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1607-1754

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View of Boston in 1730.

Civil Unions in the City on a Hill: The Real Legacy of "Boston Judges"

For the English Puritans who founded Massachusetts in 1630, marriage was a civil union, a contract, not a sacred rite.
by Mark A. Peterson via Commonplace on April 2, 2004
Woods along the path of the British retreat from Concord to Boston.

Why Concord?

The geological origins of the American Revolution.
by Robert A. Gross, Robert Thorson via The Atlantic on October 8, 2025
Wild timber rattlesnake (Crotalus horridus) on train tacks at sunrise, Florida Getty
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Actual American Rattlesnakes

Historians are recovering the overlooked history of North America’s Crotalus horridus, the timber rattlesnake.
by Whitney Barlow Robles, Matthew Wills via JSTOR Daily on August 3, 2025
A drawing of a naked woman standing in front of a crowd of Anabaptists and Quakers.
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The Naked Quakers

Today, the international feminist group FEMEN uses nudity as part of its protests. But appearing naked in public was also a tactic used by early dissenters.
by Katrina Gulliver, Jean-Pierre Cavaillé via JSTOR Daily on September 9, 2024
Image of a man distributing newspapers at a post office.
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The Post Office and Privacy

We can thank the postal service for establishing the foundations of the American tradition of communications confidentiality.
by Matthew Wills, Anuj Desai via JSTOR Daily on May 19, 2024
The Castello Plan map, depicting the broad way (Broadway) and the Wall (Wall Street)

This New York City Map Is Full of Dutch Secrets

When Broadway was a broad way and Wall Street was a wall.
by April White via Atlas Obscura on March 19, 2024
Leaders of the 1963 March on Washington posing in front of the statue of Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln Memorial. August 28, 1963.

How the 1619 Project Distorted History

The 1619 Project claimed to reveal the unknown history of slavery. It ended up helping to distort the real history of slavery and the struggle against it.
by James Oakes via Jacobin on December 27, 2023
Statue of Pocahontas.

Pocahontas, Remembered

After 400 years, reality has begun to replace the lies.
by Victoria Sutton via Unintended Consequences on December 24, 2023
A crowd of tourist superimposed over images of Salem attractions and a cemetery.

Salem’s Unholy Bargain: How Tragedy Became an Attraction

Is the cost worth the payoff?
by Lex Pryor via The Ringer on October 30, 2023
Cover of the book "American Purgatory"

American Purgatory: Prison Imperialism and the Rise of Mass Incarceration

A new book links the rise of American prisons to the expansion of American power around the globe.
by Benjamin D. Weber via The Appeal on October 4, 2023
Republican debate.

What the Republican Debates Get Wrong About the Puritans

Pence invoked them at the Republican debates, but a true reckoning with their history provides a different vision of the nation’s future.
by Peter C. Mancall via Zócalo Public Square on September 27, 2023
Sea Captains drinking alcohol

Ships Going Out

In "American Slavers," Sean M. Kelley surveys the relatively unknown history of Americans who traded in slaves in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
by James Oakes via New York Review of Books on August 31, 2023
Painting of peasants working fields on one side and socializing with one another on the other side.

The Tragedy of Misunderstanding the Commons

Twelfth-century peasants developed commons practices to survive domination. We could use them to reclaim our lives from capitalism.
by Steven Stoll via In These Times on August 16, 2023
Detail of a five-shilling Massachusetts Colony note, the only surviving piece of the colony’s 1690 legal tender.

‘Easy Money’ Review: The Currency and the Commonwealth

Saddled with debt and forbidden by the crown to mint money, Boston’s Puritans dreamed up a novel monetary system that we still use today.
by Adam Rowe via The Wall Street Journal on March 31, 2023
Enslaved men gathered in the woods to plot a revolt.

Slavery and Rebellion in Eighteenth-Century New Jersey

While documented revolts of enslaved persons in New Jersey aren’t abundant, some examples speak to the spirit of resistance among African people held captive.
by Rann Miller via Black Perspectives on March 27, 2023
Sketches of animal bones superimposed on a map of rivers in the midwest.

The First Fossil Finders in North America Were Enslaved and Indigenous People

Decades before paleontology’s formal establishment, Black and Native Americans discovered—and correctly identified—millennia-old fossils.
by Christian Elliott via Smithsonian Magazine on February 22, 2023
Map of John Proctor's 15 acres of property in Ipswich, MA

"The Crucible" and John and Elizabeth Proctor of Salem

It is worth digging a bit deeper into the family matters between John and Elizabeth.
by Benjamin Ray via Commonplace on February 7, 2023
John Winthrop.

When Perry Miller Invented America

In a covenantal nation like the United States, words are the very ligaments that hold the body together, and what words we choose become everything.
by Ed Simon via Los Angeles Review of Books on February 5, 2023
Yellow house where George Washington stayed while in Barbados.

George Washington in Barbados?

How the Caribbean colony contributed to America's fight for independence.
by Erica Johnson Edwards via Age of Revolutions on January 30, 2023
The historic campus of the College of William & Mary, drawn ca. 1740 by John Bartram.

William & Mary's Nottoway Quarter: The Political Economy of Institutional Slavery and Settler Colonialism

The school was funded by colonial taxation of tobacco grown by forced labor on colonized Indian lands.
by Danielle Moretti-Langholtz, Buck Woodard via Commonplace on January 3, 2023
An illustration of Puritans in Springfield, Massachusetts.

The Witches of Springfield

Before Salem, this small town succumbed to the witch-hunting fever.
by Katrina Gulliver via Law & Liberty on December 16, 2022
A lithograph depicting the burning of copies of William Pynchon’s 'The Meritous Price of Our Redemption' by early colonists of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, who saw his book as heresy.

He Wasn’t Like the Other New England “Witches.” His Story Explains a Lot.

The little-told tale of the 1651 trial of Hugh and Mary Parsons.
by Colin Dickey via Slate on October 31, 2022
Smallpox vaccine vial and syringe.

Never Forget That Early Vaccines Came From Testing on Enslaved People

The practice of vaccination in the U.S. cannot be divorced from the history of slavery.
by Jim Downs via STAT on June 19, 2022
Sesationalized painting of Native Americans about to scalp a white woman. The Murder of Jane McCrae by John Vanderlyn, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut

“White People,” Victimhood, and the Birth of the United States

White racial victimhood was a primary source of power for settlers who served as shock troops for the nation.
by Gregory Rodriguez via Contra Mundum on June 9, 2022
Lithograph depicting Margert Garner standing over the body of her dead daughter, to the shock of slave catchers.
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Discarding Legal Precedent to Control Women's Reproductive Rights is Rooted in Colonial Slavery

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito made reference to the legal opinions of English jurist Henry de Bracton, foreshadowing the court overturning Roe v. Wade.
by Clyde W. Ford via HNN on June 5, 2022
Tilted, weathered headstone near a fallen tree in Copp's Hill Burying Ground.

The Forgotten Legacy of Boston’s Historic Black Graveyard

At one of Boston’s historical burial grounds, more than 1,000 Black Bostonians were laid to rest in unmarked graves. Their legacy continues to haunt us today.
by Dart Adams via Boston Magazine on May 3, 2022
Red slave shackles.

Tracing the Ancestry of the Earliest Enslaved Ndongo People

A story born in blood.
by Clyde W. Ford via Literary Hub on April 8, 2022
Diorama of the founding of Los Angeles, with mannequins of settlers of different ethnicities.

North from Mexico

The first black settlers in the U.S. West.
by Herbert G. Ruffin II via BlackPast on February 9, 2022
Painting by Jean-Baptiste Oudry, "Africa: A European Merchant Bartering with a Black Chief"

Inventing the Science of Race

In 1741, the Royal Academy of Sciences held a contest searching for the origin of “blackness.” The results show how Enlightenment thinkers justified slavery.
by Andrew S. Curran, Henry Louis Gates Jr. via New York Review of Books on November 24, 2021
Painting of the first Thanksgiving

The First Thanksgiving is a Key Chapter in America's Origin Story

What happened in Virginia four months later mattered much more.
by Peter C. Mancall via The Conversation on November 22, 2021
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