John F. Kennedy Division 1 Bridgeport, CT

Historical Happenings

The First JFK Medal

August 9, 2022

The AOH and LAOH honored legendary Pittsburgh Steeler and inspirational veteran advocate Rocky Bleier with the JFK Memorial Medal at the recent convention in in Pittsburgh. The first award  of […]

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Hancock and Armistead

August 2, 2022

Historians and Hollywood producers alike have held up the story of Union Major General Winfield Scott Hancock and Confederate Brigadier General Lewis Armistead to illustrate the tragedy of internecine warfare. Hancock and Armistead had developed a friendship when stationed together in California before the war, with Armistead famously sending Mrs. Hancock the Armistead family bible for safekeeping as he left to join the Confederate As dramatically depicted in on the big screen in 1993’s Gettysburg, Armistead, a Brigade Commander in Pickett’s Division, found himself facing the center of the Union line, under the command of his friend Hancock, on July 3, 1863. Armistead, by all accounts, gallantly led his Brigade in what we now know as Pickett’s Charge, falling mortally wounded as he crossed the stone wall near “the angle,” generally considered to be the “high water mark” of the Confederacy. Knowing that he was in the hands of his friend’s troops, Armistead asked in vain to be taken to General Hancock, who had been wounded himself in the day’s fighting. The two never reconnected, despite their close proximity on the battlefield, and Armistead subsequently succumbed to his wounds.

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Bloody Sunday, State Violence and Legitimacy

November 24, 2020

The German Sociologist Max Weber famously defined the modern state as the “human community that claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.” (Emphasis […]

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Notre Dame, Nativism and the “Fighting Irish”

October 13, 2020

The country is again in the midst of a movement aimed at retiring team names and mascots deemed to be offensive. As with prior such movements, the “Fighting Irish” moniker […]

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ROBERT EMMET

July 1, 2020

The United Irishmen were a group of Catholics and Protestants united for Irish independence who rose in 1798. The English put down the rising with extreme brutality instituting a ‘campaign […]

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