Abraham Lincoln

Why did the man known as the “father of Black nationalism” defect to the Democratic Party during Reconstruction?

The story of John Wolcott Phelps and his push for Lincoln to emancipate all slaves.

We must be cautious of the inclination to find a “usable history” that proves those points we want to prove, that reinforces the lessons we want reinforced.

Jefferson revised the Gospels to make Jesus more reasonable, and lost the power of his story.

A history of the United States shifting the financial burden of emancipation onto enslaved people.

James Shapiro’s recent book looks at why Shakespeare has been a mainstay of the cultural and political conflicts of the country since its founding.

History is asking only one question right now as Trump refuses to concede. Will the Republicans decide they are no longer an American political party?

Biden will take over a country facing myriad challenges. And Trump's lame-duck period could be one of the most treacherous in American history.

Enabling sustained minority rule at the national level is not a feature of our constitutional design, but a perversion of it.

In 1880, a new generation helped decide the closest popular vote in U.S. history.

In certain corners of the internet, you can actually buy money, but these bills are relics of the Free Banking Era that reigned from the 1830s to the 1860s.

This 1952 textbook serves as an example of the "patriotic history" that Donald Trump grew up with and calls for today.

In our current politics we must be attentive to how talk of American freedom has long been connected to the presumed right of whites to dominate everyone else.

The document counted my great-great-grandfather as 3/5 of a free person. But the Framers don’t own the version we live by today. We do.

Newly added to Netflix, the Civil War movie reminds the nation that black Americans fought for their own emancipation.

Moral complexity may be an argument against unthinking iconoclasm. It is not, however, an argument for never taking down statues.

The confluence of Black and Indigenous history at Bdote.

Why secession, separatism, and disunion are the most American of values.

Dorsey and Thomas amassed important collections at a time when the future of chattel slavery and Black life hung in the balance of a national quarrel.

"No one story can completely explain Annie."