Essay
When the Past Speaks to the Present: Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings
Recent years have witnessed an explosion of interest in, and historical scholarship about, American...
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Showing results 11 – 20 of 176
Essay
Thomas Jefferson and Deism
Of all the American founders, Thomas Jefferson is most closely associated with deism, the Enlightenment faith in a...
Essay
Two Revolutions in the Atlantic World: Connections between the American Revolution and the Haitian Revolution
The late eighteenth century saw two successful anti-colonial revolutions unfold in the...
Essay
The US and Spanish American Revolutions
If one says “American Revolution” in the United States today, it is assumed that what is being referred to is the North American liberation struggles against the British Empire in...
Essay
Advice (Not Taken) for the French Revolution from America
“I come as a friend to offer my help to this very...
Essay
Why Immigration Matters
It is difficult today to recapture the iconoclasm signaled by Oscar Handlin’s opening words to his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Uprooted more than fifty years ago: “Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America. Then I discovered that the immigrants were American history.”
Essay
Avast! How the US Built a Navy, Sent in the Marines, and Faced Down the Barbary Pirates
In October 1784, an American merchant vessel, the Betsey, was on a trade run from her home port of Boston to Tenerife in the Canary Islands when she was approached by an un-flagged vessel. Suddenly, “...
Essay
Dolley Madison: First Lady and Queen
Whatever else you can say about Dolley Payne Todd Madison (1768–1849), she was famous. She was so well known and well regarded in her lifetime that, at her death in 1849, both houses of Congress adjourned, along with the Supreme Court, to join President Zachary Taylor, escorting her coffin in the largest...
Essay
First Ladies’ Contributions to Political Issues and the National Welfare
The US Constitution assigns no duties or responsibilities to the president’s spouse. Every woman had to define for herself the role she wanted to play. From the blank slate that Martha Washington...