Two great works of republican literature, though separated by almost exactly a century, give us an important insight into the republican mind. The first, Joseph Addison’s play “Cato,” found a receptive and devoted audience among American founders such as George Washington, Nathan Hale, and Patrick Henry. During his famous and well-attended University of Pennsylvania lectures [...]
With his bold pronouncement in the Dred Scott decision that Congress had no jurisdiction over the territories, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney hoped to preempt all political discussion and debate. But he was sadly disappointed, for his majority opinion itself became the focus of a new, and ever more vicious, round of political battles as [...]
Allen Guelzo might very well have had the current state of affairs in his country in mind when he set out to offer this rumination on Abraham Lincoln. It would be hard, if not impossible, to imagine otherwise. Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy, and the American Experiment, by Allen C. Guelzo (247 pages, Knopf, 2024) [...]
The creation of Thanksgiving was no uncontested process but a fight emerging from antebellum crises over slavery and American nationalism. In November 1859, a Washington, DC alderman from Capitol Hill violently opposed the mayor’s request to declare a Thanksgiving public holiday. By this point, annual celebrations had become traditional and twenty-five governors already proclaimed the [...]
By linking it to the great moral issue of slavery, perhaps more people will find their way to the position that abortion too should be put on the road to ultimate extinction. If so, it’s possible that subsequent generations of Americans will come to regard our Stephen Douglas-popular sovereignty Republicans as having been on the [...]
“Dred Scott” is a landmark decision because it answered questions regarding slavery that the Supreme Court had not previously addressed. It is also one of the most infamous decisions, furthering the great divide facing the nation regarding the question of slavery and moving the country further down the path toward the Civil War. Dred Scott [...]
No episode in the American past is more susceptible to such manipulation—manipulation rather than debate—than the Civil War. On the historical question permit me to be blunt and unequivocal. There can be no doubt that slavery was central to all that divided the northern and the southern states, and that slavery was ultimately responsible for [...]
The essence of America isn't characterized by four centuries of racial subjugation but by the 247-year-long persistent and often heroic struggle by Americans of every race and creed to live up to our highest ideals. This ideal continues to inspire countless individuals, both domestically and internationally. Juneteenth stands as a symbol of this enduring inspiration. [...]
“Lift Every Voice and Sing” is a song written as a poem by James Weldon Johnson, an American writer and civil rights activist, in 1900 and set to music by his brother J. Rosamond Johnson in 1905. A prayer of thanksgiving for faithfulness and freedom, evocative of the biblical Exodus from slavery to the freedom [...]
Is there room for yet another biography of Abraham Lincoln? Of course there is, especially if the biographer in question is as deft and insightful as Jon Meacham. And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle by Jon Meacham (676 pages, Random House, 2022) Is there room for yet another biography of Abraham [...]
From the late 1660s until about 1763, slavery grew dramatically in the American colonies, but especially in the southern colonies. Then, between 1763 and 1793, the institution declined precipitously. Why? As an institution, slavery has one of the strangest of all histories. Though Africans were sold on American soil as early as 1619, chattel slavery [...]
Even mainstream liberals today accept as fact that America is and always has been a racist system, built upon the backs of slaves. Yet American history itself was deeply divisive and extremely complicated, and after all, there is a finality to the subject: In the end, the United States abolished slavery, ending the scourge forever [...]
The Constitutional Convention debated the issue of slavery over almost a week. In the end, the delegates reluctantly agreed to allow slavery for the sake of South Carolina and Georgia. We moderns and post-moderns can debate all we want, but the case is that the Convention came very close to abolishing slavery. Its acceptance of [...]
Nikole Hannah-Jones is right and wrong. Although the first slaves arrived in Jamestown in 1619, the year and the event carry less significance than she imagines. Although neither deceptive nor careless, she is uninterested in facts in a conventional sense. Her principal objective is not to understand the past but to rebuke the present and, [...]