A corollary question: was it even logistically feasible to conduct a nationwide popular vote at the time the Electoral College system was established? Or was a "middleman" institution like the Electoral College a matter of choice rather than of necessity?

I've heard that some of the regional American accents can be traced back to waves of immigration from specific places; like the New York accents owing much to Dutch colonists, Appalachian accents to German and Scots-Irish immigrants, etc. Did African-American Vernacular English show a similar region influence?

Not sure if I'm asking this correctly. Like, I know the Gullah people in South Carolina have their own creole, but more like - during the Great Migration era, if an African-American family traveled from Texas to Chicago, would there be a notable regional difference in their speech?

In general, it seems like they got there from East Africa but except this I haven't seen anything that touches on how. What were the Trade routes, which states/tribes were they bought from and which peoples made up their Number.

I recently read a few articles questioning whether Mohammed, the founder of Islam, was a real person since, to my understanding, there is very little non-religious sources to back up his claim. So I have a 2 part question:

1. Is there really almost no non-religious sources for Mohammed being alive?
2. If so, why didn't other civilizations at the time document the rise of this new religion and king in the Arabian Peninsula?

If history is just a collection of cause and effect reactions with no overlapping grand theory (at least I think It Is, I May be wrong) what is the point of studying history as an isolated subject? What do historians want to accomplish? Am I looking at this in the wrong way?

So I’ve had a few back and forths with a person who has degrees in early Christianity and is a very good scholar from what I can tell. She’s a believing Christian but who says that when it comes to supernatural claims, now it’s out of the field of history. She says that as a historian we have to use “methodological naturalism” so claims of the supernatural are N/A.

I’m just confused because don’t historians say, even with miracle claims and supernatural claims from history that some “probably didn’t happen”?

I understand that historians can’t appeal to miracles but let’s say there are two claims from history, but one has a supernatural element attached, all of the sudden we have to be agnostic on the one with a miracle attached, we can’t lean towards non-historicity because of this?

I hope my question makes sense.

Personally I don’t think the miracle claims of the New Testament are historical. But as a historian can you not say that because it’s a supernatural claim?

He apparently grew at first, disillusioned by the poor organization of various white supremacist groups in the US, eventually denying he was a part of the KKK at all.

After the lynch mob murder of four blacks who had been arrested for defending themselves in a brawl at a barbecue, Forrest wrote to Tennessee Governor John C. Brown in August 1874 and "volunteered to help 'exterminate' those men responsible for the continued violence against the blacks", offering "to exterminate the white marauders who disgrace their race by this cowardly murder of Negroes".

On July 5, 1875, Forrest gave a speech before the Independent Order of Pole-Bearers Association, a post-war organization of black Southerners advocating to improve the economic condition of blacks and to gain equal rights for all citizens. At this, his last public appearance, he made what The New York Times described as a "friendly speech" during which, when offered a bouquet of flowers by a young black woman, he accepted them, thanked her and kissed her on the cheek. Forrest spoke in encouragement of black advancement and of endeavoring to be a proponent for espousing peace and harmony between black and white Americans.

This feels like a great risk to take in the 1870's, in the South no less, especially considering his former friends and the violence they were capable.

Was Forrest sincere about this or was he simply trying to save his own skin by disconnecting himself from the KKK? It seems a bit silly to deny being a part of the KKK when you were one of it's founders and the first Grand Wizard.

I want to believe he really did have a genuine change of heart, but the hearts of Confederate generals changed hardly. Even Longstreets heel turn wasn't out of a sense of guilt or newfound racial tolerance, he was simply hoping to step into a position of governmental power that he could then use. To me it seems likely he was trying to save his own hide from prosecution.

What do historians make of this?

I have a friend from Serbia who just showed me an image of a statue of Yugoslavian leader Josip Tito in Mexico City, Mexico.

I was curious to the origins of the statue, but cursory research has gotten me nowhere. I'm aware that Mexico and Yugoslavia had diplomatic ties in the 60s, so I'm assuming that's when it was constructed?

I have wondered lately, about how humanity did not evolve technically that much over a period of roughly 2000-3000 years i'd say, compared to the last 200-250 years, starting with the industrial revolution.

The egyptians as well as the greece and the romans, or the chinese all had their scientific advancements, but it seems as they stopped at some point to develop them further. As for europe it somehow even developed backwards compared to roman times, but that has to do with church restrictions (not religious because the roman catholic church is sometimes not to be compared with the religious teachings of the bible).

Aside from those points, that may restrict it, what could be an explanation, that the Romans or Greece didn't develop further and did not create some sort of electric computer or steam machines for weaving and so on. Are there any explanations for this or thought's that have come up?

Any help would be appreciated with this train of thought.

Let's say there's a ship's quartermaster on a ship that is participating in the Triangle Trade in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, but for some reason, his crew has managed to lose all of their supplies for the voyage from the Bahamas to the American Colonies.

I have found plenty of resources saying that sailors at the time ate mostly ship's biscuit, salted pork, salted fish, and if they were lucky, sauerkraut to keep scurvy at bay. I have also found things like the necessity to bring both fresh water and rum to make grog to sanitize the water somewhat. However, I have not found anything to tell me how much of this a ship might stock. I have also found very little telling me how much shot and powder that ships would typically stock.

I am still uncertain exactly what quantities would have to be bought and how much it would cost. Any sensible quartermaster would of course want his ship's crew to stay fed, watered, and supplied with weapons to avoid mutiny.

The reason this is important to me is because I'm running a TTRPG campaign where the players want to be pirates, and we've talked about wanting to have logistics be important, and I was wondering If I could get a baseline for which supplies they would need, how much of them they would have to buy, and how much it would cost them out of their treasure.

TLDR; How many of what type of supplies would one need to buy to stock a voyage in the Age of Sail, and how much would it cost to do so?

I know a decent amount of history, and it seems that most “leftist” (I’m using the term in its traditional sense) revolutionary groups started out as the poor / disenfranchised rising up against those they perceived as responsible for their plight. The decision of fascism, as I understand it, is usually about authoritarian government control in the name of preserving “traditional” values / ways of thought and high government control over the economy. So it is possible that the term is being misused - or perhaps refined? I’m honestly curious about any examples, again understanding that fascism is a 20th century concept and so it’s definition may need to be applied broadly in this case.

As I understand it the japanese plan in the pacific was for a swift victory as they knew that they could not keep up with the manufacturing capability of the US. To do this they planned to draw out and cripple the US carrier force and so my question is this - had yamamotos plans come to fruition and the american codebreakers not been on top of the situation, could the japanese have achieved this goal and if so do you think that this would have really given them a chance to win in the pacific?

I've hear an historian mentioning that sometimes after Charlemagne and around AD 1000 the bishop of Rome started calling himself the Vicar of Christ. If I remember my history right, when Latium and central Italy were under the Byzantine rule the Church was also under the Imperial rule (both for political and religious matters?) and the Bishop of Rome was on equal standing with the ones in Byzantyum Antiochia and Jerusalem, but when the Pope and Charlemagne founded the western Empire I suppose the Bishop of Rome managed to detach himself from the Byzantines..?

When (if) that happened, was it something that was established by law, edict, or just a given?

Whilst playing any strategy game (especially EU4, in this case. Game starting date: 1445) I keep getting stuck on the same question when playing as England: "why do the English want to be in Central Europe?"

Central Europe is full of great powers with comparable military tech to England. Often more powerful. Why would England want to try to own land there? This is a world where there are countless colonial opportunities in other parts of the world (Africa, Americas (not yet discovered admittedly), the Middle East, Scandinavia, Scotland and Ireland), why do the English instead chose to continually spend money and lives fighting in France?

Playing a computer game, my first tactics as England are to invade and occupy Scotland and Ireland, and then cast about for something outside Central Europe to go for. Why did this not occur to English monarchs? Why not isolate?

I know that being territorially adjacent doesn't disqualify it from being a kingdom, afterall we have the example of England and Scotland. But why was the Algarve seen as a kingdom while other Portuguese continental regions were not?