“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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 ArticleThe 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...
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