Jacksonian democracy

Historian Walter Russell Mead has become the favorite Trump whisperer for everyone from Steve Bannon to Tom Cotton.

Jacksonian democracy may have been liberating for some, but it was repressive for many others.

A new biography of Andrew Jackson recounts a bloody history, and reveals disturbing parallels between the 1830s and the Trump era.

The president deserves the Jackson legacy, but not for the reasons he'd like.

How the utopian notion of the U.S. as a meritocracy became so ingrained in the American psyche.

In 'What It Took to Win,' Michael Kazin traces the history over the past two centuries of what he calls ‘the oldest mass party in the world’.

Today’s progressives are children of the old Republican Party, not the New Deal Democrats. Roosevelt and his followers stood for nearly everything they oppose.

He never denounced slavery and was brutal towards American Indians, but remains a popular figure. Why?

A new history argues that illiberalism is not a backlash but a central feature from the founding to today.

A classic ghost story has something to say about America—200 years ago, 100 years ago, and today.

The story of President Andrew Jackson's 1,400-pound block of cheese.

The Astor Place Opera House Riot of 1849 combined two of 19th-century America’s favorite pastimes: going to the theater and rioting.

Conspiracy theories have been a central feature in American politics since before the Revolution.

Outlandish rumors helped elect Presidents Jackson and Van Buren and have been with us ever since.

Trump and other peddlers of angry rhetoric may reap short-term gains, but history suggests they will provoke a fearsome backlash.

Rebels in the post-Civil War South perfected the art of excluding voters, but it was yankees in the North who developed the script.

Since the Mexican-American War, Army regulars haven't always been treated as heroes.

The writings of the late Harvard political scientist anticipate America's political and intellectual battles -- and point to the country we may become.

Bipartisanship is the exception, not the rule.

When residents of the U.S. came to see Latin Americans as partners in a shared revolutionary experiment.