Historical News
A NATIONAL ASSEMBLY of the President's Civil War Centennial Com-
mission was held in Washington, D.C., on
January 14-15, 1958. Major
General U. S. Grant, 3d, chairman of the
commission, presided at the
sessions, and Dr. Bell I. Wiley, the
distinguished Civil War historian of
Atlanta, Georgia, made the keynote
address.
The purpose of the commission is to lead
the nation in a fitting celebra-
tion of the centennial of the Civil War.
At the meeting a thirteen-point
program was outlined, giving particular
attention to state and local observ-
ances. Civil War History was
designated the official organ of the commission.
Over two hundred representatives of
historical and patriotic organizations
were in attendance. Robert S. Harper,
public information officer of the
Ohio Historical Society and author of Lincoln
and the Press, represented
both the Society and Governor O'Neill.
The University of Pennsylvania has
announced the appointment of
William Charvat, professor of English at
Ohio State University, as the
Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach Fellow in
Bibliography for 1957-58. He will
deliver three lectures at the university
in April 1958 on the general theme,
"Literary Publishing in America,
1790-1850." Dr. Charvat was for some
years a member of the board of editors
of the Ohio Historical Society.
A Committee to Preserve the National
Capitol has been formed to
oppose congressional plans to rebuild
the central portion of the east
front of the United States Capitol and
extend the portico. Julian E. Berla
of the American Institute of Architects
is chairman of the committee, and
Wilbur H. Hunter, Jr., director of the
Peale Museum in Baltimore, is
executive secretary. The purpose of the
committee is to preserve the
historical and architectural integrity
of the facade of the building.
The American Institute of Architects,
the Society of Architectural His-
torians, and the American Association
for State and Local History are
opposing the proposed alteration. The
Committee to Preserve the National
Capitol is seeking to get the matter
before the American people and is
HISTORICAL NEWS 153
appealing to the congressional committee
not to carry out the projected
changes in the east front.
The fifth annual Institute on Historical
and Archival Management will
be offered by Radcliffe College and the
department of history of Harvard
University during the six-weeks period
from June 23 through August 1.
The institute will be directed again by
Lester J. Cappon, director of the
Institute of Early American History and
Culture at Williamsburg, Virginia.
The course is designed for those in or
looking toward careers in archival
and historical institutions. The class,
which will be limited to fifteen, will
be conducted as a seminar.
Two full-tuition scholarships ($200 each)
are available. Inquiries should
be addressed to the Institute on
Historical and Archival Management, 10
Garden Street, Cambridge 38,
Massachusetts.
A multi-volume history of the Supreme
Court of the United States,
made possible by a bequest of Justice
Oliver Wendell Holmes to the
United States, has been authorized by an
act of congress and is now in
preparation by a group of scholars. The
work is under the general direction
of a permanent committee, whose
ex-officio chairman is L. Quincy Mumford,
librarian of congress. Professor Paul A.
Freund of the Harvard Law
School has been named as
editor-in-chief.
The participating scholars will be
grateful for information on relevant
materials not in recognized collections,
including letters to and from
justices, accounts of justices on
circuit, comments on supreme court cases,
and memorabilia of lawyers associated
with supreme court litigation.
Information and inquiries may be sent to
Joseph P. Blickensderfer,
Administrative Editor, Permanent
Committee for the Oliver Wendell
Holmes Devise, Library of Congress,
Washington, D. C.
William D. Overman, librarian and
archivist of the Firestone Tire and
Rubber Company, was elected president of
the Society of American Archi-
vists for the year 1958. Dr. Overman was
also recently elected secretary
of the Summit County Historical Society.
Late in 1957 the American Jewish
Archives published Bertram W. Korn's
The American Reaction to the Mortara
Case, 1858-1859, as Volume II of
its Publications.
The Anthony Wayne Parkway Board was
awarded first place in the
154
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
special report division and second place
in instructional material in Ohio
history by the Legislative Digest and
Review in a competition with other
state agencies.
A Surgeon's Mate at Fort Defiance:
The Journal of Joseph Gardner
Andrews for the Year 1795, edited by Richard C. Knopf, historian of the
parkway board, has been published by the
Ohio Historical Society in book
form after appearing in the Quarterly.
Richard G. Arms has been appointed
director of the Historical and
Philosophical Society of Ohio. Mr. Arms,
who has degrees from Amherst
College and Harvard University, was for
many years head of the English
department and assistant headmaster at
the Cincinnati Country Day School.
Lately he has been administrator of
civic affairs at the General Electric
Company's Evendale plant in Cincinnati.
Mr. Arms succeeds the late
Virginius C. Hall, whose death occurred
last June. Mrs. Alice P. Hook,
librarian of the society, served as
acting director in the interim.
The annual spring meeting of the
Historical and Philosophical Society
is scheduled for Thursday evening, April
24, 1958, at the Taft Museum.
The spring exhibition of the society
will be opened in connection with
the April 24 meeting and will continue
for two months.
The society's January Bulletin featured
a series of heretofore unpublished
letters from Andrew Jackson to Moses
Dawson, a key political figure in
Cincinnati and Ohio in the Jacksonian
era. The letters, which were edited
by John J. Whealen of Xavier University,
are part of a collection of Daw-
son papers owned by the Xavier
University library. Subsequent issues of
the Bulletin will reproduce
additional parts of the collection, including
letters to Dawson from William Henry
Harrison, Martin Van Buren, James
K. Polk, and other prominent men of the
period.
The Martha Kinney Cooper Ohioana Library
Association has issued a
literary map of the state of Ohio
listing the names of 173 Ohio authors
and locating the birthplaces of many of
them. The map is three feet wide
and two feet high and is printed in four
colors.
A number of physical improvements have
been made at the Rutherford B.
Hayes Library and in the house and
grounds of Spiegel Grove.
The library recently acquired two Civil
War diaries kept by Michael
Deady of the Cleveland, Ohio, area, who
served under Hayes in the 23d
Ohio Volunteer Infantry.
HISTORICAL NEWS 155
Watt P. Marchman, director of the Hayes
Library, served as guest
editor of a recent special Ohio issue of
Civil War History.
David C. Riede, of the department of
history at the University of Akron,
gave a talk on "National Socialism
and the Catholic Church" at the State
University of Iowa on January 24, 1958.
Robert B. Boehm of the history
department at Defiance College received
his Ph.D. degree at Ohio State
University in December 1957. His disserta-
tion is titled "The Civil War in
West Virginia--The Decisive Campaigns
of 1861."
The present history staff at Defiance is
composed of Erwin J. Urch,
chairman, Dr. Boehm, A. Douglas
MacNaughton, and Eugene R. Andrews.
The Ohio-Indiana Chapter of the American
Studies Association has
elected Kenneth E. Davison of Heidelberg
College as secretary-treasurer
for 1958.
Paul I. Miller, chairman of the history
department at Hiram College,
who is lecturing at the University of Ceylon
during the year 1957-58, will
return to this country by way of Europe,
where he will spend the summer
with his family.
Robert A. Archer, instructor in history
at Kent State University, has
been awarded a 1958-59 Danforth
teacher's grant and will resume work on
his doctorate at Harvard University next
fall.
Landon Warner, chairman of the history
department at Kenyon College,
has been appointed to the acquisitions
committee of the Rutherford B.
Hayes Library in Fremont by the trustees
of the Rutherford B. Hayes and
Lucy Webb Hayes Foundation. He replaces
the late Dr. A. T. Volwiler of
Ohio University.
Fred B. Joyner of the Miami University
department of history has been
appointed chairman of the Sydnor Award
Committee of the Southern
Historical Association.
Dwight L. Smith was reelected to the
executive committee of the Ameri-
can Indian Ethnohistoric Conference.
Harris G. Warren, chairman of the
department, presented a paper,
156
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
"Cultural Vignettes of Old
Claiborne," at the annual meeting of the
Mississippi Historical Association on
March 8.
Frederick B. Artz of the Oberlin College
department of history, who is
on sabbatical leave for the second
semester of the current academic year,
is studying and writing in Europe. Dr.
Artz donated to the Oberlin College
library his excellent collection of
medieval and early modern maps.
Bernard Silberman will go to Japan next
year on a Ford Foundation grant.
George Kren of the University of
Wisconsin was appointed instructor
for the second semester, 1957-58.
After two years of lecturing and
studying in the Philippines and India
on a Fulbright grant, Ellsworth Carlson
returns to Oberlin this summer.
Dr. Carlson's 173-page book, The
Kaiping Mines, 1877-1912, was issued
last year by the Chinese Economic and
Political Studies of Harvard Uni-
versity and is being distributed by the
Harvard University Press.
President Eisenhower has reappointed
Wilfred E. Binkley, chairman of
the department of history at Ohio
Northern University, to a four-year term
on the National Historical Publications
Commission.
Miss Susan Habashy, employed during the
current school year as a
teaching fellow in history and
government at Ohio University, is conduct-
ing special seminar classes on the
history of the Ottoman Empire and the
Middle East.
Marion C. Siney returned to her teaching
duties at Western Reserve
University at the beginning of the
second semester this year after eight
months abroad, primarily in the
Scandinavian peninsula, doing research on
Swedish foreign policy during World War
II.
At Youngstown University, David M. Behen
has been appointed head of
the history department, replacing
Clarence P. Gould, who retired on
September 1, 1957, after having served
many years in that position.
New members of the department are A. W.
Skardon, Jr. (M.A., Uni-
versity of Chicago), who holds an
assistant professorship, and Alfred D.
Low, formerly of Marietta College, who
is an associate professor.
Elbert B. Smith, whose biography of
Thomas Hart Benton, Magnificent
Missourian, was published last February by Lippincott, has accepted
a
position as associate professor of
history at Iowa State College.
HISTORICAL NEWS 157
Vern Bullough had two articles published
in the past year in the Bulletin
of the History of Medicine: "Medieval Medical University at Paris" (May-
June 1957) and "Medieval Bologna
and the Development of Medical Edu-
cation" (January-February 1958).
Bookman Associates-Twayne Publishers
have published Alfred Low's
Lenin on the Question of Nationality.
Karol Marcinkowski, chairman of the
history department at Wilberforce
University, will spend a year in Europe
doing historical research and lectur-
ing at a Polish university.