Thomas Jefferson

How Henry Wadsworth Longfellow interpreted Reconstruction by translating Dante.

The author of ‘Founding Brothers’ tries to capture the breadth of the War for Independence in a single narrative.

The Iroquois, Shawnee, Cherokee, and other political formations generally separated military and civil leadership and guarded certain personal freedoms.

The little-known story of Robert Carter III.

On the ways that people have conflated freedom with whiteness but pays too little attention to the force of freedom as a concept.

What role should the federal government play in building our infrastructure?

Which personality of the American Revolution or the founding era is remembered for the wrong reasons, and why?

We ascribe too much meaning to the early years of the republic.

Vaccines against smallpox during the Revolutionary War are one example of how mandates have protected the health of Americans for more than two centuries.

W.E.B. Du Bois’s exhibit at the 1900 Paris Exposition offered him a chance to present the dramatic gains made by Black Americans since the end of slavery.

On Akhil Reed Amar’s “The Words That Made Us,” a new history of America’s constitutional conversation.

The Left once tried to own the legacy of America’s Bicentennial, but ran into ideological and structural roadblocks all too familiar today.

Pulitzer-winning historian Annette Gordon-Reed reflects on the battle for the past and the fragile state of American democracy.

Let’s remember that performative anti-racism is as profitable politically as racism has been.

When African Americans allied themselves with the British, the Patriots were enraged, and they acted.

Why are politics so consumed with the past?

People in the United States no longer agree on the nation’s purpose, values, history, or meaning. Is reconciliation possible?

A prominent intellectual and naturalist, the Maryland native wrote extensively on natural phenomena and anti-slavery causes.

Liberty for some has always entailed a lack of liberty for many others.

A group of activists is calling attention to the legacy of slavery encoded in the names of New York City’s streets and neighborhoods.