Assassination Vacation

The term “Bleeding Kansas” refers to a series of massacres and clashes that took place between 1854 and 1859 in the Kansas Territory (which was being settled by the United States but was not yet a state) and western Missouri. The overall conflict was between settlers who wanted to outlaw enslavement when Kansas became a state, and those who wanted to incorporate legalized enslavement into Kansas. Historians consider the conflicts a major precursor to the US Civil War. As Sarah Vowell points out, John Brown fought in an early confrontation and suggests that she believes he was responsible for worsening the violence, which is one example of Vowell’s opposition to political violence.

The Indian Wars were a series of conflicts fought between the United States and various Indigenous American tribes and nations throughout since the early 17th century as European settlements expanded into Indigenous American lands. The wars arguably lasted until as late as 1924, when a group from the Indigenous Apache people raided lands in Arizona and New Mexico. Vowell highlights the Indian Wars as one of the dark themes in US history.

From 2003 to 2011, the United States invaded and occupied the nation of Iraq under the administration of President George W. Bush. The rationale for the war were unsubstantiated claims by the administration that the dictator of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, was developing weapons of mass destructions (WMDs) and supporting Middle Eastern terrorist groups. The Iraq War is one of the reasons Vowell objects to the presidency of George W. Bush. She also views the Iraq War as a continuation of the US imperialism that took place during the administration of President McKinley.

Built in 1922 at the site of the National Mall in Washington, DC, the Lincoln Memorial is a monument dedicated to the memory of Abraham Lincoln. It was designed by the architects Daniel Chester French and Henry Bacon in the neoclassical or Greek Revival style. Vowell declares that the Lincoln Memorial is her “favorite place in the world” (247), reflecting not only her admiration for Lincoln but also her passion for the history of the United States.

The New York Customs House was the federal government building in New York City where government duties on imports were collected. As Vowell notes, it was a major source of income for the federal government in the 19th and early 20th centuries (127). The corruption surrounding the New York Customs House became a major part of why President Garfield would be assassinated.