Forget Hamilton, Burr Is the Real Hero

We can learn more from him in today's political world.

By Retiring a Seal, Harvard Wages War on the Dead — but to What End?

Rather than censuring the legacies of our ancestors, we should work to make our descendants proud.

The History of National Women's History Month

The celebratory month has its roots in the socialist and labor movements.
Workers on the wreck of the General Slocum, North Brother Island, New York City, June 1904.

Witness to Tragedy: The Sinking of the General Slocum

“Terrible, terrible! A thousand casualties. And heartrending scenes. Men trampling down women and children. Most brutal thing…” — James Joyce, Ulysses

The Birth of the Ku Klux Brand

A new book re-traces the origins of the 19th-century KKK, which began as a social club before swiftly moving to murder.

Hillary Clinton Goes Back to the Dunning School

How do you diagnose the problem of racism in America without understanding its actual history?
A painting of Boston harbor, where women in dresses stand on a hill, watching ships
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Invisible Cities, Continued

The 19th century recovery of John Winthrop's sermon, "A City on a Hill."

America's Other Original Sin

Europeans didn’t just displace Native Americans — they enslaved them, on a scale historians are only beginning to fathom.

Is History Written About Men, by Men?

A careful study of recent popular history books reveals a genre dominated by generals, presidents—and male authors.
Booker T. Washington writing at a desk.

Toward a Usable Black History

It will help black Americans to recall that they have a history that transcends victimization and exclusion.
Smiling porcelain salt and pepper shaker figures called "the Pilgrim Pair," and their children, "Lilgrims," atop two academic books about Puritan history entitled "The Barbarous Years" and "Seasons of Misery."

Come On, Lilgrim

The gap between academic and popular understandings of early American topics is an enduring challenge for early Americanists.

The Crumbling Monuments of the Age of Marble

The 20th century produced monuments to a false consensus—can the 21st century create a more representative commemorative sphere?

Names in the Ivy League

The argument over renaming Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School is neither trivial nor simple.

Don’t Be So Quick to Defend Woodrow Wilson

It would be a grave mistake to ignore the link between Wilson’s white supremacy at home and his racist militarism abroad.
Red Horse's drawing of American soldiers on horseback

A Lakota Sioux Warrior's Eyewitness Drawings of Little Bighorn

The role of Red Horse's drawings in the historical narrative of the Battle of Little Bighorn.
Calhoun College building at Yale University.

Don’t Repress the Past

Another way to look at controversial historical figures.

What Americans Thought of Jewish Refugees on the Eve of World War II

On the eve of World War 2, most Americans opposed granting asylum to Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler.
Enslaved people being marched from Virginia to Tennessee.

Retracing Slavery's Trail of Tears

America's forgotten migration – the journeys of a million African-Americans from the tobacco South to the cotton South

Columbus Day Is the Most Important Day of Every Year

Acknowledging the truth about colonialism is crucial if we want to comprehend the world around us today.
Lewis and Clark expedition, with Sacagawea whitened out in the center.

How The West Was Wrong: The Mystery Of Sacagawea

Sacagawea is a symbol for everything from Manifest Destiny to women’s rights to American diversity. Except we don't know much about her.
Migrants holding their shoes, being inspected.

America's Forgotten History Of Mexican-American 'Repatriation'

During the Depression, more than a million people of Mexican descent were deported. Author Francisco Balderrama says that most were American citizens.

The Split Personality of Ken Burns’s “The Civil War”

The documentary's accommodation of the Lost Cause narrative may have left viewers with a skewed understanding of the conflict.

Why America Needs a Slavery Museum

A wealthy white lawyer has spent 16 years and millions of dollars turning the Whitney Plantation into a memorial to the nation's past.

Don’t Tear Down Confederate Monuments – Do This Instead

Why eliminate street names that tell one part of Southern history when we can amplify them to tell even more of it?

What Was the Confederate Flag Doing in Cuba, Vietnam, and Iraq?

The Confederate flag’s military tenure continued long after the Civil War ended.

3 Reasons the American Revolution Was a Mistake

Washington changed the world forever when he crossed the Delaware—for the worse.

“Richmond Reoccupied by Men Who Wore the Gray”

In 1890, the former Confederate capital erected a monument to Robert E. Lee-and reasserted white supremacy.

Bryan Stevenson on Charleston and Our Real Problem with Race

"I don't believe slavery ended in 1865, I believe it just evolved."

What This Cruel War Was Over

The meaning of the Confederate flag is best discerned in the words of those who bore it.

Madam Sacho: How One Iroquois Woman Survived the American Revolution

George Washington gave orders to destroy towns and take prisoners in Sullivan’s Campaign, but her story lives on.