Books & Literary Life | February 9, 2017

Chapter and verse quotation-citation correspondence site

Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words

From The March-April 2017 Issue

Douglas R. Bunker asks if anyone can offer a citable source for a definition of power, attributed to Stalin, as the “strategic or intelligent use of cruelty.”

“Union” (January-February). Hiller Zobel noted that in the U.S. Constitution, “Union” appears in the preamble (“…a more perfect union…”) and in Article II, section 3 (“…information of the state of the Union…”), among other places. (Article VI, section 6, regarding the new nation’s prior debts, refers to “the Confederation” among the states existing before ratification of the Constitution.) Bernard Witlieb recommended examples from A Dictionary of Americanisms on Historical Principles (1946), edited by Mitford M. Mathews, including, from the Fredericksburg Virginia Herald (February 1829): “To the purpose of party leaders, intending to accomplish the dissolution of the Union and a new Confederacy….”

Send inquiries and answers to “Chapter and Verse,” Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware Street, Cambridge 02138 or via email to chapterandverse@harvardmag.com.

Published in the March-April 2017 print issue under the headline “Chapter & Verse,” in the Montage section.

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