Today in History:

From the Civil War to the football field, we have been celebrating the wrong values

“To ignore the irreconcilable distinction between the cause of the North and that of the South is to degrade the war.”  --Pen Hallowell  

Who is Pen Hallowell? A power in Harvard athletics,” according to one of the earliest histories of American football, who enlisted in the Union Army in 1861 just after graduating. A hell of a rower and a swimmer. During the Battle of Ball’s Bluff, the 22-year-old swam across the Potomac River three times through bullet-pocked water to rescue trapped and wounded comrades.  read more about Pen Hallowell