Chapter & Verse

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….”

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