George Washington Williams (October 16, 1849 – August 2, 1891) was an American Civil War veteran, minister, politician and historian. Shortly before his death he travelled to King Leopold II's Congo Free State and his open letter to Leopold about the suffering of the region's inhabitants at the hands of Leopold's agents, spurred the first public outcry against the regime running the Congo under which some 10 million people lost their lives.
Read more about George Washington Williams: Biography
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“I date the end of the old republic and the birth of the empire to the invention, in the late thirties, of air conditioning. Before air conditioning, Washington was deserted from mid-June to September.... But after air conditioning and the Second World War arrived, more or less at the same time, Congress sits and sits while the presidents—or at least their staffs—never stop making mischief.”
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