“War With Paraguay and How To Sit In A Hoopskirt--America from 1848 through 1868 as told through the newspapers and magazines of the time” Journalism has been called “history’s first rough draft.” Newspapers and magazines have been the public discourse for most of American history. "The American Squadron en route to Paraguay" Harper's Magazine 1858   The “rough draft” is the only thing most people at a particular time and place have to frame their opinions and reactions.  Historians have the luxury of hindsight.   Combined with access to private journals, formerly secret or undiscovered documents, and statistical facts unknown to the average person of the time allow historians to pontificate on “what was really happening.” While writing a magazine article about my hometown, Raleigh, NC, on the eve of the Civil War, I was astonished at the difference between the “first rough draft” in the local newspapers of the time and what historians present the public with afte...

The US War With Paraguay--1858 Map of the area in 1864 Yes.  The United States almost went to war with Paraguay in 1858. Yeah. That Paraguay. The landlocked country in the middle of South America, then about the size of Texas. Congress authorized President Buchanan “to restore American honor by any means including force if necessary,” (similar to the Congressional authorization President Lyndon Johnson received to launch the Vietnam War.) It was a serious operation which sent one fourth of the US Navy (19 ships) and 2,500 troops to Buenos Aires to await orders to sail 1,300 miles up the Paraná River for which they had few charts, past well-armed forts, to invade a country for which they had no maps nor any idea of the size of enemy forces. And the President/dictator of Paraguay, Carlos Antonio Lopez, originally thought he was signing a treaty of goodwill and trade between the two countries.  President Carlos Antonio Lopez If it had not been for cool heads of an American navy ...