Charles Sumner

The selection of African American Sen. Hiram Revels in 1870 offered great hope — but it was soon dashed.

The Bleeding Kansas parallels with our current moment get weirder and darker.

Born enslaved, he was elected to Congress in the wake of the Civil War. But the impact of this momentous step in U.S. race relationships did not last long.

Kennedy defined courage as a willingness to take an unpopular stand in service of a larger, higher cause. But what cause?

How a monument that championed black sacrifice in the name of emancipation was forgotten.

Contrary to the image of the kneeling slave, Black abolitionists did not wait passively for the "Day of Jubilee." They led the charge.

The overthrow of slavery in the US was a battle waged and won in the field of democratic mass politics; a battle that holds enormous lessons for radicals today.

Betrayal. Paranoia. Cowardice. We've been here before.

From the Framers on, Americans have understood our fundamental law to oppose ownership of persons.

Was the impeachment of Andrew Johnson a matter of national principles? Or an affair of pragmatic politics?

How one of America's original Bernie Bros became an outspoken critic of the left.

How the territory became the frontline of the battle for abolition.

Reading recommendations from a lifelong education.

Du Bois's ideas about the environment — and how Jim Crow shaped them — have gone relatively unnoticed by environmental historians.

A hundred and fifty years after its ratification, some of its promises remain unfulfilled—but one day it may still be interpreted anew.

For white southerners, honor had little to do with justice.

Why we must ask not only what stories our landscapes of commemoration tell, but also what stories they leave out.

Ulysses S. Grant was overlooked by historians and underestimated by contemporaries. H.W. Brands reevaluates Grant’s presidency.