| Publication |
2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
When Readex put its huge newspaper archive online between 2004 and 2006, it created a powerful tool for scholars to better understand the past. A case in point is the genesis of the term "War Hawk." Historians have always assumed that this term originated on the eve of the War of 1812, but a search of the Readex digital newspaper archive reveals that by then it already had been in use for at least twenty years. Like other derogatory terms-such as "Tory" and "aristocrat" or "Jacobin" and "mobocrat"-it was an established phrase in the American political lexicon. But unlike those terms, it was used by both parties whenever the opposition party talked of going to war.
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