Alexander Hamilton

Understanding the meaning of the word "slut" in the Founders' vocabulary.

The Washington Post has compiled the first database of slaveholding members of Congress by examining thousands of census records and historical documents.

The question of how to balance state and national power was perhaps the single most important and most challenging question confronting the early republic.

Democracy is in trouble, but a lawless coup isn’t the real threat.

When Thomas Jefferson’s administration was debating whether to declare war against Britain, it came up against America’s wealthy and influential marine underwriters.

While New York has yet to break away from the rest of the country, it's not for lack of trying.

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

During the 1840s, landlords tried to drive out tenants in default. The movement that rose to challenge evictions can be a model for today’s housing activists.

Athenian democracy in the political imagination.

This armed uprising in 1794, over taxation by the fledgling new government, threatened to destroy the new union within six years of the Constitution’s ratification.

What role should the federal government play in building our infrastructure?

We ascribe too much meaning to the early years of the republic.

On Akhil Reed Amar’s “The Words That Made Us,” a new history of America’s constitutional conversation.

Jefferson and his connection to partisanship in early America.

Early Americans conscripted the universe into their nation-building project.

A decade before Lewis and Clark, André Michaux wanted to explore the American continent. Spying for France gave him that chance.

Bill Bleyer dives into the secret Culper Spy Ring during the American Revolution while disproving many of the urban myths surrounding the characters involved.

Why John Adams was peculiarly unsuited to the moment.

Americans have always been deeply divided.

Swedberg's new book shows how prevalent concerns about mental illness were to the people of the early American republic.