and armored vehicles; that we're going to send a clear message--that we are finished with their empty promises and with this president's blank check."-- Hillary Clinton, speech to the Democratic National Committee, Feb. 2, 2007

Cutting off money to an ally merely emboldens our mutual foes.

H/T Tarranto

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I'll be looking for the results of this set of genetic tests -- designed to answer an old question about the presence of Roman soldiers in China, and the continued survival of their descendants.

Residents of a remote Chinese village are hoping that DNA tests will prove one of history's most unlikely legends — that they are descended from Roman legionaries lost in antiquity.

Scientists have taken blood samples from 93 people living in and around Liqian, a settlement in north-western China on the fringes of the Gobi desert, more than 200 miles from the nearest city.

They are seeking an explanation for the unusual number of local people with western characteristics — green eyes, big noses, and even blonde hair — mixed with traditional Chinese features.

"I really think we are descended from the Romans," said Song Guorong, 48, who with his wavy hair, six-foot frame and strikingly long, hooked nose stands out from his short, round-faced office colleagues.

"There are the residents with these special features, and then there are also historical records about the existence of these people long ago," he said.

The legend has it that some soldiers of Crassus' ill-fated expedition against the Parthians may have settled in the region after serving as mercenaries, sometime around 36 BC. Personally, I wonder more about possible descendants of Alexander's army, which pushed well into India. But whatever teh answer, it will be fascinating -- even if it destroys the myths that have sprung up over the ages.

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