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My Great-Great-Grandfather and an American Indian Tragedy

A personal investigation of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864.
by Michael Allen via The Wall Street Journal on November 24, 2014

150 Years of Misunderstanding the Civil War

As the 150th of the Battle of Gettysburg approaches, it's time to question the popular account of a war that tore apart the nation.
by Tony Horwitz via The Atlantic on June 19, 2013
Crowd in front of Washington Monument for presidential inauguration
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Monumental Disagreements

On America's iconic monuments and the idea of national remembrance.
via BackStory on May 24, 2013

May Day's Radical History

The date of Occupy's strike has ties to the eight-hour day movement, immigrant workers and American anarchism.
by Jacob Remes via Salon on April 30, 2012
Henry Clay's body in his death bed, surrounded by mourners.

All That Remains of Henry Clay

Political funerals and the tour of Henry Clay's corpse.
by Sarah J. Purcell via Commonplace on April 2, 2012
Painting of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin while writing the Declaration of Independence.

How the Complete Meaning of July Fourth Is Slipping Away

John Adams would not be happy to see what Independence Day has become.
by Gordon S. Wood via The New Republic on July 4, 2011

Origins of Black History Month

Why did Carter G. Woodson choose February, and what was his vision for the annual commemoration?
by Daryl Michael Scott via Association for the Study of African American Life on February 1, 2011
Illustration depicting Betsy Ross presenting the flag to George Washington.

How Betsy Ross Became Famous

Oral tradition, nationalism, and the invention of history.
by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich via Commonplace on October 1, 2007
Ships on fire and being evacuated at Pearl Harbor.

Pearl Harbor as Metaphor

At the frontier of American empire.
by John Gregory Dunne via The New Yorker on April 29, 2001
“The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers,” an 1885 parody of an 1850 painting by Charles Lucy.

Thankstaking

Was the 'first Thanksgiving' merely a pretext for the bloodshed, enslavement, and displacement that would follow in later decades?
by Jane Kamensky via Commonplace on January 1, 2001
Painting imagining John Brown (bearded man embracing Black child), being escorted by authorities.

Eugene Debs’s Stirring, Never-Before-Published Eulogy to John Brown at Harpers Ferry

In 1908, Eugene Debs eulogized John Brown as America's "greatest liberator," vowing the Socialist Party would continue Brown's work. We publish it here in full.
by Eugene V. Debs via Jacobin on October 1, 1908
Lincoln giving Gettysburg Address.

The Gettysburg Address

In 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln delivered one of the most famous speeches in U.S. history.
via Voices Of Democracy on November 19, 1863
A sparrow.

The Fall of a Sparrow

A war photographer’s unflinching images break the idealism surrounding a young Civil War hero’s death.
by Rachel Eisendrath via The Paris Review on October 23, 2025
Student stands in front of tanks in Tiananmen Square
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Students’ Tiananmen Protest Turned Deadly, Transforming U.S.-China Relations

Students in Beijing rallied for free speech and democratic reforms in 1989. The crackdown that followed altered U.S.-China relations.
via Retro Report on October 15, 2025
Fifteen year old Walter Gadsden being attacked by police dogs during the civil rights demonstration in Birmingham, Alabama
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Sanitizing the Civil Rights Movement

Contrary to the story being told in textbooks, media, and museums, the police were not neutral bystanders.
by Joshua Clark Davis via HNN on October 14, 2025
When the U.S. Navy was half the age it is now: an artist’s depiction of American warships bombarding San Juan, Puerto Rico on May 12, 1898 during the Spanish-American War. (Photo by: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

The Birth Pangs of the U.S. Navy

It was founded 250 years ago today—and, oddly, was promptly ordered to attack what is today its biggest base.
by Andrew Lawler via The Bulwark on October 13, 2025
Military members exercising at a CrossFit gym.

CrossFit and the Frontier Spirit

The gunslinging mojo of a fitness craze.
by Katie Rose Hejtmanek via Arc: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera on October 13, 2025
John Brown stands armed, positioned before Union and Confederate people fighting amid smoke and devastation.

Why Donald Trump Wants to Erase John Brown’s Fiery Abolitionist Legacy (and Why He Will Fail)

Reflections on Harper's Ferry amid a government shutdown.
by Robert S. Levine via Literary Hub on October 10, 2025
A reenactor portraying a British soldier at Fort Ticonderoga.

You Have No Idea How Hard It Is to Be a Reenactor

Benedict Arnold’s boot wouldn’t come off, and other hardships from my weekend in the Revolutionary War.
by Caity Weaver via The Atlantic on October 8, 2025
Federal encampment on Cumberland Landing, Virginia.
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How the Union Lost the Remembrance War

The victors of the American Civil War failed to write their story into the history books, leaving a gap for the mythologizing of the Confederacy.
by Matthew Wills, Robert J. Cook via JSTOR Daily on October 5, 2025
A nuclear explosion mushroom cloud.

What Do We Forget When We Remember Hiroshima?

Eighty years of talking peace and preparing for nuclear war.
by Eric Ross via Tom Dispatch on August 12, 2025
New citizens at a naturalization ceremony.

Our Cherished Values and Ideals

Celebrating immigrants on the nation's birthday.
by Marc Stein via Political Junkie on July 4, 2025
Vera Rubin and looking through a telescope.

Who Was Vera Rubin?

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope was renamed The Vera C. Rubin Observatory. This telescope is breaking new ground, just as Vera Rubin did in her lifetime.
by Jacqueline Mitton, Simon Mitton via Harvard University Press Blog on June 28, 2025
South Korean soldiers walking through a trench of dead bodies.

The Moral Distortions of the Official Korean War Narrative

June 25 marks the 75th anniversary of the start of the Korean War. But the truth is that the US was a willing partner in mass murder across the peninsula.
by Grace M. Cho via The Nation on June 24, 2025
A National Police Week ceremony.

The Jim Crow Origins of National Police Week

Police brutality and corruption are painful realities. So are officers who die performing their duty. But the memorial in Washington fails to distinguish them.
by Elizabeth Robeson via The Nation on May 9, 2025
Two Vietnamese women mourn their relatives on April 29, 1975, at Bien Hoa military cemetery.

US Defeat in Vietnam Was the Right Outcome for an Unjust War

The US invasion of Vietnam was catastrophic for the Vietnamese people, resulting in millions of deaths. Fifty years ago, the US-backed regime finally collapsed.
by Michael G. Vann via Jacobin on April 30, 2025
Revolutionary War reenactors near Lexington, Massachusetts.

The King We Overthrew — and the King Some Now Want

Americans need to reconnect with their innate dislike of arbitrary rule.
by Philip Bump via Washington Post on April 17, 2025
A monument of the Minutemen line in Concord, Massachusetts.
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The Dangerous Afterlives of Lexington and Concord

How a myth about farmers taking on the British has fueled more than two centuries of exclusionary nationalism.
by Eran A. Zelnik via HNN on April 15, 2025
Painting by Hiroki Kawanabe titled Wide Street.

Legacies of Japanese American Incarceration

Brandon Shimoda’s book about the memorialization of Japanese internment camps also speaks to the brutal system of migrant detention that continues to this day.
by Francisco Cantú via New York Review of Books on April 3, 2025
A U.S. Postal Service employee loading a van with mail.
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How Mail Delivery Has Shaped America

The United States Postal Service is under federal scrutiny. It’s not the first time.
by Sarah Prager via JSTOR Daily on March 12, 2025
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