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The Columbian Orator Taught Nineteenth-Century Americans How to Speak
For strivers like Lincoln, guides to rhetoric had a special currency in the nineteenth century.
by
Danny Heitman
via
Humanities
on
April 2, 2025
Discover Patrick Henry’s Legacy, Beyond His Revolutionary ‘Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death’ Speech
Delivered 250 years ago, the famous oration marked the Henry’s influence. The politician also served in key roles in Virginia’s state government.
by
Cassandra A. Good
via
Smithsonian
on
March 21, 2025
partner
"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
All You Need Is Love
The complex history, career, and legacy of one of America's most popular speakers and reformers.
by
Ronald Steel
via
New York Review of Books
on
June 22, 2006
The Spoilsman's Progress
Ambitious office seekers during the nineteenth century experienced wild swings of fortune that depended on the public’s mood and party benevolence.
by
Jeffrey D. Broxmeyer
via
Commonplace
on
June 3, 2025
How Margaret Fuller Set Minds on Fire
High-minded and scandal-prone, a foe of marriage who dreamed of domesticity, Fuller radiated a charisma that helped ignite the fight for women’s rights.
by
James Marcus
via
The New Yorker
on
June 2, 2025
When William F. Buckley Jr. Met James Baldwin
In 1965, the two intellectual giants squared off in a debate at Cambridge. It didn’t go quite as Buckley hoped.
by
Sam Tanenhaus
via
The Atlantic
on
May 20, 2025
Did Patrick Henry Really Say ‘Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death’?
The Virginia delegate may have spoken those words on March 23, 1775, but some historians doubt it.
by
Gregory S. Schneider
via
Retropolis
on
March 21, 2025
What If Ronald Reagan’s Presidency Never Really Ended?
Anti-Trump Republicans revere Ronald Reagan as Trump’s opposite—yet in critical ways Reagan may have been his forerunner.
by
Daniel Immerwahr
via
The New Yorker
on
September 9, 2024
partner
No Place to Make a Vote of Thanks
On the long tradition of Black third-party activism.
by
Marc Blanc
via
HNN
on
April 23, 2024
How the American Jeremiad Can Restore the American Soul
One of the country’s greatest rhetorical traditions still has the power to remind us of our founding principles.
by
Sam B. Girgus
via
Bulwark+
on
March 29, 2024
Defanged
A journalistic view of Martin Luther King Jr.'s life, work, and representation in American society.
by
Eric Foner
via
London Review of Books
on
September 28, 2023
Martin Luther King’s Dream at 60
King offered Americans the choice between acting in accordance with the Constitution and resistance to change. In many ways, we face the same choice today.
by
Eric Foner
via
The Nation
on
August 28, 2023
Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Perilous Power of Respectability
We revere the man and revile the strategy, but King knew what he was doing.
by
Kelefa Sanneh
via
The New Yorker
on
May 8, 2023
The Gift of Slam Poetry
A short history of a misunderstood literary genre and the world it created.
by
Joshua Bennett
via
The Nation
on
April 26, 2023
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
The Real Origins of the “Democrat Party” Troll
We can’t blame Joe McCarthy for this one. (Though he was a fan.)
by
Lawrence B. Glickman
via
Slate
on
January 21, 2023
The Father-Daughter Team Who Reformed America
Meet the duo who helped achieve the most important labor and civil rights victories of their age.
by
Jon Grinspan
via
Smithsonian
on
November 3, 2022
How Stokely Carmichael Helped Inspire the Creation of C-SPAN
A Black Power radical, a Navy veteran, and the story behind the most boring channel on television.
by
Eamon Whalen
via
Mother Jones
on
August 24, 2022
Would These Undelivered Speeches Really Have Changed History?
At a time of upheaval, we want to believe that better leaders have the power to change the course of history. But counterfactuals are never simple.
by
Priya Satia
via
The New Republic
on
May 20, 2022
"A New History of an Old Idea"
Richard Cándida Smith on Ian Tyrrell’s "American Exceptionalism: A New History of an Old Idea."
by
Richard Cándida Smith
via
Society for U.S. Intellectual History
on
April 17, 2022
Comparing Editions of David Walker's Abolitionist Appeal
Digitization allows researchers to trace editorial and authorial changes in archival content. Both are central to the study of this famous abolitionist pamphlet.
by
Dorothy Berry
via
JSTOR Daily
on
March 31, 2022
She Spoke to the Dead. They Told Her to Free the Slaves.
In 1850s Vermont, Achsa Sprague swore that the spirits who helped her walk again also possessed her with a crucial mission: freeing every soul in America.
by
Madeline Bodin
via
Narratively
on
October 21, 2021
A Radical Gettysburg Address
A behind-the-scenes look at Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.
by
David T. Dixon
via
Emerging Civil War
on
May 18, 2021
Frederick Douglass and the American Project
It would be hard to blame him if he had lost faith in the republic.
by
Richard Hughes Gibson
via
The Hedgehog Review
on
February 22, 2021
Ebenezer Baptist: MLK’s Church Makes New History With Warnock Victory
Georgia Sen.-elect Raphael Warnock is pastor of the church where Martin Luther King Jr. preached.
by
DeNeen L. Brown
via
Retropolis
on
January 3, 2021
Eugene Debs Believed in Socialism Because He Believed in Democracy
Eugene Debs’s unswerving commitment to democracy and internationalism was born out of his revulsion at the tyranny of industrial capitalism.
by
Shawn Gude
via
Jacobin
on
September 2, 2020
The Douglass Republic
How today's protests are struggling to reclaim the vision of the great abolitionist leader.
by
Jabari Asim
via
The New Republic
on
August 14, 2020
The Vow James Baldwin Made to Young Civil Rights Activists
How James Baldwin confronted America's most exceptional lie.
by
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
via
Literary Hub
on
July 28, 2020
The Electrifying Speeches of Sojourner Truth
Daina Ramey Berry details the life of the outspoken activist Sojourner Truth and her legendary speaking tour.
via
TED
on
April 28, 2020
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