Slavery

April 29, 2019|British Empire, India, Jeremy Black, postcolonialism, Slavery

In Empire’s Wake

British Lion in Trafalgar Square, London, UK (Marco Rubino / Shutterstock.com).

We live in an age of politically shrill history: Imperial Legacies is a fine, subtle, and bracing attempt to counter this polemical misuse of history.

October 12, 2018|commercial republic, Connecticut Compromise, Constitutional Convention, Electoral College, Equality, Gordon Wood, Slavery

Gordon Wood’s Reflections on the Constitution and Slavery

by John O. McGinnis|1 Comment

George Washington speaks at the Constitutional Convention (Everett Historical/Shutterstock.com).

Many historians today tell a dismal tale of woe about our Founding, but Wood sees it whole with defects that do not blot out its real virtues.

May 28, 2018|Colonization, Eric Foner, Forrest Nabors, From Oligarchy to Republicanism, Slavery

The Reconstruction Republicans: Answering the Slaveocratic Revolution

by James H. Read|12 Comments

Prisoners from the Front, Winslow Homer, 1866 (metmuseum.org)

A timely reminder of the full range of anti-republican institutions that the Confederacy fought a war to try to perpetuate.

May 9, 2018|Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, Federalism, Sally Hemings, Slavery, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson - Revolutionary, UVA

Thomas Jefferson’s Legacy

by Mark Pulliam|31 Comments

Washington, DC - Jefferson Memorial

In Thomas Jefferson—Revolutionary: A Radical’s Struggle to Remake America historian Kevin Gutzman examines the legacy of Jefferson.

April 16, 2018|John C. Calhoun's Theory of Republicanism, John G. Grove, John Locke, Missouri Crisis, Nullification, Slavery

John C. Calhoun, Madisonian Manqué

by Thomas W. Merrill|3 Comments

His institutional innovations were geared toward preserving slavery.

March 14, 2018|Abraham Lincoln, David Waldstreicher, Originalism, Paul Finkelman, Slavery

The Constitution: A Pro-Slavery or Anti-Slavery Document?

by Allen Guelzo|17 Comments

The U.S. Constitution (Derek Hatfield / Shutterstock.com)

The most telling evidence in the debate over slavery in the Constitution is how the pro-slavery forces responded to Lincoln's election.

March 1, 2018|Conversations, Forrest Nabors, From Oligarchy to Republicanism, Governor Henry Wise, John Calhoun, Robert Brown Elliott, Slavery

New Birth of Freedom Betrayed

by Forrest A. Nabors|34 Comments

Prisoners from the Front, Winslow Homer, 1866 (metmuseum.org)

Calhounian constitutionalism worked toward overthrowing republicanism and establishing oligarchy as the new model of government in the United States.

February 5, 2018|John Quincy Adams, Missouri Compromise, Robert Goldwin, Slavery, Three-Fifths Clause

Three Fifths of All Other Persons

by Diana Schaub|15 Comments

Newspaper engraving from 1864 (NYPL digital collections)

J.Q. Adams decried the constitutional clause that enhanced the power of the slave masters.

January 22, 2018|Colonization, John Calhoun, John Quincy Adams, Slavery, Thomas Jefferson, Three-Fifths Clause

J.Q. Adams, Diarist

by Diana Schaub|8 Comments

He saw “the hideous reality of the slave ascendency in the Government of this Union" and set about resisting it.

July 13, 2017|Jefferson: Architect of American Liberty, John Boles, Joseph Ellis, Merrill Peterson, Sally Hemings, Secession, Slavery, Thomas Jefferson

Making Jefferson Safe for the Historians

by Kevin Gutzman|1 Comment

Washington, DC - Jefferson Memorial

Rice University’s John Boles was for many years (1983-2013) editor of The Journal of Southern History, which after The Journal of American History is the most-cited scholarly journal in the field of American history. In that position, he had substantial influence on, besides being substantially influenced by, the shape of the field today. Jefferson: Architect of American Liberty comes as a kind of valedictory. As in his earlier work, Boles is self-consciously guided in writing it by recent developments in academic historiography. Contemporary politics make themselves felt in his story of the Master of Monticello, too. A full one-volume account has long…

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