Thomas Paine

Fears of great wealth and the need for economic equality go back to the country’s origins.

A public uprising forced Boston to prioritize fighting smallpox over the economy in 1792.

Why did American policing get so big, so fast? The answer, mainly, is slavery.

The real challenge is not simply to replace Trump, but to fix a system that produces, promotes, and protects the toxicity that defines his presidency.

Judith Shklar fled Nazis and Stalinism before discovering in African-American history the dilemma of modern liberalism.

Eric Foner has helped us better understand the ambiguous consequences of what were almost always only partial victories.

"Inevitably, the age of national bootblacks and national oyster houses and national blacksmiths produced national history books."

In modern democracies, who gets to determine what counts as truth—an elite of experts or the people as a whole?

The main issue they were debating was how democratic a representative body should be. And their answer was “not very democratic at all.”

Trump’s critic is utilizing a practice employed by many of the Founding Fathers to protect truth from power.

A pardon request for Aaron Dwight Stevens argues that slavery-related crimes are null.

Tillmon and other National Welfare Rights Organization members defied mainstream ideas of feminism in their fight for welfare.

How Twitter bots help us understand the founding era.

The debate between "originalism" and the "living constitution" rages on. What does history say?

The document we celebrate today wasn't just the work of Thomas Jefferson's individual genius. Everyone was doing it.

The leaders of the Revolutionary War — and their vision for the nation — were far from revolutionary.

Many Americans could have gone either way during the Revolution.

Has the celebrated musical eclipsed the man himself?

The Founding Fathers were more interested in limiting democracy than securing and expanding it.

A look back at the historian's work suggests that contemporary radicals may be all too invested in the myth of American consensus.