National Coalition for History

Tell the House to Move the NHPRC Reauthorization Bill!

lwhite — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 19:52:19 +0000

On July 12, the Senate passed legislation (S. 2872) to reauthorize the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) at a $10 million level for fiscal years 2010–2014. Unfortunately, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has yet to schedule a markup of a bill (H.R. 5616) to reauthorize the NHPRC at a $20 million level for fiscal years 2011–2015.

It is vitally important that H.R. 5616, with an annual authorization level of $20 million, pass the House and be reconciled with the Senate version before Congress adjourns in the fall. For that to happen, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee must take up the bill before the impending congressional recess which begins the first week of August.

The NHPRC’s most recent authorization, at an annual level of $10 million, expired at the end of FY 2009. Only twice over the past decade has the NHPRC received at least that amount and it has been chronically under-funded. While Congress can continue to fund the grants program without an authorization, it makes it more difficult to ensure that the NHPRC is not eliminated and is adequately supported by the House and Senate Appropriations Committees and the White House.

The National Coalition for History is asking you to contact the Members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee TODAY and urge them to support consideration, and passage of, the NHPRC reauthorization bill (H.R. 5616) this month! All Members of Congress can be reached by via the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121.

Letters, emails and phone calls from constituents within each Member’s district are most effective, but so are contacts by individual members of national, state, regional, and local organizations. A list of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, with direct links to their office Websites and phone numbers, is provided below.

To assist in making the case for the NHPRC, a link is provided to a briefing paper, as well as a link to NHPRC grants by state.

Democrats (Majority)

Republicans (Minority)

Nation’s Historians Speak Out Against Proposed Gettysburg Casino

lwhite — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 20:13:45 +0000

On July 1, 276 American historians sent a letter to the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board in opposition to a proposal to license a casino located one-half mile from the Gettysburg National Military Park. Beyond the individual signatories, the American Historical Association, National Coalition for History, National Council on Public History, Organization of American Historians, Society for Military History and Southern Historical Association sent a separate letter of opposition to the Gaming Board.

Although many individual historians have previously voiced opposition to the casino proposal, such a large and diverse group uniting in this cause demonstrates Gettysburg’s unique place in our nation’s heritage. Among the signers are some of the most prominent historians in America, including James McPherson, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Battle Cry of Freedom and Edwin C. Bearss, Chief Historian Emeritus of the National Park Service.

In part, their message states that as professional historians, they “feel strongly that Gettysburg is a unique historic and cultural treasure deserving of our protection. Gettysburg belongs to all Americans equally—future generations no less than those of us alive today,” before concluding that “there are many places in Pennsylvania to build a casino, but there’s only one Gettysburg.”

Although the proposed casino site along the Emmitsburg Road lies outside the current administrative boundaries of Gettysburg National Military Park, it would be on land identified as historically sensitive by the American Battlefield Protection Program, an arm of the National Park Service. The application before the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board would retrofit an existing family-friendly hotel complex into a gambling resort with an initial 600 slot machines in addition to table games.

According to Princeton University professor emeritus Dr. James McPherson, “The proposed site of the casino lies athwart the advance of Union cavalry toward what became known as South Cavalry Field, which saw substantial fighting on the afternoon of July 3, 1863. This ground is as hallowed as any other part of the Gettysburg battlefield, and the idea of a casino near the fields and woods where men of both North and South gave the last full measure of devotion is simply outrageous.”

The letter was circulated among the historian community by a coalition of preservation groups which have opposed both efforts to bring gambling to Gettysburg. The Civil War Preservation Trust, National Parks Conservation Association, National Trust for Historic Preservation and Preservation Pennsylvania have consistently emphasized that their opposition stems from the direct threat posed to the battlefield by the site’s proximity and potential for increasing traffic and development pressures on the park, as opposed to any objection to gaming.

Directive Issued to Assist Federal Agencies in Classification & Declassfication

lwhite — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 20:08:39 +0000

On June 28, the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO) of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), issued a Directive in the Federal Register providing guidance to federal agencies on how to implement Executive Order 13526 relating to classified national security information. President Obama issued the EO on December 29, 2009.

EO 13526 prescribes a uniform system for classifying, safeguarding, and declassifying national security information. It also establishes a monitoring system to enhance its effectiveness. The Directive sets forth guidance to agencies on original and derivative classification, downgrading, declassification, and safeguarding of classified national security information.

White House Orders Review of Federal IT Projects

lwhite — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 19:59:49 +0000

On June 28, the Obama administration issued directives mandating a comprehensive review of all federal information technology (IT) projects that are “high risk” and placed a freeze on all financial systems modernization projects.

Office of Management and Budget Director Peter R. Orszag announced three major steps designed to address persistent cost overruns and delayed delivery of IT systems.

1. First, executive departments and agencies were ordered to stop issuing new task orders or procurements for all financial system modernization projects pending review and approval by OMB of new, more streamlined project plans. According to OMB, there are approximately 30 financial systems projects that are affected by this policy. The total cost expended on these projects is anticipated to be $20 billion over the life of these projects, with an approximate annual spend of $3 billion.
2. Second, the Federal Chief Information Officer (CIO) Vivek Kundra will undertake detailed reviews of the highest risk IT projects across the federal government. Agencies will be required to present improvement plans to the CIO for projects that are behind schedule or over budget. Where serious problems continue to exist, there will be adjustments to Fiscal Year 2012 agency budgets.
3. OMB’s Deputy Director for Management Jeff Zients will develop recommendations, within 120 days, for improving the federal government’s overall IT procurement and management practices.

Politico.com reported this week that one of the projects that will receive a high level of scrutiny by OMB is the National Archives and Records Administration’s (NARA) Electronic Records Archive (ERA) . Since 2001, NARA has been working to develop an electronic records archive to preserve and provide access to massive volumes and all types of electronic records. However, the project has experienced repeated delays and cost overruns. According to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report issued on June 11, 2010, “Without ensuring adequate oversight and establishing specific plans to complete ERA, it is increasingly unlikely that NARA will deliver the completed ERA system by 2012 with the originally envisioned capabilities.”

Nixon Library Releases Additional Materials Including Oral History Files

lwhite — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 19:10:59 +0000

On July 2, the National Archives Richard Nixon Presidential Library released nearly 100,000 pages of Presidential records and 80 hours of video oral histories. Selected materials are available online at: http://www.nixonlibrary.gov/.

The bulk of the newly released documents come from the White House office files of former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Democrat who served in the Nixon administration from January 1969 to December 1970. The Moynihan papers detail his role in shaping administration policy on welfare reform, population control, civil rights, the environment and drug control.

Also in this release are 5,000 pages of formerly classified national security records. These include U.S. intelligence assessments before and during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. Also in this release are materials relating to US-UK relations, including correspondence between President Nixon and Prime Minister Edward Heath; backchannel Soviet-Israeli relations; the status of Berlin; Soviet strategic weapons; and the Vietnam War.

The Library also released 47 video oral histories. These are available in the Library’s research room. This is the first release of materials from this collection which was begun in November 2006 after Timothy Naftali became the director of the Nixon Presidential Materials Project and director-designate of the National Archives-administered Nixon Library.

The Nixon Library’s video oral history program, which has produced 126 oral histories thus far, is creating the largest video oral history collection at any Presidential library. Included in this opening are interviews conducted with, among others: former Vice President Richard Cheney, former Secretary of State George Shultz, former Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci, former Secretary of Interior Walter Hickel, former Secretary of Commerce Barbara Franklin, U.S. Representative Charles Rangel, Senator Lamar Alexander, former Senators Bob Dole and Trent Lott, former U.S. Representative Elizabeth Holtzman, Justice Stephen Breyer, Judge Robert Bork, former Watergate prosecutors Richard Ben-Veniste and Jill Wine-Banks, Carl Bernstein, astronaut Frank Borman, Dwight Chapin, Charles Colson, Sir David Frost, Leonard Garment, Herbert Klein, Egil “Bud” Krogh, entertainer Art Linkletter, Jeb Stuart Magruder, Frederic Malek, Raymond Price, William Ruckelshaus, Daniel Schorr, and William Safire. This release also includes 4 ½ hours of audio recordings of briefings given by Donald Rumsfeld, Herbert Stein and others to summer interns in the Nixon White House. These will also be available in the Nixon Library research room.

Costs of Federal Security Classification Increases

lwhite — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 19:01:42 +0000

The total security classification cost estimate within the Federal government for Fiscal Year (FY) 2009 is $8.81 billion. This figure represents estimates provided by 41 executive branch agencies, including the Department of Defense (DoD). The total security classification costs for Executive branch agencies increased $176.65 million in FY 2009, an increase of 2 percent from FY 2008.

These findings were released in the Report on Cost Estimates for Security Classification Activities for Fiscal Year 2009 issued by the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO) of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

It does not include the cost estimates of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, and the National Security Agency. The cost estimates of these agencies are classified in accordance with Intelligence Community classification guidance.

For FY 2009, agencies reported $1.21 billion in estimated costs associated with Personnel Security, an increase of $116.75 million, or 11 percent. This was mainly due to an increased number of background investigations for new personnel, as well as periodic reinvestigations for current employees.

Estimated costs associated with Physical Security were $1.28 billion, a decrease of $8.23 million, or 1 percent decrease, from FY 2008. Most decreases in costs were due to completion of projects begun in FY 2008.

Estimated costs associated with Information Security were $4.77 billion. Information Security continues to be the main driver of all the costs, representing 54 percent of the total security classification costs for FY 2009.

The FY 2009 estimated costs for Professional Education, Training, and Awareness were $226.11 million, a $17.32 million, or 7 percent decrease in costs from FY 2008.

Senator Mikulski Named Co-Chair of Senate Cultural Caucus

lwhite — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 18:51:32 +0000

Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) was recently named as the new Co-Chair of the Senate Cultural Caucus. She joins Senator Michael Enzi (R-WY) who has Co-Chaired the caucus since its founding in 2005. The list of Senate Cultural Caucus members is available here.

Senators Edward Kennedy (D-MA), James Jeffords (I-VT), Norm Coleman (R-MN), and Enzi established the caucus to bring focus to the arts and humanities and the positive impact they have on daily lives. They formed the caucus to highlight the work of the federal cultural agencies, including the National Endowment for the Humanities, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Library of Congress Uncovers Edit in Jefferson Draft of the Declaration of Independence

lwhite — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 18:45:24 +0000

Recent hyperspectral imaging of Thomas Jefferson’s rough draft of the Declaration of Independence has clearly confirmed past speculation that Jefferson made an interesting word correction during his writing of the document, according to scientists in the Library of Congress’ Preservation Research and Testing Division (PRTD). Jefferson originally had written the phrase “our fellow subjects.” But he apparently changed his mind. Heavily scrawled over the word “subjects” was an alternative, the word “citizens.”

The correction occurs in the portion of the declaration that deals with U.S. grievances against King George III, in particular, his incitement of “treasonable insurrections.” While the specific sentence doesn’t make it into the final draft, a similar phrase was retained, and the word “citizens” is used elsewhere in the final document. The sentence didn’t carry over, but the idea did.

Fenella France, a scientist in PRTD, conducted the hyperspectral imaging in the fall of 2009 and discovered a blurred word under “citizens.” France said, “It had been a spine-tingling moment when I was processing data late at night and realized there was a word underneath citizens. Then I began the tough process of extracting the differences between spectrally similar materials to elucidate the lost text.”

Hyperspectral imaging is the process of taking digital photos of an object using distinct portions of the visible and non-visible light spectrum, revealing what previously could not be seen by the human eye. The hyperspectral imaging system is located in the Library’s Optical Properties Laboratory.

For photographs of the rough draft and its hyperspectral imaging, visit http://www.loc.gov/pressroom/login. (New visitors to the site will need to establish an account to receive the username and password.)

The Thomas Jefferson word correction has been suspected for some time by scholars. In “The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 1: 1760-1776” (Princeton University Press, 1950), Julian P. Boyd wrote “TJ originally wrote ‘fellow-subjects,’ copying the term from the corresponding passage in the first page of the First Draft of the Virginia Constitution; then, while the ink was still wet on the ‘Rough draught’ he expunged or erased ‘subjects’ and wrote ‘citizens’ over it.”

The rough draft of the Declaration of Independence can be explored in detail in the online version of the exhibition “Creating the United States” at myLOC.gov (and on-site at the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building).

1297 Magna Carta On Loan to National Archives to be Re-encased

lwhite — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 18:29:15 +0000

On June 30, Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero announced that the only original Magna Carta on display in the United States will have a new $322,800 state-of-the-art encasement and will be featured in a new exhibition gallery at the National Archives Building in Washington, DC. The 1297 Magna Carta is on loan to the National Archives from David Rubenstein, Co-Founder of the Carlyle Group as a gift to the American people.

Only four originals of the 1297 Magna Carta remain. By the 17th century, the one displayed at the National Archives was in the possession of the Brudenell family, the earls of Cardigan. It was acquired by the Perot Foundation in 1984 and purchased by David M. Rubenstein in 2007. The Magna Carta which is written in Latin on parchment is on display in the National Archives West Rotunda Gallery, was encased more than 25 years ago by Dr. Nathan Stolow.

New research and technological advancements based on the 2001 re-encasement of the Charters of Freedom (the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights) by the National Archives and the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have led to improvements in design of encasements to ensure the preservation of historic documents on extended display.

National Archives experts will apply their knowledge and understanding gained in encasing the Charters of Freedom and to apply the latest advances in very long-term seal technology. These measures will ensure that the Magna Carta is displayed in an environment that greatly reduces oxidative degradation reactions and maintains constant moisture content in the parchment. This will also ensure dimensional stability. The new encasement is expected to provide an optimal environment for many years. The encasement design will represent a collaboration between the National Archives Conservation and Exhibition staff and NIST Fabrication Technology staff.

Senator Robert C. Byrd Dies

lwhite — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 20:12:33 +0000

On June 28, 2010, Senator Robert C. Byrd (D-WV), the longest-serving Member of Congress, passed away. Senator Byrd was 92 years old. Senator Byrd was considered the “father” of the Teaching American History Grants program at the U.S. Department of Education. Since its inception in fiscal year 2001, nearly $1 billion in federal dollars have been spent to raise student achievement by improving teachers’ knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of American history.

A child who was in the first grade when the program started in 2001 would now be a junior in high school. So it is no exaggeration to say Senator Byrd’s love of American history has been passed on to an entire generation of America’s school children. Among his many accomplishments, that is one of his greatest legacies.

Courtesy of the U.S. Senate Historical Office, here are some of the milestones of Senator Byrd’s career:

Beginning in 1980, and over the next ten years, Senator Byrd delivered more than one hundred floor speeches detailing the history of the U.S. Senate.

U.S. Senate Institutional Records

Longest-serving member of Congress, with 20,996 days (57 years, 5 months, 26 days). (On November 18, 2009, Senator Byrd surpassed the service record of Carl T. Hayden to become the longest-serving member of Congress, with 20,774 days of service.)
Longest serving U.S. Senator in history, at 18,805 days (51 years, 5 months, 26 days). (Senator Byrd had served 17,327 days in the U.S. Senate on June 12, 2006—making him the longest serving U.S. Senator in history.)
Only person elected to nine full terms in the U.S. Senate.
Since January 3, 1959, Senator Byrd served with a total of 424 senators.
Presided over the shortest session of the U.S. Senate in history. (6/10ths of a second, February 27, 1989)
Presided over the Senate for the longest continuous period in history. (21 hour, 8 minutes, March 7-8, 1960)
Served on a U.S. Senate committee longer than any other senator in history. (U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee, January 14, 1959-June 28, 2010)

U.S. Senate Voting Records

Cast more roll-call votes than any other U.S. senator, at 18,689. (Cast record-breaking vote number 12,134 on April 27, 1990)
Cast 4,705 consecutive votes—the third highest consecutive vote total in U.S. Senate history. (Behind Senator William Proxmire [D-WI], with 10,252 consecutive votes, and Senator Charles Grassley [R-IA], who cast his 5,400th consecutive roll call vote on Feb. 9, 2009.)

U.S. Senate Leadership

Held the most leadership positions in the U.S. Senate (secretary of the majority conference, majority whip, minority leader, majority leader, and president pro tempore.