The Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on January 1, 1863. It was an executive order stating that all enslaved people in the rebellious states were free and would be recognized and maintained as such by the Union government. Here is […]
19th century America
The Author’s Corner with Aaron W. Marrs
Aaron W. Marrs is on the staff of the Office of the Historian at the U.S. Department of State. This interview is based on his new book, The American Transportation Revolution: A Social and Cultural History (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024). […]
Santa Claus and America grew up together
Here is a taste of Ben Railton‘s piece at The Saturday Evening Post: “How Santa Claus and America Evolved Together Across the 19th Century”: While Santa Claus did not originate in the U.S., his story and image significantly evolved across […]
“A magazine about America in the form of a 19th-century newspaper”
I just learned about County Highway. It’s a “magazine about America in the form of a 19th century newspaper. According to the site’s website: County Highway is a 20-page broadsheet produced by actual human beings, containing the best new writing […]
The Author’s Corner with Kevin Kenny
Kevin Kenny is Professor of History and Glucksman Professor in Irish Studies at New York University. This interview is based on his new book, The Problem of Immigration in a Slaveholding Republic: Policing Mobility in the Nineteenth-Century United States (Oxford […]
The Author’s Corner with Elliott West
Elliott West is History Consultant at the University of Arkansas. This interview is based on his new book, Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion (University of Nebraska Press, 2023). JF: What led you to write Continental […]
The Author’s Corner with Leslie M. Alexander
Leslie M. Alexander is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of History at Rutgers University. This interview is based on her new book, Fear of a Black Republic: Haiti and the Birth of Black Internationalism in the United States (University […]
Historian Joanne Freeman on the near scuffle between Mike Rogers and Matt Gaetz
Here is part of what I wrote last night after the fourteenth ballot for Speaker of the House: Before the end of the vote, McCarthy had to walk up the aisle to talk to Matt Gaetz to try to get […]
The Author’s Corner with Janet Moore Lindman
Janet Moore Lindman is Professor of History and Chair of the History Department at Rowan University. This interview is based on her new book, A Vivifying Spirit: Quaker Practice and Reform in Antebellum America (Penn State University Press, 2022). JF: […]
The Author’s Corner with Elizabeth Leonard
Elizabeth Leonard is Gibson Professor of History, Emerita at Colby College. This interview is based on her new book, Benjamin Franklin Butler: A Noisy, Fearless Life (The University of North Carolina Press, 2022). JF: What led you to write Benjamin Franklin […]
The Author’s Corner with Sarah Purcell
Sarah Purcell is L.F. Parker Professor of History at Grinnell College. This interview is based on her new book, Spectacle of Grief: Public Funerals and Memory in the Civil War Era (University of North Carolina Press, 2022). JF: What led […]
How members of Congress used violence to silence their political adversaries
Joan E. Greve of The Guardian interviews Yale historian Joanne Freeman about violence in Congress. If any of my U.S. history survey students are reading this post, this is what we talked about in class yesterday. Here is a taste […]
The Author’s Corner with David Henkin
David Henkin is Professor of History at UC Berkeley. This interview is based on his new book, The Week: A History of the Unnatural Rhythms That Made Us Who We Are (Yale University Press, 2021). JF: What led you to […]
The ever-usable John Brown
Here is Yale graduate student Bennett Parten at History Today: …John Brown became an American sensation, a source of both fear and enchantment. Slaveholders reviled him; abolitionists wept for him, tolled bells in his honour and came to see him […]