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The Immigration-Obsessed, Polarized, Garbage-Fire Election of 1800

A madman versus a crook? Unexpected twists? Fake news? Welcome to the election of 1800.

How Women Changed American Politics

How feminism and antifeminism created Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
Delegates on the floor at the Democratic National Convention at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, August 26, 1964.

How to Steal an Election

The crazy history of nominating Conventions.
U.S. Capitol building.

The Messiest Speakership Battle in History

160 years ago, a similarly fractured GOP took months to settle on a speaker.
Lithograph of the reservoir of the Manhattan Water Works in 1825.
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Corporations in the Early Republic

An explanation of the Manhattan Company, a bank disguised as a municipal water corporation that helped to transform Early Republican politics.

The Polarized Congress of Today Has its Roots in the 1970s

Polarization in Congress began in the 1970s, and its only been getting worse since.
Brigham Young

The Reds Under Romney’s Bed

The most ambitious social experiment in American history that until 1877, explicitly rejected the core values of Victorian capitalism.

Political Construction of a Natural Disaster: The Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1853

The conversation around race after Hurricane Katrina echoed discourse from another New Orleans disaster 150 years before.
Members of the American Communist Party march with signs at a protest.

The Communist Party Helped Shape US History

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.”
Congressman Phil Burton and State Assemblymen Leo T. McCarthy, Willie L. Brown and Art Agnos.

How San Francisco’s Democratic Political Machine Led to Kamala Harris’ Presidential Campaign

Kamala Harris is the heir to a political lineage that dates back to a chain-smoking, hard-drinking mastermind elected to Congress from San Francisco in 1964.
San Francisco Communist Party marching in May Day parade, 1935.

California Communism and Its Afterlives

A new book explores the Communist Party's western base and its alliance with the labor movement.
John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson.

A Trump-Biden Tie Would Be a Political Nightmare — But Maybe a Boon to Democracy

The political upheaval of 1824 changed America. The same could happen in 2024.
Newspaper announcement of the Democratic Antimasonic nomination of William Wirt.
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The Birth of the U.S. Political Convention in 1831

A radical third party had a new idea for selecting a presidential candidate, and it’s still in use today.
Two men fighting during Shay's Rebellion.
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Fights Over American Democracy Reach Back to the Founding Era

In early America, the soaring ideals behind establishing a new democracy were marked by cycles of progress and backlash.
Members of the National Woman's Party prepare to lobby their senators and congressmen to vote for the Equal Rights Amendment, ca. 1923.

Equal Rights Amendment Was Introduced 100 Years Ago — and Still Waits

America’s feminists felt confident when the Equal Rights Amendment was put before Congress 100 years ago this week. For a century, it’s failed to be enacted.
A collage of Meir Kahane, a pistol, and the outline of Israel and Palestine on a yellow background.

The American Origins of Israel’s Armament Campaign

How Kahanism infiltrated the political mainstream.
Kaiser Wilhelm II and his generals during World War I.

The Rise and Fall of the Project State

Rethinking the twentieth century.
Hubert Humphrey addresses the Democratic National Convention in July 1948.

The Speech That Turned Democrats on Civil Rights and Lost Them the South

The president didn’t want to go too far on civil rights in 1948, fearing it would cost him reelection. But an obscure mayor changed the race — and his party.
An illustration of William Morgan's abduction.

The Masonic Murder That Inspired the First Third Party in American Politics

Public outcry over whistleblower William Morgan's disappearance gave rise to the Anti-Masonic Party, which nominated a candidate for president in 1832.
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.
Shredded "Don't Tread On Me" flag.

The Long Afterlife of Libertarianism

As a movement, it has imploded. As a credo, it’s here to stay.
Table of election returns printed in newspaper in 1796.

Collusion, Theft, Violence, and Lies: Lurid Tales of American Elections

1796, the first contested presidential election.
Black and white photo of Eugene V. Debs addressing a crowd at the Hippodrome Theatre, New York City.

Socialists on the Knife-Edge

American Democratic Socialism has deep roots in the very “American” values it is accused of undermining.
Ron DeSantis at podium at CPAC.
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Instead of Boosting Democracy, Primary Elections Are Undermining It

Why our politics are growing ever more extreme — and democracy itself is under siege.
Students crowded around General Logan Monument during the 1968 National Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois.

Are We Still Fighting the Battles of the New Left?

Revisiting post-war activist movements around the world to understand generational conflicts in the left.
Protest sign reading "We never left Jim Crow."

Voter Fraud Propagandists Are Recycling Jim Crow Rhetoric

The conservative plot to suppress the Black vote has relied on racist caricatures, then and now.
African American man casting a ballot following the Fifteenth Amendment.

Echoes of 1891 in 2022

Using the congressional filibuster to prevent voting rights legislation isn't new. It has roots in the 19th century.
Black and white photograph of Mark Twain

Mark Twain in Buffalo

Mark Twain would be hopelessly out of favor with both wings of the modern duopoly.
Sketch of the ‘Rising Sun’ design carved in the armchair used by George Washington during the 1787 Constitutional Convention.

A Rising or Setting Sun

A review of how Dennis Rasmussen understands America's Founding Fathers and their disillusions with the American experiment.
Harold Washington on a button

Primary Sources are a Vibe

Historian Melanie Newport turns to eBay.

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