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Company of Black infantry at Fort Lincoln

The Civil War and Natchez U.S. Colored Troops

The Natchez USCT not only contributed to the war effort but was essential to establishing a post-war monument honoring President Lincoln and emancipation.
Paper money issued by the Bank of North America, circa 1862.

The Civil War's Economic Shadow

To finance the war, the Union had to turn to the banks, and with lasting consequences.
Black and white photo of Charles Sumner

“A Solemn Battle Between Good and Evil.” Charles Sumner’s Radical, Compelling Message of Abolition

The senator from Massachusetts and the birth of the Republican Party.
Enslaved African Americans hoe and plow the earth and cut piles of sweet potatoes on a South Carolina plantation, circa 1862-3.

"She Had Smothered Her Baby On Purpose"

Enslaved women's use of birth control, abortifacients, and even infanticide showed that they resisted by exerting control over their reproductive lives.
Emancipation Day in South Carolina
Exhibit

Emancipation

The long history of emancipation in the United States, from individual escapes and manumissions, through Civil War fighting and Reconstruction legislation, to Juneteenth commemorations.

Harriet Tubman in the late 1860s.

When Harriet Tubman Met John Brown

Looking back at the short but deep friendship of John Brown and Harriet Tubman, who gave their lives to the abolitionist cause.
The Lincoln Memorial with a crowd of people in front attending its dedication.

A Century Ago, the Lincoln Memorial's Dedication Underscored the Nation's Racial Divide

Seating was segregated, and the ceremony's only Black speaker was forced to drastically revise his speech to avoid spreading "propaganda."
Pro-choice protest outside Supreme Court
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The Reconstruction Amendments Matter When Considering Abortion Rights

The cruelty of enslavers when it came to reproduction and families shaped the 13th and 14th Amendments.
Street Painter among paintings in Rome, Italy

W.E.B. Du Bois and the Aesthetics of Emancipation

“I am one who tells the truth and exposes evil and seeks with Beauty and for Beauty to set the world right,” W.E.B. Du Bois said in his June 1926 lecture.
INTERIM ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES A map of slavery laws in the United States, from 1775 to 1865.

A Reckoning With How Slavery Ended

A new book examines the ways white slaveholders were compensated, while formerly enslaved people were not.
A portrait of Abraham Lincoln hangs behind President Biden in the State Dining Room of the White House
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Activists Have Always Been Frustrated at Allies’ Insistence on Gradual Change

Why abolitionist Lydia Maria Child raged at President Lincoln’s political calculations.
Illustration of Abraham Lincoln getting ready to give a speech.

Re-imagining the Great Emancipator

How shall a generation know its story, if it will know no other?
Portraits of African American men revealed under torn copy of the Dred Scott Case.

The Painful, Cutting and Brilliant Letters Black People Wrote To Their Former Enslavers

The letters show a desire for freedom and a desperate longing to be reunited with their families.
Illustration of West Ford with laborers working fields in the background, by John P. Dessereau

Did George Washington Have an Enslaved Son?

West Ford’s descendants want to prove his parentage—and save the freedmen’s village he founded.
Eighth graders create a group map of the United State.

What Happens to Middle School Kids When You Teach Them About Slavery? Here’s a Vivid Example.

The topic is emotional. That’s not a bad thing.
A jar of soil from the burial site of Howard Cooper, dated 1885.

Now We Know Their Names

In Maryland, a memorial for two lynching victims reveals how America is grappling with its history of racial terror.
Colorful portrait collage of Harriet Tubman with stars in the background

The Harriet Tubman Bicentennial Project

The Harriet Tubman Bicentennial Project explores the meaning of freedom through the example of one extraordinary life.
A print based on David Gilmour Blythe's fanciful painting of Lincoln writing the Emancipation Proclamation
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The Emancipation Proclamation: Annotated

Abraham Lincoln proclaimed freedom for enslaved people in America on January 1, 1863. Today, we've annotated the Emancipation Proclamation for readers.
‘Flight of Lord Dunmore’; postcard, 1907.

The Paradox of the American Revolution

Recent books by Woody Holton and Alan Taylor offer fresh perspectives on early US history but overstate the importance of white supremacy as its driving force.
Statue of Stonewall Jackson, on its side in slings and propped up by tires, in front of its graffiti-covered pedestal.

What the 1619 Project Got Wrong

It erases the fact that, for the first 70 years of its existence, the US was roiled by intense, escalating conflict over slavery – a conflict only resolved by civil war.
A boulder marks the location where Brister Freeman’s house is thought to have stood.

Black People Lived in Walden Woods Long Before Henry David Thoreau

Decades before Thoreau's famous experiment, a community of formerly enslaved men and women had a much different experience of life in the woods.
George Washington in front a map of the United States.

The Storm Over the American Revolution

Why has a relatively conventional history of the War of Independence drawn such an outraged response?
Health care workers on strike, holding picket signs.
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Are We Witnessing a ‘General Strike’ in Our Own Time?

W.E.B. Du Bois defined the shift from slavery to freedom as a “general strike” — and there are parallels to today.
Illustration of the funeral procession of the late Captain Cailloux, 1863.

The Case for Posthumously Awarding André Cailloux the Congressional Medal of Honor

Cailloux’s valor, and the Black troops he led in battle, electrified northern opinion and gave federal race policy a strong jolt.
Painting of Lincoln and his cabinet by M.S. Carpenter, 1863.

Did the Constitution Pave the Way to Emancipation?

In his new book, "The Crooked Path to Abolition," James Oakes argues that the Constitution was an antislavery document.
Portrait of Robert Carter III

Like Washington and Jefferson, He Championed Liberty. Unlike the Founders, He Freed his Slaves

The little-known story of Robert Carter III.
‘The Proposed Emigrant Dumping Site’; cartoon by Victor Gillam from Judge magazine, March 22, 1890

Whose Freedom?

On the ways that people have conflated freedom with whiteness but pays too little attention to the force of freedom as a concept.
A cartoon by Thomas Nast, depicting Johnson as a king and the race riots that occurred at a Radical Republican convention in New Orleans.

The Mad King and the Lost Cause

Frederick Douglass and Republican legislators had high hopes for Andrew Johnson—but ended up impeaching him.
Statue of Dred Scott and wife

Allegiance, Birthright, and Race in America

What the Dred Scott v. Sandford case meant for black citizenship.
"Head of a Negro" (1777 or 1778), by John Singleton Copley.

The Declaration of Independence’s Debt to Black America

When African Americans allied themselves with the British, the Patriots were enraged, and they acted.
Restaurant with 'Help Wanted' sign
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‘Help Wanted’ Signs Indicate Lack of Decent Job Offers, Not People Unwilling to Work

The 19th-century antecedent to today’s complaints of labor shortage.

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