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Drawing of George Washington watching over a group of enslaved people working in a field at Mount Vernon.
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Even George Washington Was a Tyrant

We don't need to find heroes in our past presidents. We need to try to understand that tyranny has always been part of American freedom.
The Fallen Angels on the Wing by Gustave Doré, a dark painting of angels falling from heaven.

The Political Afterlife of Paradise Lost

From white supremacists to black activists, readers have sought moral legitimacy in Milton’s epic poem.
An artistic collage juxtiposing a transatlantic slave ship with a tenement in Harlem.

How the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Continues to Impact Modern Life

A new Smithsonian book reckons with the enduring legacies of slavery and capitalism.
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?
Drawing of the Constitutional Convention, by John W. Winkler.
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Strange Political Bedfellows

The origins of the Electoral College are entwined with slavery, but not in the way that recent accounts have suggested.
Pressed seaweed arranged like a bouquet by William G. Allen and Mary King Allen.

Flowers of the Sea: Marine Specimens at the Anti-Slavery Bazaar

Seaweed and its connection to faith and abolitionism.
Homepage of Freedom Seekers website.

Freedom Seekers: Stories of Black Liberation in the American Revolutionary Era and Beyond

A new digital project shows how those who escaped slavery were important actors in the challenge not just to their own enslavement but to slavery more broadly.

Not “Three-Fifths of a Person”

What the three-fifths clause meant at ratification.
Vice President Kamala Harris speaking at a podium in front of the Irish and American flags.

Kamala Harris’ Purported Irish Ancestry

The candidate's potential ties to an Irish slave owner invite us to reexamine Ireland’s multilayered historical identity.
Aerial photo of housing projects in the Bronx.

Suffering, Grace and Redemption: How The Bronx Came to Be

On the early history of New York City's northernmost borough.
Painting of enslaved people running away from hands grabbing at them.

Remarkable Documents Lay Bare New York’s History of Slavery

A newly digitized set of records reveals the plight and bravery of enslaved people in the North.
Costumed man and tourists in Colonial Williamsburg.

Where MAGA Granddads and Resistance Moms Go to Learn America’s Most Painful History Lessons

Welcome to Colonial Williamsburg, the largest living museum that is taking a radical approach to our national divides.
Michelle Obama at the Democratic National Convention.
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Michelle Obama Was Right to Clap Back at Trump on 'Black Jobs'

The idea of "Black jobs" owes to 18th and 19th century divisions of labor designed to uphold slavery and white supremacy.
John Andrew Jackson riding a galloping horse and tipping his hat.
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How Do We Tell a Tale of People Who Sought to Disappear?

The life of John Andrew Jackson — and the vacillating richness and scarcity of the archive.
Washington crossing the Delaware painting by Emmanuel Leutze.

What Freedom Meant to the Black Soldier Who Rowed Across the Delaware

The enslaved Prince Whipple acutely felt the contradiction between American ideals and his condition.
Sheet music depicting a fugitive slave.

Against the Slave Power: the Fugitive Liberalism of Frederick Douglass

Douglass elaborated a political theory attuned to the differential character of law as it applied to slaves and other outlaws.
The Hall of the House of Representatives.

Are We Living Through Another 1850s?

It’s difficult to see how these profound antipathies and fears will dissipate soon through any normal political processes.
Lithograph of George Washington on his land with people he enslaved.

What, to the American, Is Revolutionary?

The colonial rebellion we celebrate every July 4th doesn’t fit the definition.
Harriet Tubman.

The Radical Faith of Harriet Tubman

A new book conveys in dramatic detail what America’s Moses did to help abolish slavery. Another addresses the love of God and country that helped her do so.
Painting of Mary Ann Tritt Cassell, a woman with pale skin and curled hair wearing a blue shirt with pink bow collar.

An Art Mystery is Solved, and a Historic Portrait Goes on Display

The painting of Mary Ann Tritt Cassell is likely the first known portrait commissioned by an American born into slavery.
Combahee River.

Harriet Tubman and the Second South Carolina Volunteers Bring Freedom to the Combahee River

The story of how Harriet Tubman led 150 African American soldiers to rescue over 700 former slaves freed five months earlier by the Emancipation Proclamation.
A drawing of a bust of Abraham Lincoln sitting on philosophy books.

From Königsberg to Gettysburg

How German Enlightenment thought influenced Abraham Lincoln.
Detail from "the Book of Negroes," listing Arthur Bowler and his family, 1783.

Eight Clues

Recovering a life in fragments, Arthur Bowler in slavery and freedom.
The White House.

How the Labor of Enslaved Black Men Built the White House

On the construction of America's new capital city.
National Bureau of Economic Research logo.

Her Property Transactions: White Women and the Frequency of Female Ownership in the Antebellum Era

White women were especially likely to be owners involved in transactions with enslaved women, where they were listed as owners in nearly 40% of transactions.
A painting of Prince Albert Edward's visit to George Washington's tomb.
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On the Road to Ruin with Their Characteristic Speed

Waiting for the start of the American Civil War in Canada and the Caribbean.
Ansel Williamson, the trainer whose horse won the first Kentucky Derby, is depicted on the right in the 1864 painting “Ansel Williamson, Edward Brown, and the Undefeated Asteroid,” by Edward Troye.

They Were Born into Slavery. Then They Won the First Kentucky Derby.

As the 150th Kentucky Derby kicks off, the achievements of jockey Oliver Lewis and trainer Ansel Williamson at the first Derby have been largely forgotten.
Image of Preston Brooks pummeling Charles Sumner with a cane in 1856 and a Trump supporter on January 6th, 2021.

The Illiberalism at America’s Core

A new history argues that illiberalism is not a backlash but a central feature from the founding to today.
Illustration of Nancy and the first edition of the Emancipator.

He Published the First Abolitionist Newspaper in America. He Was Also an Enslaver.

When "The Emancipator" was first published in 1820, its original owner had to answer for why he owned Nancy and her five children.

An Unholy Traffic: How the Slave Trade Continued Through the US Civil War

In a new book, Robert KD Colby of the University of Mississippi shows how the Confederacy remained committed to slavery.

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