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History Now Essay

George Washington and the Constitution

Theodore J. Crackel

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

George Washington was among the first of America’s statesmen to recognize the flaws in the government under the Continental Congress and the Articles of Confederation. His experience in the Revolutionary War had convinced him that...

Appears in:

13 | The Constitution Fall 2007

History Now Essay

The Riddles of "Confederate Emancipation"

Bruce Levine

Economics, Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

In July 1861, Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America, was exulting over the victory of his troops at the first Battle of Manassas (or Bull Run) and calling it a sign of eventual triumph in the war as a...

Appears in:

26 | New Interpretations of the Civil War Winter 2010

Essay

The American Civil War

Gary W. Gallagher

6, 7, 8, 9

The Civil War marked a defining moment in United States history. Long simmering sectional tensions reached a critical stage in 1860–1861 when eleven slaveholding states seceded and formed the Confederate States of America. Political...

Essay

The Development of the West

Ned Blackhawk

In the summer of 1876, two dramatically different places captured the American nation’s attention. As the summer began, fairgoers in Philadelphia teemed into the Centennial Exhibition held to commemorate the one hundredth anniversary...

History Now Essay

A Place in History: Historical Perspective on Martin Luther King Jr. Day

James Oliver Horton

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

In the late fall of 1983, the US Congress passed a bill declaring the third Monday of January each year as Martin Luther King Jr. Day. President Ronald Reagan signed the bill into law on November 2, 1983, fifteen years after King’s...

Appears in:

4 | American National Holidays Summer 2005

57 | Black Voices in American Historiography Summer 2020

History Now Essay

Lincoln’s Religion

Richard Carwardine

Religion and Philosophy

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

"Lincoln often, if not wholly, was an atheist," insisted one of Lincoln’s political associates, James H. Matheny. The young Lincoln had "called Christ a bastard," "ridiculed the Bible," and duped pious voters into believing he was "a...

Appears in:

18 | Abraham Lincoln in His Time and Ours Winter 2008

History Now Essay

Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Matter of Influence

Hollis Robbins

Literature

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

One hundred years after Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852, the poet Langston Hughes called the novel, "the most cussed and discussed book of its time." Hughes’s observation is particularly apt in that it avoids...

Appears in:

16 | Books That Changed History Summer 2008

History Now Essay

Before Jackie: How Strikeout King Satchel Paige Struck Down Jim Crow

Larry Tye

7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Satchel Paige was pitching in the Negro Leagues in California when he got the news he had been anticipating for two decades. Brooklyn Dodgers president Branch Rickey had just signed a Negro to a big-league contract—the first Negro in...

Appears in:

23 | Turning Points in American Sports Spring 2010

History Now Essay

The Form and Function of the Supreme Court

Charles Anthony Smith

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The Supreme Court often stands at the center of the storm of politics. High profile cases over individual liberties, federal or state power, or even presidential elections can dominate the news and attention of the public. The close...

Appears in:

15 | The Supreme Court Spring 2008

Essay

The Seventies

Judith Stein

Long overshadowed by the tumultuous 1960s and the transformative 1980s, the 1970s has finally been recognized as an era in its own right. And it is more than Watergate, big hair, and disco. During the 1970s, postwar affluence was...

History Now Essay

“Rachel Weeping for Her Children”: Black Women and the Abolition of Slavery

Margaret Washington

Government and Civics, Religion and Philosophy

7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

During the period leading up to the Civil War, black women all over the North comprised a stalwart but now largely forgotten abolitionist army. In myriad ways, these race-conscious women worked to bring immediate emancipation to the...

Appears in:

5 | Abolition Fall 2005

57 | Black Voices in American Historiography Summer 2020

Essay

The Rise of Industrial America, 1877-1900

Richard White

Economics, Government and Civics

When in 1873 Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner entitled their co-authored novel The Gilded Age , they gave the late nineteenth century its popular name. The term reflected the combination of outward wealth and dazzle with inner...

History Now Essay

Truman and His Doctrine: Revolutionary, Unprecedented, and Bipartisan

Elizabeth Edwards Spalding

World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

In February 1947, the British government privately told the United States that it would no longer be able to guarantee the security and independence of Greece and Turkey. President Harry S. Truman had known this time would come and...

Appears in:

27 | The Cold War Spring 2011

History Now Essay

From Citizen to Enemy: The Tragedy of Japanese Internment

Julie Des Jardins

Government and Civics, World History

7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Although World War II is covered in most school curricula, the story of American citizens who were stripped of their civil liberties here, on American soil, during that war is often omitted. Yet what happened to first-generation...

Appears in:

14 | World War II Winter 2007

History Now Essay

The Presidential Election of 1800: A Story of Crisis, Controversy, and Change

Joanne B. Freeman

Government and Civics

7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Nasty political mud-slinging. Campaign attacks and counterattacks. Personal insults. Outrageous newspaper invective. Dire predictions of warfare and national collapse. Innovative new forms of politicking capitalizing on a growing...

Appears in:

1 | Elections Fall 2004

History Now Essay

A Local and National Story: The Civil Rights Movement in Postwar Washington, DC

Wendell E. Pritchett

Government and Civics

5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The history of the Civil Rights Movement is the story of numerous grassroots campaigns loosely coordinated and assisted by a small number of national organizations. Every local struggle had its own actors, issues, and nuances, and all...

Appears in:

8 | The Civil Rights Movement Summer 2006

57 | Black Voices in American Historiography Summer 2020

History Now Essay

Lincoln’s Civil Religion

George C. Rable

Government and Civics, Religion and Philosophy

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

His long-time law partner William Herndon once described Abraham Lincoln as "the most shut-mouthed man who ever lived." That phrase wonderfully captured an important characteristic of a politician who had surprisingly few friends and...

Appears in:

Lincoln

Essay

The Civil War and Reconstruction in the American West

Elliott West

5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The histories of the Civil War and of the emerging West were tangled together from their beginnings. Although the war was fought mostly in the East, the events that set it off were born of the expansion of the 1840s, and in turn the...

History Now Essay

Are Artists “Workers”? Art and the New Deal

Elizabeth Broun

Art

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

As I write this essay in February 2009, the nation is engaged in a great discussion about how to restore confidence during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. One contentious issue is whether and how cultural...

Appears in:

The Great Depression

History Now Essay

Theodore Roosevelt: The Making of a Progressive Reformer

Kathleen Dalton

Economics, Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Theodore Roosevelt’s interesting life often tempts biographers to write about him with the history left out. His story offers plenty of drama. Born in 1858 to a wealthy family in New York City he waged a life and death struggle...

Appears in:

17 | Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Era Fall 2008

Essay

Slavery and Anti-Slavery

David Brion Davis

Abolitionism emerged in America as part of a massive fusion of reform movements related to religious revivals and dedicated to the goal of creating a righteous society capable of fulfilling America’s high ideals. [1] In part, the...

History Now Essay

Photography in Nineteenth-Century America

Martha A. Sandweiss

Art, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

During the mid-nineteenth century, American commentators pronounced that new technological innovations in transportation and communications represented nothing less than the "annihilation of space and time." On steamships and...

Appears in:

10 | Nineteenth Century Technology Winter 2006

History Now Essay

The Emancipation Proclamation: Bill of Lading or Ticket to Freedom?

Allen C. Guelzo

Economics, Government and Civics

6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Of all the speeches, letters, and state papers he had written, Abraham Lincoln believed that the greatest of them was his Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863. With one document of only 713 words, Lincoln declared more than...

Appears in:

6 | Lincoln Winter 2005

History Now Essay

Iran and the United States in the Cold War

Malcolm Byrne

Religion and Philosophy, World History

8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

As the latest wave of revolutionary uncertainty sweeps across the Middle East, Iran remains one of the region’s biggest question marks. The Islamic regime that temporarily crushed the Green Movement after Iran’s controversial...

Appears in:

27 | The Cold War Spring 2011

History Now Essay

FDR’s Court-Packing Plan: A Study in Irony

Richard G. Menaker

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The Great Depression of the 1930s was the nation’s grimmest economic crisis since the founding of the American republic. After the 1932 elections, Franklin D. Roosevelt introduced a series of innovative remedies—his New Deal—but the...

Appears in:

15 | The Supreme Court Spring 2008

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