Power

Just like in wartime, compulsion is a must.

This is not the first time that democratic governance appeared to be under assault.

In the past two centuries, the evolution of the U.S. Census has tracked the country’s social tensions and reflected its political controversies.

Failing upward with Oliver North.

Anti-slavery protest during the Missouri statehood debate.

A review of "The Idealist: Wendell Willkie’s Wartime Quest to Build One World."

Having a single candidate by the time of the convention has been a key stepping stone for a party’s victory. But it hasn't always worked out that way.

Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden are the icons of an ideological split among today’s Democrats, echoing a similar split in the Republican party of 1964.

What Shirley Chisholm can teach 2020 candidates as they exit.

Winning the South Carolina primary requires exciting a crucial constituency.

How Better Homes in America—a collaboration between Herbert Hoover and the editor of a conservative women’s magazine—promoted idealized whiteness.

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.

The similarities between 2020 and 1972 are too astonishing to ignore. But there’s one big difference.

The problem of minority rule isn’t Trumpian or temporary; it’s bipartisan and enduring.

Before Bernie Bros vs. the DNC, there was Jesse Jackson vs. the Atari Democrats.

Our first President understood that armed citizens are essential to American freedom.

When Washington left the presidency, he didn’t really leave politics at all.

Lincoln protected thousands of acres of California forest and wanted to restore the nation’s battle-ravaged countryside before he was assassinated.

What the president understood that the zealous Republican reformers in Congress didn’t.

A look at the impeachment of Warren Hastings and the nature of American power.

What the Civil War tells us about who has the power to shape history.

The first woman to run for president was infamous in her day.

The revolution wasn’t only an effort to establish independence from the British—it was also a push to preserve slavery and suppress Native American resistance.

Reflections on Alexander Hamilton, Alexis de Tocqueville, and the power of the presidency.

How dogs permeated slave societies and bolstered European ambitions for colonial expansion and social domination.

The results of the 1920 census kicked off a bitter, decadelong political squabble. Could the same happen again in 2020?

History shows that this blockbuster event is merely a test of organizational strength in one small state.

But did they backfire?

Gouverneur Morris’s views changed during the Constitutional Convention — setting a good example for senators today.

A new history of Andrew Johnson’s trial reminds us the impeachment is a tool to constrain executive abuse of power and publicize dissent on matters of policy.