Otto von Bismarck
Otto Eduard Leopold, Prince of Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg, known as Otto von Bismarck, was a conservative Prussian statesman who dominated German and European affairs from the 1860s until 1890 and was the first Chancellor of the German Empire between 1871 and 1890. In 1862, King Wilhelm I appointed Bismarck as Minister President of Prussia, a position he would hold until 1890, with the exception of a short break in 1873, he provoked three short, decisive wars against Denmark and France. Following the victory against Austria, he abolished the supranational German Confederation and instead formed the North German Confederation as the first German national state in 1867, leading it as Federal Chancellor; this aligned the smaller North German states behind Prussia. Receiving the support of the independent South German states in the Confederation's defeat of France, he formed the German Empire in 1871, unifying Germany with himself as Imperial Chancellor, while retaining control of Prussia at the same time.
The new German nation excluded Austria, Prussia's main opponent for predominance among the German states. With that accomplished by 1871, he skillfully used balance of power diplomacy to maintain Germany's position in a Europe which, despite many disputes and war scares, remained at peace. For historian Eric Hobsbawm, it was Bismarck who "remained undisputed world champion at the game of multilateral diplomatic chess for twenty years after 1871, devoted himself and to maintaining peace between the powers". However, his annexation of Alsace-Lorraine gave new fuel to French nationalism and promoted Germanophobia in France; this helped set the stage for the First World War. Bismarck's diplomacy of realpolitik and powerful rule at home gained him the nickname the "Iron Chancellor". German unification and its rapid economic growth was the foundation to his foreign policy, he disliked colonialism but reluctantly built an overseas empire when it was demanded by both elite and mass opinion. Juggling a complex interlocking series of conferences and alliances, he used his diplomatic skills to maintain Germany's position and used the balance of power to keep Europe at peace in the 1870s and 1880s.
A master of complex politics at home, Bismarck created the first welfare state in the modern world, with the goal of gaining working class support that might otherwise go to his Socialist enemies. In the 1870s, he allied himself with the Liberals and fought the Catholic Church in what was called the Kulturkampf, he lost that battle as the Catholics responded by forming a powerful Centre party and using universal male suffrage to gain a bloc of seats. Bismarck reversed himself, ended the Kulturkampf, broke with the Liberals, imposed protective tariffs, formed a political alliance with the Centre Party to fight the Socialists. A devout Lutheran, he was loyal to his king, who argued with Bismarck but in the end supported him against the advice of his wife and his heir. While the Reichstag, Germany's parliament, was elected by universal male suffrage, it did not have much control of government policy. Bismarck distrusted democracy and ruled through a strong, well-trained bureaucracy with power in the hands of a traditional Junker elite that consisted of the landed nobility in eastern Prussia.
Under Wilhelm I, Bismarck controlled domestic and foreign affairs, until he was removed by the young Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1890, at the age of seventy-five. Bismarck – a Junker himself – was strong-willed and overbearing, but he could be polite and witty, he displayed a violent temper, he kept his power by melodramatically threatening resignation time and again, which cowed Wilhelm I. He possessed not only a long-term national and international vision but the short-term ability to juggle complex developments; as the leader of what historians call "revolutionary conservatism", Bismarck became a hero to German nationalists. Many historians praise him as a visionary, instrumental in uniting Germany and, once, accomplished, kept the peace in Europe through adroit diplomacy. Bismarck was born in Schönhausen, a wealthy family estate situated west of Berlin in the Prussian province of Saxony, his father, Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand von Bismarck, was a Junker estate owner and a former Prussian military officer.
He had two siblings: his younger sister Malwine. The world saw Bismarck as a typical Prussian Junker, an image that he encouraged by wearing military uniforms. Bismarck was well cosmopolitan with a gift for conversation. In addition to his native German, he was fluent in English, Italian and Russian. Bismarck was educated at Johann Ernst Plamann's elementary school, the Friedrich-Wilhelm and Graues Kloster secondary schools. From 1832 to 1833, he studied law at the University of Göttingen, where he was a member of the Corps Hannovera, enrolled at the University of Berlin. In 1838, while stationed as an army reservist in Greifswald, he studied agriculture at the University of Greifswald. At Göttingen, Bismarck befriended the American student John Lothrop Motley. Motley, who became an eminent historian and diplomat while remaining close to Bismarck, wrote a novel in 1839, Morton's Hope, or the Memoirs of a Provincial, about l
United States Secretary of the Treasury
The Secretary of the Treasury is the head of the United States Department of the Treasury, concerned with financial and monetary matters, until 2003 included several federal law enforcement agencies. This position in the federal government of the United States is analogous to the Minister of Finance in many other countries; the Secretary of the Treasury is a member of the President's Cabinet, is nominated by the President of the United States. Nominees for Secretary of the Treasury undergo a confirmation hearing before the United States Senate Committee on Finance before being voted on by the United States Senate; the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, the Secretary of Defense are regarded as the four most important cabinet officials because of the importance of their departments. The Secretary of the Treasury is a non-statutory member of the U. S. National Security Council and fifth in the United States presidential line of succession; the Secretary of the Treasury is the principal economic advisor to the President and plays a critical role in policy-making by bringing an economic and government financial policy perspective to issues facing the government.
The Secretary is responsible for formulating and recommending domestic and international financial and tax policy, participating in the formulation of broad fiscal policies that have general significance for the economy, managing the public debt. The Secretary oversees the activities of the Department in carrying out its major law enforcement responsibilities; the Chief Financial Officer of the government, the Secretary serves as Chairman Pro Tempore of the President's Economic Policy Council, Chairman of the Boards and Managing Trustee of the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds, as U. S. Governor of the International Monetary Fund, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development; the Secretary along with the Treasurer of the United States must sign Federal Reserve notes before they can become legal tender. The Secretary manages the United States Emergency Economic Stabilization fund.
Most of the Department's law enforcement agencies such as the U. S. Customs Service, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Explosives, the U. S. Secret Service were reassigned to other departments in 2003 in conjunction with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security; the salary of the Secretary of the Treasury is $205,700 annually. Parties No party Federalist Democratic-Republican Democratic Whig Republican Status 1 William Jones served as acting secretary between the resignation of Alexander J. Dallas and appointment of William H. Crawford. 2 Deputy Secretary of the Treasury M. Peter McPherson served as Acting Secretary of the Treasury from August 17, 1988, to September 15, 1988. 3 Because of the resignation of Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Roger Altman in August 1994, Under Secretary of Treasury for Domestic Finance Frank N. Newman served from December 22, 1994, to January 11, 1995 as Acting Secretary of the Treasury. 4 Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Kenneth W. Dam served as Acting Secretary of the Treasury from December 31, 2002, to February 3, 2003.
5 Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Robert M. Kimmitt served as Acting Secretary of the Treasury from June 30, 2006, to July 9, 2006. 6 Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Stuart A. Levey served as Acting Secretary of the Treasury from January 20, 2009, until the confirmation of Timothy Geithner, which occurred January 26, 2009. 7 Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Neal Wolin served as Acting Secretary of the Treasury from January 25, 2013, until the confirmation of Jack Lew which occurred February 28, 2013. 8 Acting Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Adam J. Szubin served as Acting Secretary of the Treasury from January 20, 2017, until the confirmation of Steven Mnuchin which occurred February 13, 2017. If both the Secretary and the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury are unable to carry out the duties of the office of Secretary of the Treasury whichever Treasury official of Under Secretary rank sworn in earliest assumes the role of Acting Secretary. Positions listed on the Department of the Treasury website include the Under Secretary for Domestic Finance, the Under Secretary for International Affairs, the Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence.
As of April 2019, there are eleven living former Secretaries of the Treasury, the oldest being George P. Shultz; the most recent Secretary of the Treasury to die, as well as the most serving Secretary to die, was Lloyd M. Bentsen, Jr. on May 23, 2006. "Secretaries of the Treasury". History of the Treasury. United States Department of the Treasury. Retrieved April 9, 2006. Official website
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, which along with the United States House of Representatives—the lower chamber—comprises the legislature of the United States. The Senate chamber is located in the north wing of the Capitol, in Washington, D. C; the composition and powers of the Senate are established by Article One of the United States Constitution. The Senate is composed of senators; each state, regardless of its population size, is represented by two senators who serve staggered terms of six years. There being at present 50 states in the Union, there are presently 100 senators. From 1789 until 1913, senators were appointed by legislatures of the states; as the upper chamber of Congress, the Senate has several powers of advice and consent which are unique to it. These include the approval of treaties, the confirmation of Cabinet secretaries, Supreme Court justices, federal judges, flag officers, regulatory officials, other federal executive officials and other federal uniformed officers.
In addition to these, in cases wherein no candidate receives a majority of electors for Vice President, the duty falls to the Senate to elect one of the top two recipients of electors for that office. Furthermore, the Senate has the responsibility of conducting the trials of those impeached by the House; the Senate is considered both a more deliberative and more prestigious body than the House of Representatives due to its longer terms, smaller size, statewide constituencies, which led to a more collegial and less partisan atmosphere. The presiding officer of the Senate is the Vice President of the United States, President of the Senate. In the Vice President's absence, the President Pro Tempore, customarily the senior member of the party holding a majority of seats, presides over the Senate. In the early 20th century, the practice of majority and minority parties electing their floor leaders began, although they are not constitutional officers; the drafters of the Constitution created a bicameral Congress as a compromise between those who felt that each state, since it was sovereign, should be represented, those who felt the legislature must directly represent the people, as the House of Commons did in Great Britain.
This idea of having one chamber represent people while the other gives equal representation to states regardless of population, was known as the Connecticut Compromise. There was a desire to have two Houses that could act as an internal check on each other. One was intended to be a "People's House" directly elected by the people, with short terms obliging the representatives to remain close to their constituents; the other was intended to represent the states to such extent as they retained their sovereignty except for the powers expressly delegated to the national government. The Senate was thus not designed to serve the people of the United States equally; the Constitution provides that the approval of both chambers is necessary for the passage of legislation. First convened in 1789, the Senate of the United States was formed on the example of the ancient Roman Senate; the name is derived from Latin for council of elders. James Madison made the following comment about the Senate: In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of landed proprietors would be insecure.
An agrarian law would soon take place. If these observations be just, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation. Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, to balance and check the other, they ought to be so constituted. The Senate, ought to be this body. Article Five of the Constitution stipulates that no constitutional amendment may be created to deprive a state of its equal suffrage in the Senate without that state's consent; the District of Columbia and all other territories are not entitled to representation allowed to vote in either House of the Congress. The District of Columbia elects two "shadow U. S. Senators", but they are officials of the D. C. City Government and not members of the U. S. Senate; the United States has had 50 states since 1959, thus the Senate has had 100 senators since 1959. The disparity between the most and least populous states has grown since the Connecticut Compromise, which granted each state two members of the Senate and at least one member of the House of Representatives, for a total minimum of three presidential electors, regardless of population.
In 1787, Virginia had ten times the population of Rhode Island, whereas today California has 70 times the population of Wyoming, based on the 1790 and 2000 censuses. This means some citizens are two orders of magnitude better represented in the Senate than those in other states. Seats in the House of Representatives are proportionate to the population of each state, reducing the disparity of representation. Before the adoption of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913, senators were elected by the individual state legislatures. Problems with repeated vacant seats due to the inability of a legislature to elect senators, intrastate political struggles, bribery and intimidation had led to a growing movement to amend the Constitution to allow for the direct election of senators; the party composition of the Senate during the 116th Congress: Art
Fine art
In European academic traditions, fine art is art developed for aesthetics or beauty, distinguishing it from applied art, which has to serve some practical function, such as pottery or most metalwork. The five main fine arts were painting, architecture and poetry, with performing arts including theatre and dance; the old master print and drawing were included as related forms to painting, just as prose forms of literature were to poetry. Today, the range of what would be considered fine arts includes additional modern forms, such as film, video production/editing and conceptual art. One definition of fine art is "a visual art considered to have been created for aesthetic and intellectual purposes and judged for its beauty and meaningfulness painting, drawing, watercolor and architecture." In that sense, there are conceptual differences between the applied arts. As conceived, as understood for much of the modern era, the perception of aesthetic qualities required a refined judgment referred to as having good taste, which differentiated fine art from popular art and entertainment.
The word "fine" does not so much denote the quality of the artwork in question, but the purity of the discipline according to traditional Western European canons. Except in the case of architecture, where a practical utility was accepted, this definition excluded the "useful" applied or decorative arts, the products of what were regarded as crafts. In contemporary practice these distinctions and restrictions have become meaningless, as the concept or intention of the artist is given primacy, regardless of the means through which this is expressed. According to some writers the concept of a distinct category of fine art is an invention of the early modern period in the West. Larry Shiner in his The Invention of Art: A Cultural History locates the invention in the 18th century: "There was a traditional “system of the arts” in the West before the eighteenth century. In that system, an artist or artisan was a skilled maker or practitioner, a work of art was the useful product of skilled work, the appreciation of the arts was integrally connected with their role in the rest of life.
“Art”, in other words, meant the same thing as the Greek word techne, or in English “skill”, a sense that has survived in phrases like “the art of war”, “the art of love”, “the art of medicine.” Similar ideas have been expressed by Paul Oskar Kristeller, Pierre Bourdieu, Terry Eagleton, though the point of invention is placed earlier, in the Italian Renaissance. The decline of the concept of "fine art" is dated by George Kubler and others to around 1880, when it "fell out of fashion" as, by about 1900, folk art came to be regarded as of equal significance. ""fine art" was driven out of use by about 1920 by the exponents of industrial design... who opposed a double standard of judgment for works of art and for useful objects". This was among theoreticians; the separation of arts and crafts that exists in Europe and the US is not shared by all other cultures. In Japanese aesthetics, the activities of everyday life are depicted by integrating not only art with craft but man-made with nature. Traditional Chinese art distinguished within Chinese painting between the landscape literati painting of scholar gentlemen and the artisans of the schools of court painting and sculpture.
A high status was given to many things that would be seen as craft objects in the West, in particular ceramics, jade carving and embroidery. Latin American art was dominated by European colonialism until the 20th-century, when indigenous art began to reassert itself inspired by the Constructivist Movement, which reunited arts with crafts based upon socialist principles. In Africa, Yoruba art has a political and spiritual function; as with the art of the Chinese, the art of the Yoruba is often composed of what would ordinarily be considered in the West to be craft production. Some of its most admired manifestations, such as sculpture and textiles, fall in this category. Drawing is one of the major forms of the visual arts. Common instruments include: graphite pencils and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, charcoals, pastels, stylus, or various metals like silverpoint. There are a number including cartooning and creating comics. There remains debate whether the following is considered a part of “drawing” as “fine art”: "doodling", drawing in the fog a shower and leaving an imprint on the bathroom mirror, or the surrealist method of "entopic graphomania", in which dots are made at the sites of impurities in a blank sheet of paper, the lines are made between the dots.
Mosaics are images formed with small pieces of glass, called tesserae. They can be functional. An artist who designs and makes mosaics is called a mosaicist. Printmaking is the process of making artworks by printing on paper. Except in the case of monotyping, the process is capable of producing multiples of the same piece, called a print; each print is considered an original, as opposed to a copy. The reasoning behind this is that the print is not a reproduction of another work of art in a different medium — for instance, a painting — but rather an image designed from inception as a print. An individual print is referred to as an impression. Prints ar
Grace Coolidge
Grace Anna Goodhue Coolidge was the wife of the 30th President of the United States, Calvin Coolidge. She was the First Lady of the United States from 1923 to 1929 and the Second Lady of the United States from 1921 to 1923, she graduated from the University of Vermont in 1902 with a bachelor of arts degree in teaching and joined the Clarke Schools for Hearing and Speech in Northampton, Massachusetts, to teach deaf children to communicate by lip reading, rather than by signing. She met Calvin Coolidge in 1904, the two were married the following year; as her husband advanced his political career, Coolidge avoided politics. When Calvin Coolidge was elected Governor of Massachusetts in 1919, she remained at home in Northampton with their children. After her husband's election as vice president in 1920, the family moved to Washington, D. C. living at the Willard Hotel. Coolidge did not speak out on political issues including women's rights. Instead, she dedicated herself to supporting popular causes and organizations, such as the Red Cross and the Visiting Nurse Association.
After the death of her son Calvin in 1924, she won the sympathy of the country. Unlike previous first ladies, who had withdrawn entirely from the public spotlight after personal tragedies, Coolidge resumed her official duties after a few months. In 1929, Calvin Coolidge's term as president ended, the couple retired to Northampton. After her husband's death in 1933, Coolidge continued her work with the deaf and wrote for several magazines, she served on the boards of the Clarke School. After the start of World War II, Grace joined a local Northampton committee dedicated to helping Jewish refugees from Europe, loaned her house to WAVES. In 1957, she died of heart disease, was buried in Plymouth, beside her husband and her son. Grace Anna Goodhue was born on January 3, 1879, in Burlington, the only child of Andrew Issaclar Goodhue and Lemira Barrett Goodhue, she was of English ancestry. Her father, a deacon, had served as the steamboat inspector for the Lake Champlain Transportation Company, appointed to the position in 1887 by President Grover Cleveland.
Her mother was a housewife, who taught her many domestic skills, including knitting, cooking and gardening. She began her education at age five at a local public grade school in Burlington, attended Burlington Public Grammar School, it was during this time that she took private piano lessons. In 1893, she entered Burlington High School. There she studied Latin and French, as well as geology and chemistry, she took a private course on elocution. She enrolled in 1898 at the University of Vermont, where she founded the Vermont chapter of the Pi Beta Phi sorority, acted in productions of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing and Twelfth Night, joined the college's glee club, she would become the first First Lady to have earned a four-year undergraduate degree. From 1902 to 1904, inspired by a childhood friend who had pursued a career teaching deaf children, she studied lip reading at Clarke Schools for Hearing and Speech and became a teacher there; the education of deaf children remained her lifelong passion.
Grace dated several young men during college. One relationship, that with Frank Joyner, was serious enough, she ended the relationship in 1903 when she met Calvin Coolidge. Grace's vivacity and charm proved a perfect complement to Coolidge's reserved manner. In the summer of 1905, Coolidge proposed in the form of an ultimatum: "I am going to be married to you." Grace consented, but her mother objected and did everything she could to postpone the wedding. Coolidge never reconciled with his mother-in-law, who insisted that Grace had been responsible for Coolidge's political success. On October 4, 1905, Goodhue and Coolidge married in a simple ceremony at her parents' house in Burlington: Coolidge House, The house was restored in 1993 by Champlain College*, they honeymooned for a week in Montreal and settled in Northampton, where they occupied what is now known as the Calvin Coolidge House until 1930. Calvin Coolidge's political career took off in 1907 when he was elected to the Massachusetts General Court.
After his term in the state legislature ended, he served three consecutive one-year terms as Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, one term as Governor of Massachusetts. In 1920, he was elected Vice President and took office in March 1921. Grace did not maintain much of a public profile; the Coolidges had two sons and Calvin In 1921, as wife of the Vice President of the United States, Grace Coolidge went from her housewife's routine into Washington society and became the most popular woman in the capital. After Harding's death and Calvin Coolidge's succession to the Presidency, Grace planned the new administration's social life as her husband wanted it: unpretentious and dignified; as First Lady, she was a popular hostess. She was the first First Lady to speak in sound newsreels; the social highlight of the Coolidge years was the party for Charles Lindbergh following his transatlantic flight in 1927. The Coolidges were a devoted couple, although the president never discussed state matters with her.
She did not know that he had decided not to seek re-election in 1928 until he announced it to the press. She received a gold medal from the National Institute of Social Science. In 1931 she was voted one of America's twelve greatest living women. Calvin Coolidge summed up his marriage to Grace in his autobiography: "For a quarter of a century she has borne with my infirmities, I have rejoiced i
Hampton National Historic Site
Hampton National Historic Site, in the Hampton area north of Towson, Baltimore County, Maryland, USA, preserves a remnant of a vast 18th-century estate, including a Georgian manor house, gardens and the original stone slave quarters. The estate was owned by the Ridgely family for seven generations, from 1745 to 1948; the Hampton Mansion was the largest private home in America when it was completed in 1790 and today is considered to be one of the finest examples of Georgian architecture in the U. S, its furnishings, together with the estate's slave quarters and other preserved structures, provide insight into the life of late 18th-century and early 19th-century landowning aristocracy. In 1948, Hampton was the first site selected as a National Historical Site for its architectural significance by the U. S. National Park Service; the grounds were admired in the 19th century for their elaborate parterres or formal gardens, which have been restored to resemble their appearance during the 1820s. Several trees are more than 200 years old.
In addition to the mansion and grounds, visitors may tour the overseer's slave quarters. The property was part of the Northampton land grant given to Col. Henry Darnall, a relative of Lord Baltimore, in 1695, his heirs sold the land on April 2, 1745, to Col. Charles Ridgely, a tobacco farmer and trader. The bill of sale records that the property included "... houses, tobacco houses, stables and orchards." By the late 1750s, Hampton included an ironworks. His son, Capt. Charles Ridgely, expanded the family business to include gristmills, apple orchards, stone quarries. During the American Revolutionary War, the ironworks was a significant source of income for the Ridgelys, producing cannons and ammunition for the Continental Army. In 1783, Capt. Ridgely began construction of Hampton Mansion, he said. When it was completed in 1790, the Hampton Mansion was the largest private home in the United States; when Capt. Ridgely died that same year, his nephew, Charles Carnan Ridgely, became the second master of Hampton.
He had 10,590 feet of irrigation pipes laid in 1799 from a nearby spring to provide water to the Mansion and the surrounding gardens, which he was extensively developing. Prominent artisans of the time were hired to design geometric formal gardens, which were planted on the Mansion's grounds between 1799 and 1801. An avid horseman, Charles Carnan began raising Thoroughbred horses at Hampton, where he had a racetrack installed. A 1799 advertisement promoted the stud services of Grey Medley. Another of Ridgely's racehorses, Post Boy, won the Washington City Jockey Club cup. Under Charles Carnan Ridgely, Hampton reached its peak of 25,000 acres in the 1820s; the mansion overlooked a grand estate of orchards, coal mining, marble quarries and mercantile interests. The vast farm produced corn, beef cattle, dairy products and horses. More than 300 slaves worked the fields and served the household, making Hampton one of Maryland's largest slaveholding estates. Six parterres were designed on three terraced levels facing the mansion, planted with roses and seasonal flowers.
In 1820, an orangery was built on the grounds. Charles Carnan Ridgely entertained prominent guests in the Mansion's 51 ft. x 21 ft. Great Hall, such as Charles Carroll of Carrollton, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, Revolutionary War general, the Marquis de Lafayette. Charles Carnan served as governor of Maryland between 1816–19; when Governor Ridgely died in 1829, he freed Hampton's slaves in his will. The Hampton estate was split among various heirs, with his son, John Carnan Ridgely, inheriting the mansion and 4,500 acres; the ironworks closed and thereafter the Ridgelys' income was derived from farming and their stone quarries. John Carnan added plumbing and gas lighting to the mansion. Eliza Ridgely, John's wife and the subject of Thomas Sully's famous portrait, Lady with a Harp, purchased many artworks and furnishings for the mansion, she was a noted horticulturist and had successively larger and more elaborate gardens cultivated on the grounds, with a large variety of flowers and shrubs grown in the estate's greenhouses and tended by some of the 60 slaves purchased by John Carnan Ridgely.
By the mid-19th century, the Hampton estate had one of the most extensive collections of citrus trees in the U. S. along with various exotic trees and plants gathered by Eliza Ridgely during her frequent travels to Europe and the Orient. In the warm months, the potted citrus plants were brought outside and arranged around the terraced gardens taken into the heated orangery during the winter, she had one section of the garden planted with colorful red, yellow and maroon coleus from Asia. In 1859, Hampton's fame for lavish style was such that the author of a book on landscaping wrote, "It has been said of Hampton that it expresses more grandeur than any other place in America". In January 1861, shortly after the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, Charles Ridgely formed the pro-Confederate Baltimore County Horse Guards at Hampton with himself as captain of the militia unit that he described as "states' rights gentlemen." One of his militia's cavalry men, Lieut. John Merryman, was subsequently arrested by the Union Army and imprisoned in May 1861 on a charge of treason, sparking the landmark U.
S. Supreme Court case, Ex parte Merryman; as the Civil War rage
University
A university is an institution of higher education and research which awards academic degrees in various academic disciplines. Universities provide undergraduate education and postgraduate education; the word university is derived from the Latin universitas magistrorum et scholarium, which means "community of teachers and scholars". While antecedents had existed in Asia and Africa, the modern university system has roots in the European medieval university, created in Italy and evolved from cathedral schools for the clergy during the High Middle Ages; the original Latin word universitas refers in general to "a number of persons associated into one body, a society, community, corporation, etc". At the time of the emergence of urban town life and medieval guilds, specialized "associations of students and teachers with collective legal rights guaranteed by charters issued by princes, prelates, or the towns in which they were located" came to be denominated by this general term. Like other guilds, they were self-regulating and determined the qualifications of their members.
In modern usage the word has come to mean "An institution of higher education offering tuition in non-vocational subjects and having the power to confer degrees," with the earlier emphasis on its corporate organization considered as applying to Medieval universities. The original Latin word referred to degree-awarding institutions of learning in Western and Central Europe, where this form of legal organisation was prevalent, from where the institution spread around the world. An important idea in the definition of a university is the notion of academic freedom; the first documentary evidence of this comes from early in the life of the University of Bologna, which adopted an academic charter, the Constitutio Habita, in 1158 or 1155, which guaranteed the right of a traveling scholar to unhindered passage in the interests of education. Today this is claimed as the origin of "academic freedom"; this is now recognised internationally - on 18 September 1988, 430 university rectors signed the Magna Charta Universitatum, marking the 900th anniversary of Bologna's foundation.
The number of universities signing the Magna Charta Universitatum continues to grow, drawing from all parts of the world. According to Encyclopædia Britannica, the earliest universities were founded in Asia and Africa, predating the first European medieval universities; the University of Al Quaraouiyine, founded in Morocco by Fatima al-Fihri in 859, is considered by some to be the oldest degree-granting university. Their endowment by a prince or monarch and their role in training government officials made early Mediterranean universities similar to Islamic madrasas, although madrasas were smaller, individual teachers, rather than the madrasa itself, granted the license or degree. Scholars like Arnold H. Green and Hossein Nasr have argued that starting in the 10th century, some medieval Islamic madrasas became universities. However, scholars like George Makdisi, Toby Huff and Norman Daniel argue that the European university has no parallel in the medieval Islamic world. Several other scholars consider the university as uniquely European in origin and characteristics.
Darleen Pryds questions this view, pointing out that madaris and European universities in the Mediterranean region shared similar foundations by princely patrons and were intended to provide loyal administrators to further the rulers' agenda. Some scholars, including Makdisi, have argued that early medieval universities were influenced by the madrasas in Al-Andalus, the Emirate of Sicily, the Middle East during the Crusades. Norman Daniel, views this argument as overstated. Roy Lowe and Yoshihito Yasuhara have drawn on the well-documented influences of scholarship from the Islamic world on the universities of Western Europe to call for a reconsideration of the development of higher education, turning away from a concern with local institutional structures to a broader consideration within a global context; the university is regarded as a formal institution that has its origin in the Medieval Christian tradition. European higher education took place for hundreds of years in cathedral schools or monastic schools, in which monks and nuns taught classes.
The earliest universities were developed under the aegis of the Latin Church by papal bull as studia generalia and from cathedral schools. It is possible, that the development of cathedral schools into universities was quite rare, with the University of Paris being an exception, they were founded by Kings or municipal administrations. In the early medieval period, most new universities were founded from pre-existing schools when these schools were deemed to have become sites of higher education. Many historians state that universities and cathedral schools were a continuation of the interest in learning promoted by The residence of a religious community. Pope Gregory VII was critical in promoting and regulating the concept of modern university as his 1079 Papal Decree ordered the regulated establishment of cathedral schools that transformed themselves into the first European universities; the first universities in Europe with a form of corporate/guild structure were the University of Bologna, the University of Paris, the University of Oxford.
The University of Bologna began as a law school teach
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