daniel walker howe what hath god wrought

“I hoped to make history as interesting for other people as I’ve always found it to be,” Howe said.

Instead,” she said, “it brings together a great many events, such as the War of 1812, technology and communications, party politics, literature and art, and the rise of many different religious groups.” These broad topics, far from the realm of traditional history, reflect Howe’s desire to write for the general public-to tell a story rather than speak in generalizations. Its popularity is remarkable because, as Susan Ferber, acquisitions editor for the Oxford History of the United States series, wrote in an email to The Crimson, “It’s not an obvious period for many, since it doesn’t cover the American Revolution or Civil War or World War II. So this is a different world.” It was a different world, a slower world, one that is closer perhaps to the world that Howe wrote about in “What Hath God Wrought” than to the modern era. Recalling his early days of transition between Denver and Harvard, Howe interrupts himself to say, “By the way, in those days transportation meant the train,” he said, “It was a night between Denver and Chicago and then another between Chicago and South Station where the train came in early in the morning. It was only a National Scholarship from Harvard that allowed Howe to afford an Ivy League education. His storytelling father, a newspaperman, died when Howe was eight years old, widowing his mother and making money scarce. “I thought this was the most fascinating stuff imaginable.” Coming from Denver to Harvard was, in those days, still vaguely unusual: Denver was remote and provincial, far from the colorful melting pots of 19th century New Orleans, or ancient Rome. “I got interested in history when I was about six years old and my father sat me on his lap and told me about Hannibal crossing the Alps with elephants to fight the Romans,” Howe said. The diverse internationalism of such a scene must have particularly piqued the interest of Howe, Harvard graduate and Professor Emeritus of both Oxford and UCLA, who once dreamed of ancient overseas battles as a young boy growing up in Denver. Orders were translated into Spanish, French, and Choctaw. The “Americans” hailed from Louisiana, Haiti, Kentucky, encompassing crack Irish-American units, freed slaves, and wary Native Americans. The opening scene of Daniel Walker Howe ’59’s Pulitzer Prize winning history, “What Hath God Wrought,” artistically depicts the 1815 Battle of New Orleans, which pitted British regulars against a heterogeneous American force.

Daniel walker howe what hath god wrought