The Truth About Sojourner Truth
In 1828, a former slave named Isabella van Wagenen took her owner to court on the charge that he had illegally sold her five-year-old son out of state. Isabella herself had only been legally free for...
View Article12 Years A Slave After America’s “Racial Reckoning”
This year marks the ten-year anniversary of the release of 12 Years a Slave, the “triumphant” Steve McQueen film that swept the Oscars with both critical and public acclaim. Yet 2023 also marks...
View ArticleUnderstanding Lincoln’s Cardinal Principles
Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth president of the United States, the man who led the nation through the horrors of civil war, signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and advocated for the ratification of...
View ArticleThe Cultural Pessimism of 1619
There is a lot of talk in the U.S. today about “cultural pessimism.” Such talk may or may not capture the overall mood of the country, but there are certainly lots of things about the state of...
View ArticleThe Legacy of Slavery is Not Simply Black and White
It would seem impossible for Yale University’s Henry Louis Gates Jr. to surpass his The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross explaining U.S. slavery but he approaches doing so in his documentary...
View ArticleIs History for Sale?
American history is under siege. Howard Zinn’s tendentious tract, A People’s History of the United States, is widely used in the nation’s high schools, now supplemented by the equally mendacious 1619...
View ArticleGeorge Washington as Entrepreneur
My journey into a greater understanding of George Washington and his business enterprises came shortly after Mount Vernon rebuilt some of those enterprises such as the whiskey distillery and the...
View ArticleWhat Did the Three-Fifths Clause Really Mean?
The Constitution’s Three-Fifths Compromise, which counted three-fifths of a state’s slave population for purposes of taxation and the apportionment of representatives and presidential electors, was...
View ArticleThe Enduring Psychology of Slavery
Slavery is in the news and on our minds. Any historical figure who participated in the slave economy must be roundly excoriated, condemned, and consigned to oblivion. If such a person happens to be...
View Article“Contextualizing” Jefferson
The University of Virginia Board of Visitors has decided to add “context” to the statue of Thomas Jefferson near the University Rotunda. Their decision comes on the heels of a similar decision by a...
View ArticleHopelessness in the New History
In May, Law & Liberty ran a forum debate on the nature of modern socialist thought. Prominent among the criticisms raised are points applicable to current leftist ideology overall: its...
View ArticleAssessing the 1619 Project: A Law & Liberty Symposium
In a recent meeting addressing the staff of the New York Times, the paper’s executive editor Dean Baquet announced that the Gray Lady’s new editorial direction for 2019 would include an effort to...
View ArticleReclaiming 1619
Editor’s Note: This essay is part of a Law & Liberty symposium on the 1619 Project. For several years now, I’ve devoted substantial attention in my introductory university classes on “America to...
View ArticleAmerica’s Exceptional Guilt
Editor’s Note: This essay is part of a Law & Liberty symposium on the 1619 Project. In framing America’s national history as pro-slavery to its core, the Times follows, and intensifies, the...
View ArticleThe New York Times Resurrects the Positive Good Slavery Argument
Editor’s Note: This essay is part of a Law & Liberty symposium on the 1619 Project. One hundred and sixty years ago citizens in the United States (or, at least as many as sufficed) rightly...
View ArticleFrederick Douglass’s “Plea for Freedom of Speech in Boston”
Introduction by Kurt Lash On December 3, 1860, a group of abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass, gathered at a public meeting hall in Boston, Massachusetts, to discuss “How Can American Slavery...
View ArticleIn Empire’s Wake
The totally disinterested historian who is curious about the past only for its own sake and has no axe to grind, no ideological preconceptions to reinforce by the use of selective evidence, and no...
View ArticleGordon Wood’s Reflections on the Constitution and Slavery
At Northwestern University Law School’s Lincoln Lecture, endowed by my colleague Steve Calabresi, we had the great good fortune to hear a talk by Gordon Wood, the leading historian of the early...
View ArticleThomas Jefferson’s Legacy
The problem with “popular” history is that it often becomes mired in conventional narratives and familiar tropes. For example, Thomas Jefferson is most commonly remembered as the author of the...
View ArticleThe Constitution: A Pro-Slavery or Anti-Slavery Document?
Almost from the moment Christopher Columbus made landfall in the New World, European minds began turning toward slavery. “It appeared to me that these people were very poor in everything,” Columbus...
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