205 items
In 1953, a pamphlet ominously tilted What Price Wetbacks? circulated widely throughout the American Southwest. Its authors warned that a “wetback invasion” was underway, one that posed “a threat to our health, our economy, [and] our...
Indian Removal
In 1828 pressure was building among white Americans for the relocation of American Indians from the eastern United States to lands west of the Mississippi River. A student at a mission school in the Cherokee Nation, which lay within...
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Insurgent India: Purna Swaraj as Self-Determination
“At the stroke of midnight, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.” These are the famous words of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, that began his resonant “Tryst with Destiny” speech of August...
Inventing American Diplomacy
In 1783, the expatriate artist Benjamin West began what became his most memorable painting, "The Peacemakers." West intended to produce a group portrait of the diplomats whose negotiations resulted in the Treaty of Paris of 1783, but...
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Invisible Threats and the Politics of Disaster: Three Mile Island and Covid-19
An invisible, potentially deadly threat. Elected officials saying one thing, and public health experts saying another. A citizenry hungry for information and guidance. A cultural divide between those who are afraid of the threat and...
James Madison and the Constitution
James Madison had just turned twenty-five when he took up his first public office as a delegate to the Virginia provincial convention that endorsed American independence and then adopted a new constitution and an accompanying...
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James Wilson: Scottish Immigrant, Pennsylvania Statesman, Signer of the Declaration, and Framer of the Constitution
James Wilson’s impact on the founding of the United States was significant. One of only six individuals to sign both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, he helped create the nation and its enduring institutions....
Judith Sargent Murray and the Declaration of Independence
Judith Stevens (as she was then) was just twenty-five years old when a group of men in Philadelphia boldly declared the American colonies’ independence from England. Insisting that all men were created equal, and claiming that all...
Labor Day: From Protest to Picnics
In the 1880s a surge in growth of the American labor movement led to the creation of two workers’ holidays, Labor Day and May Day. May Day soon spread abroad, as European unions and socialist groups adopted it as an occasion to...
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Lincoln and Whitman
The relationship between Walt Whitman and Abraham Lincoln has long been the stuff of legend. According to one report, in 1857 Lincoln in his Springfield law office picked up a copy of Whitman’s poetry volume Leaves of Grass , began...
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Lincoln at Cooper Union
In March 1860, just a few weeks after returning home from his triumphant visit to New York to deliver his Cooper Union address, Lincoln went on the road yet again. He traveled up from Springfield, Illinois, to Chicago to complete...
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Lincoln’s Civil Religion
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...
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Lincoln’s Interpretation of the Civil War
On March 4, 1865, Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office for the second time. The setting itself reflected how much had changed in the past four years. When Lincoln delivered his First Inaugural Address, the new Capitol dome, which...
Lincoln’s Religion
"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...
Lockean Liberalism and the American Revolution
The town of Boston took an important step toward rebellion on November 20, 1772, by adopting a declaration of "the Rights of the Colonists" drafted by Sam Adams, the firebrand of the Revolution. Adams summarized these "Natural rights"...
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Making (White Male) Democracy: Suffrage Expansion in the United States from the Revolution to the Civil War
There is perhaps no theme more central to our traditional understanding of American history than the expansion of democracy. And in that long story of democratization we habitually regard as our peculiar contribution to the world,...
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Making a Film about Alexander Hamilton
A few years ago, my colleagues and I made a documentary, Alexander Hamilton , for the Public Television series American Experience . When it was completed, we did a lot of screenings, interviews, and Q&As for all kinds of...
Martha Washington Creates the Role of First Lady
During nearly forty-one years of marriage, Martha and George Washington lived together in harmony and mutual enjoyment. Never did he play the overbearing patriarch nor she the querulous nag. Theirs was a peaceful domestic partnership,...
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Mexican Farm Labor and the Agricultural Economy of the United States
In July of 1958, a Mexican man in Empalme, Mexico, died outside a recruitment center for Mexican men who wanted to participate in a guest-worker program known as the Bracero Program. The program, designed and agreed upon by both the...
Modern Women Persuading Modern Men: The Nineteenth Amendment and the Movement for Woman Suffrage, 1916–1920
Today we take women’s suffrage for granted, but many activists of the nineteenth century, including Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, struggled their whole lives for the vote, and did not live to see it. As a presidential...
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Nancy Ward, Cherokee Beloved Woman
In 1755 a Cherokee woman named Nanye’hi accompanied a war party, which included her husband Kingfisher. At Taliwa in what today is north Georgia, the Cherokees engaged the enemy Creek Indians in battle. Nanye’hi crouched behind a log...
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Natural Rights, Citizenship Rights, State Rights, and Black Rights: Another Look at Lincoln and Race
Stephen Douglas was the first in a long line of observers frustrated by the inconsistent things Abraham Lincoln had to say about racial equality. In their fifth debate, at Galesburg, Illinois, on October 7, 1858, Douglas complained...
New Zealand's Declaration of Independence
On May 5, 1833, James Busby arrived in New Zealand to take up his appointment as Britain’s Resident in the country. The role of Resident was similar to that of a diplomat—Busby had no powers to enforce British law, raise taxes, or...
Nineteenth-Century Feminist Writings
Contemporaries sometimes called the nineteenth century "The Woman’s Century." Certainly it is true that there were dramatic changes in the status and rights of women between the 1790s and 1900, foreshadowing even greater changes in...
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