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Illustration of “Twenty-eight fugitives escaping from the eastern shore of Maryland”

The Supernatural and the Mundane in Depictions of the Underground Railroad

Navigating the line between historical records and mystic imagery to understand the Underground Railroad.
Bernard Lynch's slave pen in St. Louis, with many potential buyers standing outside.

The Remarkable Story of Mattie J. Jackson

Her narrative documents the very real dangers enslaved runaways experienced while traveling through so-called "free states" of the North.
Portraits of African American men revealed under torn copy of the Dred Scott Case.

The Painful, Cutting and Brilliant Letters Black People Wrote To Their Former Enslavers

The letters show a desire for freedom and a desperate longing to be reunited with their families.
A man carries a Confederate battle flag through the halls of the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021.

A Brief History of Violence in the Capitol: The Foreshadowing of Disunion

The radicalization of a congressional clerk in the 1800s and the introduction of the telegraph set a young country on a new trajectory.
Portrait of Roscoe Conkling taken between 1860 and 1865.

The Senator Who Said No to a Seat on the Supreme Court — Twice

Roscoe Conkling was a successful politician and an able lawyer. But the colorful and irascible senator had no desire to serve on the high court.
A line of black civil war soldiers holding their rifles.

Black Soldier Desertion in the Civil War

The reasons Black Union soldiers left their army during the Civil war were varied, with poor pay, family needs and racism among them.
Cartoon animation of Beecher with his hand up with a man next to him holding a Holy Bible

When Forgiveness Enables Tyranny: The Unbearable Lightness of Henry Ward Beecher

The most influential preacher in the country, Beecher aggressively agitated for the Union to extend complete forgiveness to Confederates.
Three children playing on a frozen river.

The Ohio River

When the river freezes, lives change.
Collage of nature images and transcendentalists' faces, with flowers in Emerson's eyes.

Emerson and Thoreau’s Fanatical Freedom

Why do the Transcendentalists still have an outsize influence on American culture?
Black and white photograph of four men standing amongst barrels of alcohol.

The Truth About Prohibition

The temperance movement wasn’t an example of American exceptionalism; it was a globe-spanning network of activists and politicians against economic exploitation.
Illustrations from Twelve Years a Slave, by Solomon Northup, 1853, depicting an African American man hugging his family.

A Dark Cloud over Enjoyment

Refusing myths of joy and pain in slave narratives.
William Wells Brown

William Wells Brown, Wildcat Banker

How a story told by a fugitive from slavery became a parable of American banking gone bad.
Abraham Lincoln speaking to a crowd.

Stop Making Sense

Are the truths in the Declaration of Independence really self-evident?
Left: Longfellow in His Study, by Worth Brehm, c. 1912. Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Right: Dante Meditating on “The Divine Comedy”, by Jean-Jacques Feuchère, 1843.

As Far From Heaven as Possible

How Henry Wadsworth Longfellow interpreted Reconstruction by translating Dante.
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.
Luther Martin
partner

For Constitution Day, Let's Toast the Losers of the Convention

Anti-federalist Luther Martin's agenda failed at the Constitutional Convention, but his criticisms of the Founders may still resonate with us today.
Artwork by Alanna Fields of an enslaved individual.

The Dark Underside of Representations of Slavery

Will the Black body ever have the opportunity to rest in peace?
Depiction of an agricultural fair with crowds of people gathered around exhibit halls.

Slavery, Technology and the Social Origins of the US Agricultural State

Ariel Ron discusses the rise of the agricultural state in his book, Grassroots Leviathan: Agricultural Reform and the Rural North in the Slaveholding Republic.
Photo of Union commanders.

The Anti-Lee

George Henry Thomas, southerner in blue.
Boats moored in the water in front of a row of houses on the beach. Photo by Amani Willett.

Nantucket Doesn’t Belong to the Preppies

The island was once a place of working-class ingenuity and Black daring.

Black Women and American Freedom in Revolutionary America

The relationship between enslaved women and the Revolutionary war.
Lithograph of two men shooting one man on the ground

The Young America Movement and the Crisis of Household Politics

In the 19th century, freedom from government interference mapped onto opposition of women's rights.
Tucker Carlson wearing a t-shirt with a photograph of Abraham Lincoln on it.

The Right May Be Giving Up the “Lost Cause,” but What’s Next Could Be Worse

The GOP’s new embrace of Lincoln, emancipation, and Juneteenth is no sign of progress.
A painting entitled Our Town, with Black children playing on a suburban street

The Truth About Black Freedom

This year’s Juneteenth commemorations must take a deeper look at the history of Black self-liberation to understand what emancipation really means.
Historical photo of a group of black men and women

The United States' First Civil Rights Movement

A new history charts the radical agitation around Black rights and freedom back to the early nineteenth century. 
Walmart Mormon Prophet Joseph Smith As Lieutenant General Of The Nauvoo Legion

The Fallacy of Religious Freedom

When the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith ran for president, he wasn’t seeking further glory but a policy change in religious liberty.
African American mother and children in peach vignette, c. 1885.

A Mother’s Influence

How African American women represented Black motherhood in the early nineteenth century.
John Quincy Adams giving speech at U.S. House of Representatives
partner

Why a Culture War Over Critical Race Theory? Consider the Pro-Slavery Congressional "Gag Rule"

In 1836, the House passed a resolution that automatically tabled all petitions on slavery without a hearing.
Harriet Tubman.

Harriet Tubman’s Lost Maryland Home Found, Archaeologists Say

The famed abolitionist’s father, Ben Ross, sheltered her and family on the Eastern Shore in the 1840s.
Portrait of Walt Whitman.

How the American Civil War Gave Walt Whitman a Call to Action

Mark Edmundson on the great American poet as a defender of democracy.

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