Power

The political upheaval of 1824 changed America. The same could happen in 2024.

100 years ago the U.S. tried to limit immigration to White Europeans. Instead, diversity triumphed.

They called themselves the Wide Awakes. They are a lesson in building a political movement.

And cost Gerald Ford the presidency.

The election will be a challenge for Joe Biden. But looking to the past won’t help him—or us—understand what lies ahead.

Why our understanding of the era has been hindered by the party system model.

Donald Trump says he will authorize a roundup of all 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country. A 1950s program with similar goals offers lessons.

A new history argues that illiberalism is not a backlash but a central feature from the founding to today.

How a little-known, century-old law perpetuated the odious notion that certain types of immigrants degrade our nation’s character.

May not amount to much, actually. Chicago 2024 is not Chicago 1968.

As the first Native American Cabinet member, the Secretary of the Interior has made it part of her job to address the travesties of the past.

George Eliot refused to stereotype the rural working class. Her outlook would serve us well today.

Throughout the 1960s and 70s, conservative activists led a counterattack against campus demonstrators by demanding action from college presidents, courts, and police.

On the long tradition of Black third-party activism.

Examining how William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass interpreted the nation's relationship with the Constitution.

The risks of calling on politicians to push back against the court must be weighed against the present reality of a malign judicial dictatorship.

The women who opposed their own enfranchisement in the Victorian era have little in common with the “Repeal the 19th” fringe of today.

Ronald Reagan proved instrumental to Southerners bringing their cultural conservatism to center stage for the Republican Party.

The federal government has long controlled immigration law—and for very good reason.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s struggle against polio transformed him into the man who led the country through the Great Depression and World War II.

How gay Republicans tried to counter the religious right and show Christians it is ok to be gay.

Over the course of U.S. history, presidential rematches have signaled momentous political upheavals.

The bipartisan push to create AmeriCorps, and the community service organization's impact.

During the Little Ice Age, Native North Americans devised whole new economic, social, and political structures.

History not only explains how the industrial Midwest became Trump country, but also how the area's politics may shift again.

From the 1880s to the 1940s, New York City was transformed—and so too was the New York City Police Department.

The newly empowered federal state created during Reconstruction could restrict immigration much more comprehensively than any state—as Chinese laborers soon discovered.

The untold story of the Wide Awakes, the young Americans who took up the torch for their antislavery cause and stirred the nation.

In Lincoln’s view the West represented a space for opportunity, especially for the citizen-soldiers returning to their prewar pursuits.

Three US presidents from the South’s borders—Truman, Eisenhower, and Johnson—worked against Southern politicians to support civil and voting rights.