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How America’s Hunting Culture Shaped Masculinity, Environmentalism, and the NRA

From Davy Crockett to Teddy Roosevelt, this is the legacy of hunting in American culture.

Standing Armies: The Constitutional Debate

Why did Alexander Hamilton and James Madison take up the cause of the very thing that revolutionaries had vehemently opposed?
Map of the arms trade.

The Roots of America’s Gun Culture

How 18th-century British arms sales, the slave trade, and the Revolutionary War contributed to the mess we have today.
George Washington resigning his commission as commander of the Army
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Why George Washington Rejected a Military Parade in his Honor

Of all the precedents the first president set, this is one of his most overlooked — and most important.

The United States & 'The Young and Fearless of Heart'

The March for Our Lives organizers are not an anomaly, but follow in a long tradition of youth activism in America.

The Revolutionary Roots of America’s Religious Nationalism

America's sense of religious nationalism was forged in the same fires that ignited the profoundly secular French Revolution.

What America Gets Wrong About Three Important Words in the Second Amendment

The NRA misquotes George Mason to support its own view of "well-regulated militia."

Medical Mystery: James Madison's Sudden Collapse

The Father of the U.S. Constitution fought a life-long physical battle, too.
Painting of the signing of the Constitution.

The Original Theory of Constitutionalism

The debate between "originalism" and the "living constitution" rages on. What does history say?

Amazon or Independence Hall? Development vs. Preservation in the City of Philadelphia

A history of Independence Hall offers an example of how old buildings and open spaces are not always ripe sites for development.

America’s Painful, Historic Contempt for Black Soldiers

Donald Trump writes the latest chapter in a long history.
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The Tireless Abolitionist Nobody Ever Heard of

He was a well-known figure in early America, but the name of Warner Mifflin has all but faded from the nation's memory.
Original printing of the Articles of Confederation in a glass display case at Williams College in 2007.

‘We Have Not a Government’: The US Before the Constitution

What the political crisis in post-revolutionary America has to teach us about our own time.

Was the Declaration of Independence Signed on July 4?

How memory plays tricks with history.
A stone marker for a post road, slightly chipped, reading "Boston 8 miles 1734 A.I."

"To Undertake a News-Paper in This Town"

How printers in the 1770s assembled the news for their papers, how they used the postal system, and how they may have approached Twitter.
Allegorical lithograph entitled "Reconstruction," by J. L. Giles in 1867.
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Why the Second American Revolution Deserves as Much Attention as the First

The first revolution articulated American ideals. The second enacted them.

Wild Thing: A New Biography of Thoreau

Freeing Thoreau from layers of caricature that have long distorted his legacy.
Flag in front of a church.

What Politicians Mean When They Say The United States Was Founded As A Christian Nation

Today's Christian nationalists and liberal secularists both oversimplify the history of the nation's founding.
Declaration of Independence

This Woman’s Name Appears on the Declaration of Independence. Why Don’t we Know Her Story?

Mary K. Goddard printed one of the most famous copies of our founding document.

How Charleston Celebrated Its Last July 4 Before the Civil War

As the South Carolina city prepared to break from the Union, its people swung between nostalgia and rebellion.
Jackson statue outside the White House.

Trump's Jacksonian Moment

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

A “Thorough Deist?” The Religious Life of Benjamin Franklin

Historian Thomas S. Kidd examines the tension between Benjamin Franklin's deism and his frequent religious rhetoric.
Political cartoon depicting fat-cat tycoons sitting on money on a dock made of commodities held aloft by struggling laborers.

From Fat Cats to Egg Heads: The Changing American 'Elite'

American has long been suspicious of “elites”, but just who they are has changed a lot over the last 200 years.

The Bitter History of Law and Order in America

It has stifled suffrage, blamed immigrants for chaos, and suppressed civil rights. It's also how Donald Trump views the entire world.

Free from the Government

The origins of the more passive view of the freedom of the press can be traced back to Benjamin Franklin.
Furniture and carpet store in the 1789 Boston directory.
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Revolutionary Spirit

On the widespread boycotts of British-made goods in the American Colonies.

Why Haiti Should be at the Centre of the Age of Revolution

Haiti, not the US or France, was where the assertion of human rights reached its climax in the Age of Revolution.

Were the Framers Democrats?

Review of The Framers' Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution, by Michael J. Klarman.
The Gadsden Flag

The Shifting Symbolism of the Gadsden Flag

How do we decide what the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag, or indeed any symbol, really means?
Delegates at a political convention.
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Please (Don’t) Be Seated

The story of an unofficial, integrated delegation from Mississippi that attempted to claim seats at the 1964 Democratic National Convention and was denied.

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