International Union for Conservation of Nature
The International Union for Conservation of Nature is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. It is involved in data gathering and analysis, field projects and education. IUCN's mission is to "influence and assist societies throughout the world to conserve nature and to ensure that any use of natural resources is equitable and ecologically sustainable". Over the past decades, IUCN has widened its focus beyond conservation ecology and now incorporates issues related to sustainable development in its projects. Unlike many other international environmental organisations, IUCN does not itself aim to mobilize the public in support of nature conservation, it tries to influence the actions of governments and other stakeholders by providing information and advice, through building partnerships. The organization is best known to the wider public for compiling and publishing the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, which assesses the conservation status of species worldwide.
IUCN has a membership of over 1400 non-governmental organizations. Some 16,000 scientists and experts participate in the work of IUCN commissions on a voluntary basis, it employs 1000 full-time staff in more than 50 countries. Its headquarters are in Switzerland. IUCN has observer and consultative status at the United Nations, plays a role in the implementation of several international conventions on nature conservation and biodiversity, it was involved in establishing the World Wide Fund for Nature and the World Conservation Monitoring Centre. In the past, IUCN has been criticized for placing the interests of nature over those of indigenous peoples. In recent years, its closer relations with the business sector have caused controversy. IUCN was established in 1948, it was called the International Union for the Protection of Nature and the World Conservation Union. Establishment IUCN was established on 5 October 1948, in Fontainebleau, when representatives of governments and conservation organizations signed a formal act constituting the International Union for the Protection of Nature.
The initiative to set up the new organisation came from UNESCO and from its first Director General, the British biologist Julian Huxley. The objectives of the new Union were to encourage international cooperation in the protection of nature, to promote national and international action and to compile and distribute information. At the time of its founding IUPN was the only international organisation focusing on the entire spectrum of nature conservation Early years: 1948–1956 IUPN started out with 65 members, its secretariat was located in Brussels. Its first work program focused on saving species and habitats and applying knowledge, advancing education, promoting international agreements and promoting conservation. Providing a solid scientific base for conservation action was the heart of all activities. IUPN and UNESCO were associated, they jointly organized the 1949 Conference on Protection of Nature. In preparation for this conference a list of gravely endangered species was drawn up for the first time, a precursor of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
In the early years of its existence IUCN depended entirely on UNESCO funding and was forced to temporarily scale down activities when this ended unexpectedly in 1954. IUPN was successful in engaging prominent scientists and identifying important issues such as the harmful effects of pesticides on wildlife but not many of the ideas it developed were turned into action; this was caused by unwillingness to act on the part of governments, uncertainty about the IUPN mandate and lack of resources. In 1956, IUPN changed its name to International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources. Increased profile and recognition: 1956–1965 In the 1950s and 1960s Europe entered a period of economic growth and formal colonies became independent. Both developments had impact on the work of IUCN. Through the voluntary involvement of experts in its Commissions IUCN was able to get a lot of work done while still operating on a low budget, it established links with the Council of Europe. In 1961, at the request of United Nations Economic and Social Council, the United Nations Economic and Social Council, IUCN published the first global list of national parks and protected areas which it has updated since.
IUCN's best known publication, the Red Data Book on the conservation status of species, was first published in 1964. IUCN began to play a part in the development of international treaties and conventions, starting with the African Convention on the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources. Environmental law and policy making became a new area of expertise. Africa was the focus of many of the early IUCN conservation field projects. IUCN supported the ‘Yellowstone model’ of protected area management, which restricted human presence and activity in order to protect nature. IUCN and other conservation organisations were criticized for protecting nature against people rather than with people; this model was also applied in Africa and played a role in the decision to remove the Maasai people from Serengeti National Park and the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. To establish a stable financial basis for its work, IUCN participated in setting up the World Wildlife Fund
George Armstrong Custer
George Armstrong Custer was a United States Army officer and cavalry commander in the American Civil War and the American Indian Wars. Custer graduated from West Point in 1861, bottom of his class, but as the Civil War was just starting, trained officers were in immediate demand, he worked with General McClellan and the future General Pleasonton, who both recognised his qualities as a cavalry leader, he was brevetted brigadier general of Volunteers at age 23. At Gettysburg, he commanded the Michigan Cavalry Brigade, defeated Jeb Stuart’s assault on Cemetery Ridge, while outnumbered. In 1864, Custer served in the Overland Campaign and in Sheridan’s army in the Shenandoah Valley, defeating Jubal Early at Cedar Creek, his division blocked Lee's final retreat and received the first flag of truce from the Confederates, Custer being present at Lee’s surrender to U. S. Grant at Appomattox. After the war, Custer was appointed a lieutenant colonel in the Regular Army, sent west to fight in the Indian Wars.
On June 25, 1876, while leading the 7th Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in Montana Territory against a coalition of Native American tribes, he was killed along with over one third of his command during an action romanticized as "Custer's Last Stand". His dramatic end was as controversial as the rest of his career, his legacy remains divided, his bold leadership in battle is unquestioned, but his legend was of his own fabrication, through his extensive journalism, more through his wife’s energetic lobbying throughout her long widowhood. Custer's paternal immigrant ancestors and Gertrude Küster, emigrated to the North American English colonies around 1693 from the Rhineland in Germany among thousands of Palatine refugees whose passage was arranged by the English government to gain settlers in New York and Pennsylvania. According to family letters, Custer was named after George Armstrong, a minister, in his devout mother's hope that her son might join the clergy. Custer was born in New Rumley, Ohio, to Emanuel Henry Custer, a farmer and blacksmith, his second wife, Marie Ward Kirkpatrick, of English and Scots-Irish descent.
He had two younger brothers and Boston. His other full siblings were the family's youngest child, Margaret Custer, Nevin Custer, who suffered from asthma and rheumatism. Custer had three older half-siblings. Custer and his brothers acquired their life-long love of practical jokes, which they played out among the close family members. Emanuel Custer was an outspoken Democrat who taught his children politics and toughness at an early age. In a February 3, 1887 letter to his son's widow, Libby, he related an incident "when Autie was about four years old, he had to have a tooth drawn, he was much afraid of blood. When I took him to the doctor to have the tooth pulled, it was in the night and I told him if it bled well it would get well right away, he must be a good soldier; when he got to the doctor he took his seat, the pulling began. The forceps slipped off and he had to make a second trial, he pulled it out, Autie never scrunched. Going home, I led him by the arm, he jumped and skipped, said'Father you and me can whip all the Whigs in Michigan.'
I thought, saying a good deal but I did not contradict him." In order to attend school, Custer lived with an older half-sister and her husband in Monroe, Michigan. Before entering the United States Military Academy, Custer attended the McNeely Normal School known as Hopedale Normal College, in Hopedale, Ohio, it was to train teachers for elementary schools. While attending Hopedale and classmate William Enos Emery were known to have carried coal to help pay for their room and board. After graduating from McNeely Normal School in 1856, Custer taught school in Ohio, his first sweetheart was Mary Jane Holland. Custer entered West Point as a cadet on July 1, 1857, as a member of the class of 1862, his class numbered seventy-nine cadets embarking on a five-year course of study. With the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, the course was shortened to four years, Custer and his class graduated on June 24, 1861, he was 34th in a class of 34 graduates: 23 classmates had dropped out for academic reasons while 22 classmates had resigned to join the Confederacy.
Throughout his life, Custer tested rules. In his four years at West Point, he amassed a record-total of 726 demerits, one of the worst conduct records in the history of the academy. A fellow cadet recalled Custer as declaring there were only two places in a class, the head and the foot, since he had no desire to be the head, he aspired to be the foot. A roommate noted, "It was alright with George Custer. Under ordinary national conditions, Custer's low class rank would result in an obscure posting, but Custer had the "fortune" to graduate as the Civil War broke out. All officers were needed. Like the other graduates, Custer was commissioned as a second lieutenant. S. Cavalry Regiment and tasked with drilling volunteers in Washington, D. C. On July 21, 1861, he was with his regiment at the First Battle of Bull Run during the Manassas Campaign, where Army commander Winfield Scott detailed him to carry messages to Major General Irvin McDowell. After the battle, Custer continued participating in the defenses of Washington D.
C. until October, when he became ill. He was absent from his unit until February 1862. In March, he participated with the 2nd Cavalry in the Peninsula Campaign in Virginia until April 4. On April 5, Custer s
United States Department of the Interior
The United States Department of the Interior is the United States federal executive department of the U. S. government responsible for the management and conservation of most federal lands and natural resources, the administration of programs relating to Native Americans, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, territorial affairs, insular areas of the United States. About 75% of federal public land is managed by the department, with most of the remainder managed by the United States Department of Agriculture's United States Forest Service; the department is administered by the United States Secretary of the Interior, a member of the Cabinet of the President. The current Secretary is David Bernhardt, who serves in an acting capacity, concurrently serves in the Department as Deputy Secretary; the Inspector General position is vacant, with Mary Kendall serving as acting Inspector General. Despite its name, the Department of the Interior has a different role from that of the interior ministries of other nations, which are responsible for police matters and internal security.
In the United States, national security and immigration functions are performed by the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice secondarily. The Department of the Interior has been humorously called "The Department of Everything Else" because of its broad range of responsibilities. A department for domestic concern was first considered by the 1st United States Congress in 1789, but those duties were placed in the Department of State; the idea of a separate domestic department continued to percolate for a half-century and was supported by Presidents from James Madison to James Polk. The 1846–48 Mexican–American War gave the proposal new steam as the responsibilities of the federal government grew. Polk's Secretary of the Treasury, Robert J. Walker, became a vocal champion of creating the new department. In 1849, Walker stated in his annual report that several federal offices were placed in departments with which they had little to do, he noted that the General Land Office had little to do with the Treasury and highlighted the Indian Affairs office, part of the Department of War, the Patent Office, part of the Department of State.
Walker argued that these and other bureaus should be brought together in a new Department of the Interior. A bill authorizing its creation of the department passed the House of Representatives on February 15, 1849, spent just over two weeks in the Senate; the department was established on March 3, 1849, the eve of President Zachary Taylor's inauguration, when the Senate voted 31 to 25 to create the department. Its passage was delayed by Democrats in Congress who were reluctant to create more patronage posts for the incoming Whig administration to fill; the first Secretary of the Interior was Thomas Ewing. Many of the domestic concerns the department dealt with were transferred to other departments. For example, the Department of Interior was responsible for water pollution control prior to the creation of the EPA. Other agencies became separate departments, such as the Bureau of Agriculture, which became the Department of Agriculture; however and natural resource management, American Indian affairs, wildlife conservation, territorial affairs remain the responsibilities of the Department of the Interior.
As of mid-2004, the department managed 507 million acres of surface land, or about one-fifth of the land in the United States. It manages 476 dams and 348 reservoirs through the Bureau of Reclamation, 410 national parks, seashore sites, etc. through the National Park Service, 544 national wildlife refuges through the Fish and Wildlife Service. Within the Interior Department, the Bureau of Indian Affairs handles some federal relations with Native Americans, while others are handled by the Office of Special Trustee; the current acting Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs is Lawrence S. Roberts, an enrolled member of the Oneida Tribe in Wisconsin; the department has been the subject of disputes over proper accounting for Native American Trusts set up to track the income and distribution of monies that are generated by the Trust and specific Native American lands, which the government leases for fees to companies that extract oil, timber and other resources. Several cases have sought an accounting of such funds from departments within the Interior and Treasury, in what has been a 15-year-old lawsuit.
Some Native American nations have sued the government over water-rights issues and their treaties with the US. In 2010 Congress passed the Claims Settlement Act of 2010, which provided $3.4 billion for the settlement of the Cobell v. Salazar class-action trust case and four Native American water rights cases; the $3.4 billion will be placed in a still-to-be-selected bank and $1.4 billion will go to individuals in the form of checks ranging from $500 to $1,500. A small group, such as members of the Osage tribe who benefit from huge Oklahoma oil revenues, will get far more, based on a formula incorporating their 10 highest years of income between 1985 and 2009; as important, $2 billion will be used to buy trust land from Native American owners at fair market prices, with the government returning the land to tribes. Nobody can be forced to sell. Assistant Secretary for Policy and Budget Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy and International Affairs Office of Environmental Policy and Compliance Office of International Affairs Office of Native Hawaiian Relations Office of Restoration and Damage Assessment Office of Policy Analysis National Invasive Species Council Deputy Assistant Secretary for Budget, Finance and Acquisiti
Lakota people
The Lakota are a Native American tribe. Known as the Teton Sioux, they are one of the three Sioux tribes of Plains, their current lands are in South Dakota. They speak Lakȟótiyapi—the Lakota language, the westernmost of three related languages that belong to the Siouan language family; the seven bands or "sub-tribes" of the Lakota are: Sičháŋǧu Oglála Itázipčho Húŋkpapȟa Mnikȟówožu Sihásapa Oóhenuŋpa Notable Lakota persons include Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake from the Húnkpapȟa band. Siouan languages speakers may have originated in the lower Mississippi River region and migrated to or originated in the Ohio Valley, they were agriculturalists and may have been part of the Mound Builder civilization during the 9th–12th centuries CE. In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, Dakota-Lakota speakers lived in the upper Mississippi Region in present-day Minnesota, Wisconsin and the Dakotas. Conflicts with Anishnaabe and Cree peoples pushed the Lakota west onto the Great Plains in the mid- to late-17th century.
Early Lakota history is recorded in their Winter counts, pictorial calendars painted on hides or recorded on paper. The Battiste Good winter count records Lakota history back to 900 CE, when White Buffalo Calf Woman gave the Lakota people the White Buffalo Calf Pipe. Around 1730, Cheyenne people introduced the Lakota to horses, called šuŋkawakaŋ. After their adoption of horse culture, Lakota society centered on the buffalo hunt on horseback; the total population of the Sioux was estimated at 28,000 by French explorers in 1660. The Lakota population was first estimated at 8,500 in 1805, growing and reaching 16,110 in 1881; the Lakota were, one of the few Native American tribes to increase in population in the 19th century. The number of Lakota has now increased to more than 170,000, of whom about 2,000 still speak the Lakota language. After 1720, the Lakota branch of the Seven Council Fires split into two major sects, the Saône who moved to the Lake Traverse area on the South Dakota–North Dakota–Minnesota border, the Oglála-Sičháŋǧu who occupied the James River valley.
However, by about 1750 the Saône had moved to the east bank of the Missouri River, followed 10 years by the Oglála and Brulé. The large and powerful Arikara and Hidatsa villages had long prevented the Lakota from crossing the Missouri. However, the great smallpox epidemic of 1772–1780 destroyed three-quarters of these tribes; the Lakota crossed the river into short-grass prairies of the High Plains. These newcomers were the Saône, well-mounted and confident, who spread out quickly. In 1765, a Saône exploring and raiding party led by Chief Standing Bear discovered the Black Hills the territory of the Cheyenne. Ten years the Oglála and Brulé crossed the river. In 1776, the Lakota defeated the Cheyenne; the Cheyenne moved west to the Powder River country, the Lakota made the Black Hills their home. Initial United States contact with the Lakota during the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804–1806 was marked by a standoff. Lakota bands refused to allow the explorers to continue upstream, the expedition prepared for battle, which never came.
Some bands of Lakotas became the first Indians to help the United States Army in an Indian war west of the Missouri during the Arikara War in 1823. In 1843, the southern Lakotas attacked Pawnee Chief Blue Coat's village near the Loup in Nebraska, killing many and burning half of the earth lodges. Next time the Lakotas inflicted a blow so severe on the Pawnee would be in 1873, during the Massacre Canyon battle near Republican River. Nearly half a century after Fort Laramie had been built without permission on Lakota land, the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 was negotiated to protect travelers on the Oregon Trail; the Cheyenne and Lakota had attacked emigrant parties in a competition for resources, because some settlers had encroached on their lands. The Fort Laramie Treaty acknowledged Lakota sovereignty over the Great Plains in exchange for free passage on the Oregon Trail for "as long as the river flows and the eagle flies"; the United States government did not enforce the treaty restriction against unauthorized settlement.
Lakota and other bands attacked settlers and emigrant trains, causing public pressure on the U. S. Army to punish the hostiles. On September 3, 1855, 700 soldiers under American General William S. Harney avenged the Grattan Massacre by attacking a Lakota village in Nebraska, killing about 100 men and children. A series of short "wars" followed, in 1862–1864, as refugees from the "Dakota War of 1862" in Minnesota fled west to their allies in Montana and Dakota Territory. Increasing illegal settlement after the American Civil War caused war once again; the Black Hills were considered sacred by the Lakota, they objected to mining. Between 1866 and 1868 the U. S. Army fought the Lakota and their allies along the Bozeman Trail over U. S. Forts built to protect miners traveling along the trail. Oglala Chief Red Cloud led his people to victory in Red Cloud's War. In 1868, the United States signed the Fort Laramie
Memorial Day
Memorial Day is a federal holiday in the United States for remembering and honoring persons who have died while serving in the United States Armed Forces. The holiday, observed every year on the last Monday of May, was most held on May 28, 2018. Memorial Day was observed on May 30 from 1868 to 1970. Memorial Day is considered the unofficial start of the summer vacation season in the United States, while Labor Day marks its end on the first Monday of September. In Canada, Victoria Day is a public holiday observed on a Monday one week before Memorial Day and indicates the start of summer. Many people visit cemeteries and memorials on Memorial Day to honor those who died in military service. Many volunteers place an American flag on each grave in national cemeteries. Two other days celebrate those who serve or have served in the U. S. military: Veterans Day, which celebrates the service of all U. S. military veterans. S. remembrance celebrated earlier in May honoring those serving in the U. S. military.
The history of Memorial Day in the United States is so controversial that it constitutes an area of research. At Columbus State University there is a Center for Memorial Day Research. It, together with the University of Mississippi's Center for Civil War Research, are excellent starting points for investigating the topic; the practice of decorating soldiers' graves with flowers is an ancient custom. Soldiers' graves were decorated in the U. S. before and during the American Civil War. Some believe that an annual cemetery decoration practice began before the American Civil War and thus may reflect the real origin of the "memorial day" idea. Annual Decoration Days for particular cemeteries are still held on a Sunday in late spring or early summer in some rural areas of the American South, notably in the mountain areas. In cases involving a family graveyard where remote ancestors, as well as those who died more are buried, this may take on the character of an extended family reunion to which some people travel hundreds of miles.
People gather, put flowers on graves, renew contacts with relatives and others. There is a religious service and a picnic-like "dinner on the grounds", the traditional term for a potluck meal at a church. On June 3, 1861, Virginia, was the location of the first Civil War soldier's grave to be decorated, according to a Richmond Times-Dispatch newspaper article in 1906. In 1862, women in Savannah, Georgia decorated Confederate soldiers' graves according to the Savannah Republican; the 1863 cemetery dedication at Gettysburg, was a ceremony of commemoration at the graves of dead soldiers. Some have therefore claimed. On July 4, 1864, ladies decorated soldiers' graves according to local historians in Boalsburg, yet the principal grave they claim to have decorated was of a man, not dead yet. Nonetheless, Boalsburg promotes itself as the birthplace of Memorial Day. In April 1865, following President Abraham Lincoln's assassination, commemorations were widespread; the more than 600,000 soldiers of both sides who died in the Civil War meant that burial and memorialization took on new cultural significance.
Under the leadership of women during the war, an formal practice of decorating graves had taken shape. In 1865, the federal government began creating national military cemeteries for the Union war dead. On May 1, 1865, in Charleston, South Carolina freed African-Americans held a parade of 10,000 people to honor 257 dead Union Soldiers, whose remains they had reburied from a mass grave in a Confederate prison camp. Historian David W. Blight cites contemporary news reports of this incident in the Charleston Daily Courier and the New-York Tribune. Although Blight claimed that "African Americans invented Memorial Day in Charleston, South Carolina", in 2012, Blight stated that he "has no evidence" that the event in Charleston inspired the establishment of Memorial Day across the country. Accordingly, investigators for Time Magazine, LiveScience, RealClearLife and Snopes have called this conclusion into question. In 1868, copying the Southern annual observance of the previous three years, General John A. Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic, an organization of Union veterans founded in Decatur, established Decoration Day as a time for the nation to decorate the graves of the Union war dead with flowers.
By the 20th century, various Union and Confederate memorial traditions, celebrated on different days and Memorial Day extended to honor all Americans who died while in the military service. On May 26, 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson designated an "official" birthplace of the holiday by signing the presidential proclamation naming Waterloo, New York, as the holder of the title; this action followed House Concurrent Resolution 587, in which the 89th Congress had recognized that the patriotic tradition of observing Memorial Day had begun one hundred years prior in Waterloo, New York. The village credits druggist Henry C. Welles and county clerk John B. Murray as the founders of the holiday. Scholars have determined. Snopes and Live Science discredit the Waterloo account. On May 5, 1868, General John A. Logan issued a proclamation calling for "Decoration Day" to be observed annually and nationwide. With his proclamation, Logan adopted the Memorial Day practice that had begun in the Southern states three years earlier.
The first Northern Memorial Day was observed on May 30, 1868. One author claims that the date wa
United States Department of War
The United States Department of War called the War Department, was the United States Cabinet department responsible for the operation and maintenance of the United States Army bearing responsibility for naval affairs until the establishment of the Navy Department in 1798, for most land-based air forces until the creation of the Department of the Air Force on September 18, 1947. The Secretary of War, a civilian with such responsibilities as finance and purchases and a minor role in directing military affairs, headed the War Department throughout its existence; the War Department existed from August 7, 1789 until September 18, 1947, when it split into Department of the Army and Department of the Air Force and joined the Department of the Navy as part of the new joint National Military Establishment, renamed the United States Department of Defense in 1949. Shortly after the establishment of a strong government under President George Washington in 1789, Congress created the War Department as a civilian agency to administer the field army under the president and the secretary of war.
Retired senior General Henry Knox in civilian life, served as the first United States Secretary of War. Forming and organizing the department and the army fell to Secretary Knox. Direct field command of the small Regular Army by President Washington leading a column of troops west through Pennsylvania to Fort Cumberland in Maryland in 1794 to combat the incipient Whiskey Rebellion on the frontier was an occasion never since used by American Presidents; the Possibility of re-organizing a "New Army" under nominal command of retired President and Major General George Washington and his aide, former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton to deal with the rising tide of maritime incidents between American commerce ships and the new French Republic was authorized by second President John Adams in 1798 and the remote possibility of land invasion was an interesting adventure. On November 8, 1800 the War Department building with its records and files was consumed by fire. Foundation of the new military academy at West Point along the Hudson River upstream from New York City in 1802 was important to the future growth of the American army.
In August 1814 during the Burning of Washington, the United States Department of War building was burned-however the War and State Department files had been removed-all books and record had been saved. The multiple failures and fiascos of the War of 1812 convinced Washington that thorough reform of the War Department was necessary. Secretary of War, John C. Calhoun reorganized the department into a system of bureaus, whose chiefs held office for life, a commanding general in the field, although the Congress did not authorize this position. Winfield Scott became the senior general until the start of the American Civil War in 1861; the bureau chiefs acted as advisers to the Secretary of War while commanding their own troops and field installations. The bureaus conflicted among themselves, but in disputes with the commanding general, the Secretary of War supported the bureaus. Congress regulated the affairs of the bureaus in detail, their chiefs looked to that body for support. Calhoun set up the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1824, the main agency within the War Department for dealing with Native Americans until 1849, when the Congress transferred it to the newly founded Department of the Interior.
During the American Civil War, the War Department responsibilities expanded. It handled the recruiting, supply, medical care and pay of two million soldiers, comprising both the regular army and the much larger temporary volunteer army. A separate command structure took charge of military operations. In the late stages of the war, the Department took charge of refugees and freedmen in the American South through the Bureau of Refugees and Abandoned Lands. During Reconstruction, this bureau played a major role in supporting the new Republican governments in the southern states; when military Reconstruction ended in 1877, the U. S. Army removed the last troops from military occupation of the American South, the last Republican state governments in the region ended; the Army comprised hundreds of small detachments in forts around the West, dealing with Indians, in coastal artillery units in port cities, dealing with the threat of a naval attack. The United States Army, with 39,000 men in 1890 was the smallest and least powerful army of any major power in the late 19th century.
By contrast, France had an army of 542,000. Temporary volunteers and state militia units fought the Spanish–American War of 1898; this conflict demonstrated the need for more effective control over its bureaus. Secretary of War Elihu Root sought to appoint a chief of staff as general manager and a European-type general staff for planning, aiming to achieve this goal in a businesslike manner, but General Nelson A. Miles stymied his efforts. Root enlarged the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York and established the United States Army War College and the General Staff, he changed the procedures for promotions and organized schools for the special branches of the service. He devised the principle of rotating officers from staff to line. Concerned about the new territories acquired after the Spanish–American War, Root worked out the procedures for turning Cuba over to the Cubans, wrote the charter of government for the Philippines, eliminated tariffs on goods imported to the United States from Puerto Rico.
Root's successor as Secretary
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States federal government's official list of districts, buildings and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance. A property listed in the National Register, or located within a National Register Historic District, may qualify for tax incentives derived from the total value of expenses incurred preserving the property; the passage of the National Historic Preservation Act in 1966 established the National Register and the process for adding properties to it. Of the more than one million properties on the National Register, 80,000 are listed individually; the remainder are contributing resources within historic districts. For most of its history the National Register has been administered by the National Park Service, an agency within the United States Department of the Interior, its goals are to help property owners and interest groups, such as the National Trust for Historic Preservation, coordinate and protect historic sites in the United States.
While National Register listings are symbolic, their recognition of significance provides some financial incentive to owners of listed properties. Protection of the property is not guaranteed. During the nomination process, the property is evaluated in terms of the four criteria for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places; the application of those criteria has been the subject of criticism by academics of history and preservation, as well as the public and politicians. Historic sites outside the country proper, but associated with the United States are listed. Properties can be nominated in a variety of forms, including individual properties, historic districts, multiple property submissions; the Register categorizes general listings into one of five types of properties: district, structure, building, or object. National Register Historic Districts are defined geographical areas consisting of contributing and non-contributing properties; some properties are added automatically to the National Register when they become administered by the National Park Service.
These include National Historic Landmarks, National Historic Sites, National Historical Parks, National Military Parks, National Memorials, some National Monuments. On October 15, 1966, the Historic Preservation Act created the National Register of Historic Places and the corresponding State Historic Preservation Offices; the National Register consisted of the National Historic Landmarks designated before the Register's creation, as well as any other historic sites in the National Park system. Approval of the act, amended in 1980 and 1992, represented the first time the United States had a broad-based historic preservation policy; the 1966 act required those agencies to work in conjunction with the SHPO and an independent federal agency, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, to confront adverse effects of federal activities on historic preservation. To administer the newly created National Register of Historic Places, the National Park Service of the U. S. Department of the Interior, with director George B.
Hartzog Jr. established an administrative division named the Office of Archeology and Historic Preservation. Hartzog charged OAHP with creating the National Register program mandated by the 1966 law. Ernest Connally was the Office's first director. Within OAHP new divisions were created to deal with the National Register; the division administered several existing programs, including the Historic Sites Survey and the Historic American Buildings Survey, as well as the new National Register and Historic Preservation Fund. The first official Keeper of the Register was an architectural historian. During the Register's earliest years in the late 1960s and early 1970s, organization was lax and SHPOs were small and underfunded. However, funds were still being supplied for the Historic Preservation Fund to provide matching grants-in-aid to listed property owners, first for house museums and institutional buildings, but for commercial structures as well. A few years in 1979, the NPS history programs affiliated with both the U.
S. National Parks system and the National Register were categorized formally into two "Assistant Directorates." Established were the Assistant Directorate for Archeology and Historic Preservation and the Assistant Directorate for Park Historic Preservation. From 1978 until 1981, the main agency for the National Register was the Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service of the United States Department of the Interior. In February 1983, the two assistant directorates were merged to promote efficiency and recognize the interdependency of their programs. Jerry L. Rogers was selected to direct this newly merged associate directorate, he was described as a skilled administrator, sensitive to the need for the NPS to work with SHPOs, local governments. Although not described in detail in the 1966 act, SHPOs became integral to the process of listing properties on the National Register; the 1980 amendments of the 1966 law further defined the responsibilities of SHPOs concerning the National Register.
Several 1992 amendments of the NHPA added a category to the National Register, known as Traditional Cultural Properties: those properties associated with Native American or Hawaiian groups
