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Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

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Frederick Douglass.
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"What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?"

Frederick Douglass’ 1852 speech is widely known as one of the greatest abolitionist speeches ever.
via BackStory on July 7, 2014
Abraham Lincoln

Was the Civil War Inevitable?

Before Lincoln turned the idea of “the Union” into a cause worth dying for, he tried other means of ending slavery in America.
by Adam Gopnik via The New Yorker on April 21, 2025
Harvard University "veritas" seal displayed on flags on its campus.

Harvard Stood Up to Trump. Too Bad the School Wasn’t Always So Brave.

The university’s last “finest hour” was more than 200 years ago.
by Timothy Noah via The New Republic on April 16, 2025
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Knight Club

Were the Knights of the Golden Circle responsible for Lincoln’s assassination? No one knows, but far-right secret societies always draw power from speculation.
by Devin Thomas O’Shea via HNN on January 14, 2025
Title page of Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Searching for the Elusive Man Who Inspired Uncle Tom’s Cabin

John Andrew Jackson spent a night at Harriet Beecher Stowe’s home as he fled north. Why do so few traces of his visit remain?
by Scott Wasserman Stern via The New Republic on October 24, 2024
A map of Boston from 1725.

When Did the Police Become a “Machine”?

The journey of America’s police force from a non-professional night watch to a highly visible and professional force.
by Nicole Breault via The Panorama on August 13, 2024
A Ride for Liberty – The Fugitive Slaves by Eastman Johnson.

Unapologetically Free: A Personal Declaration of Independence From the Formerly Enslaved

Abolitionist and writer John Swanson Jacobs on reclaiming liberty in a land of unfreedom.
by John Swanson Jacobs, Jonathan D. S. Schroeder via Literary Hub on May 24, 2024
Henry Ward Beecher.

When Preachers Were Rock Stars

A classic New Yorker account of the Henry Ward Beecher adultery trial recalls a time in America that seems both incomprehensible and familiar.
by Louis Menand via The New Yorker on April 14, 2024
Lithograph of the brig Acorn leaving port with Sims on board.

Underground Railroad’s Forgotten Route: Thousands Fled Slavery by Sea

Despite depictions of the Underground Railroad, escaping over land was almost impossible in the South. Thousands of enslaved people found allies on the water.
by Tonya Russell via Retropolis on October 15, 2023
Illustration by Kat Brooks of Stephanie Gilbert and her great grandfather Oliver Cromwell Gilbert and his home.

She Cherished the Home Where Her Family Fled Slavery. Then a Stranger Bought It.

Would the new owner of Richland Farm let a Black woman continue to visit to pay tribute to her enslaved ancestors?
by Sydney Trent via Washington Post on August 5, 2023
Abraham Lincoln.

The Two Constitutions

James Oakes’s deeply researched book argues that two very different readings of the 1787 charter put the United States on a course of all but inevitable conflict.
by David W. Blight via New York Review of Books on May 18, 2023
Cover of "Vigilance: The Life of William Still, Father of the Underground Railroad" by Andrew K. Diemer

A Historian Forgotten

A new biography of William Still show how the abolitionist documented the underground railroad as he helped people through it.
by Bennett Parten via Los Angeles Review of Books on May 7, 2023
Samuel Ringgold Ward and Frederick Douglass.

Frederick Douglass Thought This Abolitionist Was a 'Vastly Superior' Orator and Thinker

A new book offers the first full-length biography of newspaper editor, labor leader and minister Samuel Ringgold Ward.
by Richard Blackett via Smithsonian on March 24, 2023
Illustration of Black fugitives fleeing slavery on the Underground Railroad

How Some Enslaved Black People Found Freedom in Southern Slaveholding States

Instead of using the Underground Railroad as a route north, thousands of enslaved Black people fled to communities in the South.
by Viola Franziska Müller via The Conversation on January 24, 2023
Bridge in Pittsburgh.

Life In The ’Burgh'

A Steel City bibliography of Pittsburgh.
by Drew Simpson, Dan Holland via The Metropole on January 11, 2023
Kevin McCarthy
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What 1856 Teaches Us About the Ramifications of the House Speaker Fight

The battle is worth winning for Kevin McCarthy — and could reshape the Republican Party.
by Corey M. Brooks via Made By History on January 5, 2023
Engraving of freed slaves arriving at Union lines, New Bern, North Carolina, 1863.

The Emancipators’ Vision

Was abolition intended as a perpetuation of slavery by other means?
by Sean Wilentz via New York Review of Books on December 1, 2022
Black and white photograph of William Still, sitting, pasted against a blue tinted backdrop of a U.S. state map

The Forgotten Father of the Underground Railroad

The author of a book about William Still unearths new details about the leading Black abolitionist—and reflects on his lost legacy.
by Andrew K. Diemer via Smithsonian on November 9, 2022
Political cartoon of Andrew Johnson holding a leaking kettle labeled "The Reconstructed South" towards a woman representing liberty and Columbia, carrying a baby representing the newly approved 14th Amendment.

The Pro-Democratic Fourteenth Amendment

At the heart of recent US Supreme Court decisions, the Fourteenth Amendment was framed to require free speech and free elections in the South.
by Garrett Epps, Livia Gershon via JSTOR Daily on July 22, 2022
Charlotte Forten Grimke

The Atlantic Writers Project: Charlotte Forten Grimké

A contemporary Atlantic writer reflects on one of the voices from the magazine's archives who helped shape the publication—and the nation.
by Clint Smith via The Atlantic on July 11, 2022
Graphic of money breaking the chains holding black hands.

There’s No Freedom Without Reparations

A movement to secure payments for descendants of enslaved people rages on.
by Fabiola Cineas via Vox on June 6, 2022
U.S. Supreme Court building, Washington, D.C.

"A Man of His Time": From Patrick Henry to Samuel Alito in U.S. History

The struggle for progress is always two steps forward and at least one step back.
by Thomas Lecaque via Age of Revolutions on May 5, 2022
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.
by Jourdon Anderson, Vilet Lester, Gillian Brockell, Annie Davis, Jermain Wesley Loguen, Frederick Douglass via Retropolis on March 13, 2022
Watercolor portrait of Bronson Alcott, a 19th century American philosopher and educator.

New England Ecstasies

The transcendentalists thought all human inspiration was divine, all nature a miracle.
by Brenda Wineapple via New York Review of Books on February 16, 2022

More Than 1,700 Congressmen Once Enslaved Black People. This is Who They Were.

The Washington Post has compiled the first database of slaveholding members of Congress by examining thousands of census records and historical documents.
by Julie Zauzmer Weil, Adrian Blanco, Leo Dominguez via Washington Post on January 10, 2022
William Wells Brown

William Wells Brown, Wildcat Banker

How a story told by a fugitive from slavery became a parable of American banking gone bad.
by Ross Bullen via The Public Domain Review on November 24, 2021
A mural depicting the portrait of Ahmaud Arbery, on the side of a building.
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Trial of Arbery's Killers Hinges on Law that Originated in Slavery

Georgia enacted the Citizen's Arrest Law in an attempt to maintain control of enslaved people.
by Alan J. Singer via HNN on November 7, 2021
The plough, the loom and the anvil book drawing

In the Common Interest

How a grassroots movement of farmers laid the foundation for state intervention in the economy, challenging the slaveholding South.
by Nic Johnson, Chris Hong, Robert Manduca via Boston Review on May 18, 2021

The Unreconstructed Radical

Thaddeus Stevens was a fierce opponent of the “odious” compromises in the Constitution, and of the North’s compromises after the Civil War.
by Richard Kreitner via The Baffler on May 13, 2021
Wooden cross in the Eli Jackson Methodist Church cemetery in San Juan, Texas.

When Slaves Fled to Mexico

A new book tells the forgotten story of fugitive slaves who found freedom south of the border.
by David S. Reynolds via New York Review of Books on May 13, 2021
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