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Drawing of Black and white Liberian Senators sitting behind desks while one speaks and a crowd watches

Freedom and Its Limits

Edward Wilmot Blyden sorted through competing ideas about the meaning of freedom in 19th-Century Liberia.
by Shae Omonijo via Journal of the History of Ideas Blog on April 30, 2025

Surviving a Wretched State

A discussion on the difficulty of keeping faith in a foundationally anti-Black republic.
by Melvin L. Rogers, Neil Roberts via Boston Review on November 15, 2023
Eugene V Debs speaking at a rally, c1912-18. Photo courtesy the Library of Congress.

For Socialism and Freedom: The Life of Eugene Debs

How Eugene V. Debs turned American republicanism against the chiefs of capitalism – and became a true crusader for freedom.
by Tom O’Shea via Aeon on October 2, 2023
Title page and verso of a 1727 printing of Plutarch's Lives

"Those Noble Qualities": Classical Pseudonyms as Reflections of Divergent Republican Value Systems

Writing under ancient veneers allowed partisans to politicize and weaponize ancient history during the turbulent start of the Federal Republic.
by Shawn David McGhee via Journal of the American Revolution on August 3, 2023
Illustration of a man with a shovel working a farm; the background shows scenes of family and communal life

Deep States

The old Midwest was a place animated by the belief that a self-governing republic is the best regime for man.
by Wilfred M. McClay via Claremont Review of Books on May 31, 2023
Photograph of protesters and text from a 1944 edition of "Are You An American?"

The Failure of a Public Philosophy

How Americans lost faith in the possibility of self-government.
by Win McCormack via The New Republic on November 23, 2022
Soldiers with arms and fortifications in a street in Bolivia.

Our Fellow American Revolutionaries

When residents of the U.S. came to see Latin Americans as partners in a shared revolutionary experiment.
by Caitlin Fitz, Timothy Shenk via Dissent on June 30, 2016
Women of the American Revolution (in the fashion of the day) sewing a flag for the new republic.
partner

Homespun Wisdom

A discussion of the patriotic attempt to spurn European fashion and spin cloth at home in the time leading up to the Revolutionary War.
via BackStory on August 28, 2015
Rembrandt Peale's portrait of Thomas Jefferson wearing a simple black coat.

Dressing Down for the Presidency

Thomas Jefferson's republican simplicity.
by Gaye Wilson via White House Historical Association on November 1, 2012
Grave of John Quincy Adams.

From Son of the Revolution to Old Man Eloquent

A new Library of America edition of John Quincy Adams’s writings demonstrates the enduring appeal—and real shortcomings—of his revolutionary conservatism.
by Michael Lucchese via Law & Liberty on April 11, 2025
Constitution mural in the Capitol rotunda.

James Madison and the Crisis of the New Order

The effort to return American government to republican principles is daunting—but the Founders’ wisdom can serve as a guide.
by Richard Samuelson via Law & Liberty on March 4, 2025
Portrait of Abraham Lincoln, 1858.

A Constitutionalist or a Revolutionist?

Which one was Abraham Lincoln?
by Herman Belz via Modern Age on February 17, 2025
William F. Buckley, Donald Trump.

The Modern Conservative Tradition and the Origins of Trumpism

Today’s Trumpist radicals are not (small-c) conservatives – but they stand in the continuity of Modern Conservatism’s defining political project.
by Thomas Zimmer via Democracy Americana on December 16, 2024
Elon Musk reacts on stage during a rally for Donald Trump at Madison Square Garden.

America’s Decline & Fall

The founders anticipated someone like Trump partly because they’d been reading Edward Gibbon’s 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.'
by Jim Sleeper via Commonweal on November 24, 2024
George Washington

The Moment of Truth

The reelection of Donald Trump would mark the end of George Washington’s vision for the presidency—and the United States.
by Tom Nichols via The Atlantic on October 9, 2024
"We the People" collage.

Is It Time to Torch the Constitution?

Some scholars say that it’s to blame for our political dysfunction—and that we need to start over.
by Louis Menand via The New Yorker on September 23, 2024
"The President's House" (The White House), in the nineteenth century, print by Isidore Laurent Deroy after Augustus Kollner, 1848.

Can the Republic Survive Corrupt Presidents?

The Founders knew that executive power was vital but dangerous in any republic.
by Richard Samuelson via Law & Liberty on June 27, 2024
Cover of "American Civil Wars" by Alan Taylor.

Our Civil War Was Bigger Than You Think

Alan Taylor’s case for thinking of it as a continental conflict.
by Casey Michel via The Bulwark on June 21, 2024
James Madison by Gilbert Stewart, 1821.

How the Constitution Unifies the Country

Yuval Levin urges us to take America’s greatest constitutional thinker, James Madison, as our lodestar.
by Marc Landy via Law & Liberty on June 11, 2024
Carbinari seal of a woman holding a liberty cap.

Lady Liberty in Restoration Italy? Crime, Counterfeit, and Carbonari Revolutionary Politics

Following Napoleon’s fall, international secret societies emerged promoting dissent from absolutist forms of power and sharing ideologies and iconographies.
by Giuseppe Perelli via Age of Revolutions on June 3, 2024
A painting of Prince Albert Edward's visit to George Washington's tomb.
partner

On the Road to Ruin with Their Characteristic Speed

Waiting for the start of the American Civil War in Canada and the Caribbean.
by Alan Taylor via HNN on May 28, 2024
Election Day in Philadelphia, John Lewis Krimmel.

A More Imperfect Union: How Differing National Visions Divided the North and the South

On the fragile facade of republicanism in 19th century America.
by Alan Taylor via Literary Hub on May 21, 2024
A 1797 map of New York City.

The Black Cockade and the Tricolor

Space and place in New York City's responses to the French Revolution.
by Mike Rapport via Age of Revolutions on March 4, 2024
Black and white image of Abraham Lincoln, with the edges of his face out of focus.

No Slaves, No Masters: What Democracy Meant to Abraham Lincoln

A detailed look on Abraham Lincoln's political philosophy on slavery, ownership, and freedom.
by Allen C. Guelzo via Literary Hub on February 8, 2024
Cover of "The Corporation in the Nineteenth-Century American Imagination" featuring a dragon with its tentacles entrapping people.

Between The Many and The One

Stephanie Mueller´s book sheds light on the percieved death of liberalism and the fear of corporations.
by Kevin Musgrave via The New Rambler on September 29, 2023
African American school children at Horatio Greenough’s statue of George Washington at the US Capitol, 1899.

Why the Age of Revolution Loved the Classical World

Radicals in the Age of Revolution saw the classical world as a common inheritance that could aid their fight for liberty.
by Francesca Langer via Aeon on May 30, 2023
American flag sign that reads "NWRO," "I support a guaranteed adequate income for all Americans"

Escape from the Market

Far from spelling the end of anti-market politics, basic income proposals are one place where it can and has flourished.
by Simon Torracinta via Boston Review on May 19, 2023
An English revolutionary takes the crown off of the head of the dead King Charles I.

What Happens When You Kill Your King

After the English Revolution—and an island’s experiment with republicanism—a genuine restoration was never in the cards.
by Adam Gopnik via The New Yorker on April 17, 2023
A painting of the American Founders at the Constitutional Convention.

Inventing American Constitutionalism

On "Power and Liberty," a condensed version of Gordon Wood's entire sweep of scholarship about constitutionalism.
by Gordon S. Wood, Brian A. Smith via Law & Liberty on March 10, 2023
Demonstrators outside the Supreme Court holding signs that read "People Over Politics."
partner

A Post-Reconstruction Proposal That Would Have Restored Power to the People

Largely forgotten today, Albion W. Tourgée’s legislation could have prevented Moore v. Harper.
by Brook Thomas via Made By History on December 19, 2022
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