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Photo of Jefferson Davis

The Southern Slaveholders Dreamed of a Slaveholding Empire

Antebellum slaveholders weren't content with an economic and social system based on trafficking in human flesh in the South alone.
by Arvind Dilawar, Kevin Waite via Jacobin on September 21, 2021
Camel.

The Dark Underbelly of Jefferson Davis's Camels

How the U.S. Army's antebellum camel experimentation paved the way for the illicit trafficking of enslaved Africans.
by Michael E. Woods via Muster on November 21, 2017
partner

The North Tried Compromise. The South Chose War.

The South's insistence upon protecting and spreading slavery caused the Civil War.
by Carole Emberton via Made By History on November 1, 2017
U.S. soldiers in the Civil War.

Expanding the Slaveocracy

The international ambitions of the US slaveholding class and the abolitionist movement that brought them down.
by Eric Foner, Matthew Karp via Jacobin on March 21, 2017

When Slaveholders Ran America

Before the Civil War, many Southern leaders hoped to expand slavery even beyond the nation's borders.
by Abrahim Sundiata via Public Books on March 1, 2017

These Maps Reveal How Slavery Expanded Across the United States

As the hunger for more farmland stretched west, so too did the demand for enslaved labor.
by Lincoln Mullen via Smithsonian on May 15, 2014
Portrait of Abraham Lincoln, 1858.

A Constitutionalist or a Revolutionist?

Which one was Abraham Lincoln?
by Herman Belz via Modern Age on February 17, 2025
partner

Knight Club

Were the Knights of the Golden Circle responsible for Lincoln’s assassination? No one knows, but far-right secret societies always draw power from speculation.
by Devin Thomas O’Shea via HNN on January 14, 2025
Portrait of Martin Van Buren.

The Father of the Party System

Because Martin Van Buren was an unsuccessful president, his more significant contributions to the nation’s political life have also been obscured.
by James M. Bradley via OUPblog on October 18, 2024
The Hall of the House of Representatives.

Are We Living Through Another 1850s?

It’s difficult to see how these profound antipathies and fears will dissipate soon through any normal political processes.
by Robert W. Merry via The American Conservative on July 22, 2024
John Montgomery’s Notice to George W. Gray, November 26, 1855.

“Acts of Lawless Violence”: The Office of Indian Affairs, and the Coming of the Civil War in Kansas

The question should not be if settler colonialism factored into the history of the Civil War but how and to what extent.
by Paul Barba via Muster on July 17, 2024
The Little White School House in Ripon, Wisconsin.

Looking Back at Wisconsin's Long History with the Republican Party

The one-room schoolhouse that was one of the birthplaces of the GOP.
by Chuck Quirmbach via WUWM on July 13, 2024
John Gast's 1872 painting "American Progress," in which Miss Columbia, a personification of the enlightening United States, is depicted leading pioneers over the western plains.

Two Years That Made the West

In a momentous couple of years, the young United States added more than a million square miles of territory, including Texas and California. 
by Elliott West via American Heritage on July 3, 2024
original

Where Kansas Bled

How can one place represent the complexity of the Civil War’s beginnings?
by Ed Ayers on November 30, 2023
Painting of Thomas Cooper.

Thomas Cooper: Harbinger of Proslavery Thought and the Coming Civil War

To understand the proslavery defense of the 1850s, one must reckon with the proslavery Malthusianism articulated by Cooper in the 1820s.
by K. Howell Keiser Jr via Emerging Civil War on May 30, 2023
Cover of "Freedom's Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance To Federal Power"

The Little Man’s Big Friends

A new book seeks to explain why many Americans, especially but not exclusively in the South, have understood freedom as an entitlement for white people.
by Eric Foner via London Review of Books on May 24, 2023

When the House Needed Two Months and 133 Votes to Elect a Speaker

Kevin McCarthy's struggling bid to win the speakership has nothing on the epic 1856 contest that pitted abolitionists against proslavery members of Congress.
by Ronald G. Shafer via Retropolis on December 30, 2022
Henry Arthur McArdle’s The Battle of San Jacinto (1895), depicting the final battle of the Texas Revolution of 1836.

The Long American Counter-Revolution

Historian Gerald Horne has developed a grand theory of U.S. history as a series of devastating backlashes to progress—right down to the present day.
by David Waldstreicher via Boston Review on December 8, 2022
A street with a sign above it reading "Welcome to San Bernardino."

California's Never-Ending Secessionist Movement — and its Grim Ties To Slavery in the State

San Bernardino County may explore seceding from California. Many of the earliest separatists wanted to transform Southern California into a slave state.
by Kevin Waite via Los Angeles Times on August 7, 2022
Illustration of Abraham Lincoln getting ready to give a speech.

Re-imagining the Great Emancipator

How shall a generation know its story, if it will know no other?
by Ralph Lerner via National Affairs on March 21, 2022
Photograph of Sam Chamberlain

Crossing the Blood Meridian: Cormac McCarthy and American History

McCarthy imagined a vast border region where colonial empires clashed, tribes went to war, and bounty hunters roamed.
by Bennett Parten via Los Angeles Review of Books on February 9, 2022

More Than 1,700 Congressmen Once Enslaved Black People. This is Who They Were.

The Washington Post has compiled the first database of slaveholding members of Congress by examining thousands of census records and historical documents.
by Julie Zauzmer Weil, Adrian Blanco, Leo Dominguez via Washington Post on January 10, 2022
A bronze statue of Civil War soldiers on horseback, in front of the U.S. Capitol building.

How Twitter Explains the Civil War (and Vice Versa)

The proliferation of antebellum print is analogous to our own tectonic shifts in how people communicate and what they communicate about.
by Ariel Ron via The Strong Paw Of Reason on January 6, 2022
‘Flight of Lord Dunmore’; postcard, 1907.

The Paradox of the American Revolution

Recent books by Woody Holton and Alan Taylor offer fresh perspectives on early US history but overstate the importance of white supremacy as its driving force.
by Sean Wilentz via New York Review of Books on December 24, 2021
Antiquated image of two Indigenous people, against the backdrop of a settlement.

What Slavery Looked Like in the West

Tens of thousands of Indigenous people labored in bondage across the western United States in the 1800s.
by Kevin Waite via The Atlantic on November 25, 2021
Painting of Lincoln and his cabinet by M.S. Carpenter, 1863.

Did the Constitution Pave the Way to Emancipation?

In his new book, The Crooked Path to Abolition, James Oakes argues that the Constitution was an antislavery document.
by Richard Kreitner via The Nation on October 6, 2021
Image of John C. Calhoun

How Slavery Haunts Today’s Big Debates About Federal Spending

John C. Calhoun knew what a strong federal government might do.
by Ariel Ron via Slate on September 22, 2021
The front cover of Kevin Waite's, "West of Slavery: The Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire."

Desert Plantations

A review of “West of Slavery: The Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire."
by Tom Prezelski via Los Angeles Review of Books on August 29, 2021
Chart of Black Population by state in 1860.

Black Population by State, 1790–2019

A Flourish data visualisation by Bill Black.
by Bill Black via Flourish on July 29, 2021
Wooden cross in the Eli Jackson Methodist Church cemetery in San Juan, Texas.

When Slaves Fled to Mexico

A new book tells the forgotten story of fugitive slaves who found freedom south of the border.
by David S. Reynolds via New York Review of Books on May 13, 2021
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