Power

The origins of the Electoral College are entwined with slavery, but not in the way that recent accounts have suggested.

In 1956, The New York Times, dismayed by wayward polls in the prior presidential race, sent teams of reporters across the nation to better gauge public opinion.

Long before the rise of Trump, the American conservative mainstream enjoyed a complex partnership with the Far Right.

Blue America lacks a Gov. Ron DeSantis: someone remaking a state or major city in the image of a well-articulated ideology.

What was “exceptional” about the American Revolution wasn’t so much the creation of a single republic but the immediate opportunity it provided for action.

New books reconsider how Ulysses S. Grant became a forceful defender of the rights of African Americans after the Civil War.

“Against Constitutional Originalism” by historian Jonathan Gienapp could fundamentally reorient how we understand America’s founding.

Anti-immigrant think tanks and advocacy groups operated on the margins until Trump became president. Now they have molded not only the GOP but also Democrats.

American democracy has been haunted by the spectre of a Caesar-type figure since the birth of the republic. Have such fears ever been justified?

History illustrates that voters become galvanized and change their party allegiance when former US presidents run for a nonconsecutive term.

Two new books reveal the shortcomings at the heart of the liberal critique of Trump voters.

Some scholars say that it’s to blame for our political dysfunction—and that we need to start over.

Culture wars have a long and divisive history in American politics, with gender, race and religion continuing to inflame public opinion.

Horace Greeley ran against incumbent Ulysses S. Grant in November 1872. Twenty-four days later, he died of unknown causes at a private mental health facility.

Many founders expressed their hope that slavery would be abolished, while simultaneously exerting themselves to defend it.

On Nelson Rockefeller and the disappearance of moderate Republicans from American politics.

A new book tells the story of American communism as an integral part of 20th-century US history, with Communists “as social critics and social change agents.”

During the Great Depression, financial elites translated European fascism into an American form that joined high capital with lower middle-class populism.

Churchill weaponized her powers of seduction—but Pamela Harriman came into her own when she brought her glamour to Washington.

For American politicians, the obsession with appealing to the everyman dates back to the raucous campaign of 1840.

The relationship between presidents and vice presidents is unique and often personal. Sometimes, internal divisions spill out into public life.

We took a closer look at how Americans’ views and experiences have evolved on a variety of topics over the last 20 years.

At its peak in the 1920s and early ’30s, the Socialist Party in Wisconsin used confrontational tactics and nonsocialists alliances to make legislative advances.

America long ago rejected the trappings of monarchy in favor of republicanism, but many have wanted to have it both ways.

A new book on how 9/11 altered the national psyche also demonstrates how it stunted progressive politics.

What the three-fifths clause meant at ratification.

Anti-Trump Republicans revere Ronald Reagan as Trump’s opposite—yet in critical ways Reagan may have been his forerunner.

The 40th president inadvertently prepared the ground for the 45th in multiple ways.

The factionalized press was the site of campaigning in the U.S.'s first contested presidential elections.

Historians may never speak of an “Age of Adams” to rival Andrew Jackson, but Randall Woods’s new biography reveals the sixth president’s greatness.