Abraham Lincoln

Faith’s pivotal role in the outcome of the Civil War.

Often, the proper scope of the First Amendment can be determined only by considering both text and context.

Two new books explore the messy complexities of immigration—from the era of Lincoln to Irish New York.

American democracy has been haunted by the spectre of a Caesar-type figure since the birth of the republic. Have such fears ever been justified?

On the 1860 Republican National Convention in Chicago.

Heather Cox Richardson argues that there are two Americas: one interested in equality, the other in hierarchy. But it's not that simple.

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

As the Supreme Court invents a law to negate all others, Chief Justice John Roberts now ranks just below Roger Taney.

Historian Manisha Sinha argues that the Second Republic lasted decades longer than most histories state and achieved wider gains.

The images, diaries, and ephemera in Grand Valley State University’s Civil War and Slavery Collection reveal the cold realities of Abraham Lincoln’s world.

"I was always working on a theory of America."

You can thank Eric Voegelin for the right’s clichéd catchall critique for the left.

The untold story of the Wide Awakes, the young Americans who took up the torch for their antislavery cause and stirred the nation.

It’s important to remember why analogies to Jesus should stay out of the political realm. The results are always ugly.

One of the country’s greatest rhetorical traditions still has the power to remind us of our founding principles.

The risks of calling on politicians to push back against the court must be weighed against the present reality of a malign judicial dictatorship.

The black naturalist, astronomer, surveyor, and almanac-writer Benjamin Banneker took issue with Thomas Jefferson’s attitude toward “those of my complexion.”

Where abolitionists and congressmen—including Lincoln—dined, debated, and became bedfellows.

James Oakes’s deeply researched book argues that two very different readings of the 1787 charter put the United States on a course of all but inevitable conflict.

Remembering the mixed reception is key to understanding the complexities of our history and the persistence of racism today.