George Washington

A new history of five heroes of the revolutionary period considers the power and instability of charismatic leadership.

On the continued revolutionary rhetoric and ideology that persisted in America even after the American Revolution.

Washington supported a much more limited conception of executive privilege.

There is, and always has been, a vanishingly thin line between charismatic democratic rulers and charismatic authoritarians.

They understood that revolution means dismantling old power structures, violently if necessary.

Hunting shirts, backcountry culture, and “playing Indian” in the American Revolution.

The dangerous myth that blacks in bondage chose not to be free in revolutionary America.

Our first President understood that armed citizens are essential to American freedom.

Many people think of the White House as a symbol of democracy, but it also embodies America’s complicated past.

British occupation brought challenges to the very foundation of the American home.

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

In 1790, as the First Amendment was being ratified, George Washington made a promise to American Jews.

A just-discovered eyewitness account provides startling new evidence about who fired the shot that sparked the French and Indian War.

The murals have been denounced as demeaning, and defended as an exposé of America’s racist past. Both sides miss the point.

And what Congress can learn from his efforts.

The economics of childbirth under slavery.

The 45th president, no student of history, marveled at the first president's failure to name his historic compound after himself.

The co-winners of the 2018 Frederick Douglass Book Prize on researching slavery.

The Founding Fathers relied on deceit in championing American independence—and that has lessons for the present.

George Washington knew the perils of letting scandals linger.