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A 1912 painting by Edward Percy Moran shows Francis Scott Key pointing to the American flag at Fort McHenry in Baltimore.

The National Anthem Was a 19th-Century Meme

Like many patriotic songs of its time, ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ was created by fitting a popular tune with topical new lyrics.
Illustration of an angel symbolizing peace with her hand on the shoulder of a man symbolizing war, titled "The Messenger"
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Ukraine Shows We Need to Learn the History of Peace Movements to Break The Habit of War

When the war in Ukraine finally ends, will we take peace organizations and peace movements more seriously?
Picture of the statue of Black Hawk.

Remembering Black Hawk

A history of imperial forgetting.
Pro-Trump protesters gather outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6
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Talk of Secession Always Gets U.S. History Wrong

Americans have always been deeply divided.
US Capitol

Is the US Capitol a 'Temple of Democracy'? Its Authoritarian Architecture Suggests Otherwise

The neoclassical building was inspired by European shrines to imperial power.
Richard Mentor Johnson.

He Became the Nation’s Ninth Vice President. She Was His Enslaved Wife.

Her name was Julia Chinn.
Jacob Lawrence.

Jacob Lawrence Went Beyond the Constraints of a Segregated Art World

Jacob Lawrence was one of twentieth-century America’s most celebrated black artists.
Silhouette of a soldier sitting on aircraft

The Long Roots of Endless War

A new history shows how the glut of US military bases abroad has led to a constant state of military conflict.
A black and white artistic photo

A Quest to Discover America’s First Science-Fiction Writer

It’s been two hundred years since America’s first sci-fi novel was published. But who wrote it?
Massacre in Boston

Knives Out

‘Struggle: From the History of the American People’ charts the strife of early US history in a fierce Cubist/Expressionist style.
William Lloyd Garrison

The Country That Was Built to Fall Apart

Why secession, separatism, and disunion are the most American of values.
A pen and ink portrait of Alexander Hamilton as Treasury Secretary.

A New Hamilton Book Looks to Reclaim His Vision for the Left

In “Radical Hamilton,” Christian Parenti argues that the left should use Alexander Hamilton’s mythologized status to drive home his full agenda.
A graphic featuring a map of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and slavery imagery.

Cancer Alley

A collage artist explores how Louisiana's ecological and epidemiological disasters are founded in colonialism.
Statue of men in a bread line at the FDR memorial.

Who Remembers the Panic of 1819?

We haven’t built many memorials to panics, recessions, or depressions, but maybe we should.

George Washington Would Have So Worn a Mask

The father of the country was a team player who had no interest in displays of hyper-masculinity.
Map of 1796 presidential election electoral votes by state.
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The Founders Knew That Foreign Interference in U.S. Elections was Dangerous

The origins of our efforts to keep foreign countries out of our elections.
Chester Harding

Chester Harding’s My Egotistigraphy (1866)

Privately published memoir of an American portraitist who grew up in a log cabin and went on to paint presidents and Daniel Boone.

Fifty Years Ago, Hendrix’s Woodstock Anthem Expressed the Hopes and Fears of a Nation

It also inspired my own scholarship on the national anthem.

It Isn’t Independence Day For Everyone

If the British had won the Revolutionary War, things might be very different for Native Americans.
Map of the United States from 1828.

In Its First Decades, The United States Nurtured Schoolgirl Mapmakers

Education for women and emerging nationhood, illustrated with care and charm.

'I'm Feeling Bad About America'

The sick history of the U.S. campaign song.

Congress Handed to the President the Power to Level Tariffs

A republic needs a legislature that can handle such tasks. We don’t have one.
Black sailors among the crew of a Union Naval vessel.

Slaves and Sailors in the Civil War

The enlistment of black soldiers in the Union Army is well-known, but their Navy counterparts played an integral role, too.

Medical Mystery: James Madison's Sudden Collapse

The Father of the U.S. Constitution fought a life-long physical battle, too.

Disarming the NRA

The Second Amendment does not stand in the way of better gun laws; the NRA does.

The Two Andrew Jacksons

Jacksonian democracy may have been liberating for some, but it was repressive for many others.
Independence Day Celebration in Centre Square by John Lewis Krimmel (1787–1821).

The Brief Period, 200 Years Ago, When American Politics Was Full of “Good Feelings”

James Monroe’s 1817 goodwill tour kicked off a decade of party-less government – but he couldn’t stop the nation from dividing again.

The Revival of John Quincy Adams

The sixth president, long derided as a hapless elitist, is suddenly relevant again 250 years after his birth.
Jackson statue outside the White House.

Trump's Jacksonian Moment

A new biography of Andrew Jackson recounts a bloody history, and reveals disturbing parallels between the 1830s and the Trump era.

The Dramatic Life and Mysterious Death of Theodosia Burr

The fate of Aaron Burr's daughter remains a topic of contention.

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