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Antebellum era

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Jewish moneylender choking debtor

"A Fiendish Fascination"

The representation of Jews in antebellum popular culture reveals that many Americans found them both cartoonishly villainous and enticingly exotic.
by David S. Reynolds via New York Review of Books on February 1, 2024

Conservatives Say We've Abandoned Reason and Civility. The Old South Said That, Too

The ‘reasonable’ right’s persecution rhetoric echoes the Confederacy’s defense of slavery.
by Eve Fairbanks via Washington Post on August 29, 2019
A colorized engraving depicts enslavers selling enslaved people in the 19th-century South.

American Slavery Wasn’t Just a White Man’s Business − Research Shows How White Women Profited, Too

Human bondage was big business in the antebellum US, and men weren’t the only ones cashing in.
by Trevon Logan via The Conversation on June 10, 2024
A drawing of a Wide Awake march.

These Torchlit Young Marchers Helped to Save American Democracy

They called themselves the Wide Awakes. They are a lesson in building a political movement.
by Jon Grinspan via Washington Post on May 14, 2024
Collage of Heather Cox Richardson and the subjects of her book -- FDR, Lincoln, and Trump.

We Have No Princes: Heather Cox Richardson and the Battle over American History

One interpretation presents the country as irredeemably tainted by its past. Another contends that the United States has also tended toward egalitarianism.
by Kim Phillips-Fein via The Nation on January 24, 2024
Collage of African Americans' faces.

Specters of the Mythic South

How plantation fiction fixed ghost stories to Black Americans.
by Alena Pirok via Southern Cultures on January 24, 2024
Black residents of Natchez, Miss., walk alongside a railroad track in August 1940.

One of the Biggest U.S. Slave Markets Finally Reckons With Its Past

Natchez, Miss., is beginning to highlight the history of its enslaved people—including at a Black-owned bed and breakfast in former slave quarters.
by Sarah Enelow-Snyder via Retropolis on November 26, 2023
Political cartoon showing Uncle Sam reaching out to pull a child representing Cuba into a carriage with children representing American colonies.
partner

Annexation Nation

Since 1823, when the Monroe Doctrine was first introduced to the world, the US has regarded Cuba as key to its designs for Latin America.
by Rebecca Bodenheimer via JSTOR Daily on July 1, 2023
Five generations of a family pose at the plantation where they were enslaved, soon after Union forces arrived in Beaufort, South Carolina, 1863.

More Than 100 U.S. Political Elites Have Family Links to Slavery

Among America's political elite, 5 living presidents, 2 Supreme Court justices, 11 governors, and 100 legislators have ancestors who enslaved Black people.
by Tom Lasseter, Lawrence Delevingne, Makini Brice, Donna Bryson, Nicholas P. Brown, Tom Bergin via Reuters on June 27, 2023
Aerial view of Pennsylvania's Eastern State Penitentiary, 19th century.

Untangling the 19th Century Roots of Mass Incarceration

Popular accounts often trace the origins of forced penal labor to the post-Civil War South. But a vast system of forced penal labor existed in the antebellum North.
by Rebecca McLennan via LPE Project on May 16, 2023
Hands holding pregnant woman's stomach.

Black Women and the Racialization of Infanticide

Loss of control over knowledge of the female body cemented women’s status as second-class citizens.
by Rebekka Michaelsen via Black Perspectives on March 2, 2023
Class photo of white men medical students on the steps of a building.

Race and Early American Medical Schools: Review of "Masters of Health"

Medical schools in the antebellum U.S. were critical in the formation of a medical community that shared ideas about racial science.
by Natalie Shibley via Nursing Clio on February 14, 2023
Building of the old Pendleton Farmers' Society.

Ablaze: The 1849 White Supremacist Attack on a South Carolina Post Office

The bonfire was a public spectacle for Black people, as well as any white dissenters. It was a calculated warning.
by Susanna Ashton via Southern Spaces on December 2, 2022
Black preacher giving an antislavery sermon to an integrated audience.

Baptists, Slavery, and the Road to Civil War

Baptists were never monolithic on the issue of slavery, but Southern Baptists were united in their opposition to Northern Baptists determining their beliefs.
by Obbie Tyler Todd via The London Lyceum on November 14, 2022
Cartoon of Madame Restell and Mrs. Bird accompanied by a skeleton.

Female Physicians in Antebellum New York City

"Female physicians" did a lot more than provide abortions, but abortion soon encompassed how others perceived their work.
by Nicholas L. Syrett via The Panorama on November 11, 2022
Illustration of African American Civil War soldier examining newspaper by torchlight as a Black family watches.

On War and U.S. Slavery: Enslaved Black Women’s Experiences

Enslaved women’s experiences with war must be extended to include the everyday warfare of slavery.
by Karen Cook Bell via Black Perspectives on November 7, 2022
Painting of a plantation.

The Old South Shall Rise Again

On the economic system of Silicon Valley.
by Victor Davis Hanson via The New Criterion on August 24, 2022
"Mademoiselle V...in the Costume of an Espada," by Edouard Manet, a painting of a woman dressed as a matador holding sword and cloth.

A Private Matter

Abortion and "The Scarlet Letter."
by Dana Medoro via Lapham’s Quarterly on August 3, 2022
Painting of Patent Office in 1855

A Sea of “Savage Islands”: How Antebellum Americans at Home Imagined the Pacific World

When most U.S. nationals in the early republic thought of the Pacific Ocean, they conjured lands instead.
by Michael A. Verney via The Panorama on June 13, 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
Dual circular images of fire, representing seeing fire through the eye holes of a klan hood

Sins of the Fathers

In Life of a Klansman, Edward Ball’s white supremacist great-great-grandfather becomes a case study in the enduring legacy of slavery.
by Colin Grant via New York Review of Books on October 28, 2021
1836 lithograph of a slave trader marching enslaved people to be sold.

Partners in Brutality

New books investigate the brutality of the internal slave trade by focusing on businesses, and examine the role of white women in enslaving Black people.
by Nicholas Guyatt via New York Review of Books on October 18, 2021
Two artifacts: a firefighting badge from 1861, and a silver speaking trumpet.

Two Objects Bring the History of African American Firefighting to Light

The story played out very differently in Philadelphia and Charleston, and not in the way you might expect.
by Timothy Winkle via National Museum of American History on October 4, 2021

Republicans Rediscover the Dangers of Selling Bunk to Their Constituents

Cynical public speech aimed at winning political power has consequences.
by Rachel Shelden via The Atlantic on November 25, 2020
Drawing of building on fire, with crowd outside

Many Tulsa Massacres

How the myth of a liberal North erases a long history of white violence.
by Anna-Lisa Cox, Christy Clark-Pujara via National Museum of American History on August 25, 2020
Black and white photo of three African-American men with signs that state, "I am a man," as a military tank rolls through the street

Insurrection in the Eye of the Beholder

The Insurrection Act of 1807, which Trump has threatened to invoke, is the linchpin of several iconic events in African American history.
by Hawa Allan via The Baffler on June 2, 2020

The Making of the Radical Republicans

How did the struggle for emancipation become a mass politics?
by Eric Foner via The Nation on May 5, 2020

Emma Willard's Maps of Time

The pioneering work of Emma Willard, a leading feminist educator whose innovative maps of time laid the groundwork for the charts and graphics of today.
by Susan Schulten via The Public Domain Review on January 22, 2020

‘A Doubtful Freedom’

Andrew Delbanco's new book positions the debate over fugitive slaves as a central factor in the nation's slide toward disunion.
by David W. Blight via New York Review of Books on January 14, 2020

Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Narratives of Freedom

In Coates's debut novel, he sets out to recover the struggles for emancipation that have been lost to the past.
by Elias Rodriques via The Nation on October 29, 2019
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