C-SPAN asked scholars to rank the presidents in terms of public persuasion, crisis leadership, economic management, moral authority, international relations, administrative skills, relations with Congress, vision, the pursuit of justice, and “performance within the context of the times.” The list […]
Abraham Lincoln
San Francisco school board will not rename schools
Some of you may remember our posts earlier this year about the San Francisco school board’s decision to rename forty-four schools that honor historical figures such as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It now appears the board […]
Good Friday, American style
Over at First Things, Raymond J. de Souza offers a brief history of Good Friday in the United States. Here is a taste: In most Christian-majority countries, Good Friday is a federal holiday—but not in the United States, even though […]
A socialist defense of Abraham Lincoln monuments in Chicago
The city of Chicago recently launched a group called The Chicago Monuments Project. Here is the project’s mission statement: The Chicago Monuments Project intends to grapple with the often unacknowledged – or forgotten – history associated with the City’s various municipal […]
Historian Allen Guelzo featured at the Princeton University alumni magazine
Deborah Yaffe just published a great feature on American historian Allen Guelzo, Director of the Initiative on Politics and Statesmanship at Princeton’s James Madison Program. The piece, published at the Princeton University alumni magazine, covers Guelzo’s role in the rollout […]
Putting the January 6, 2021 insurrection in historical context
Catherine Halley of JSTOR Daily offers some great resources. Here is a taste of her January 7 piece: Yesterday our friends who teach sixth grade were asking: how do I talk to my students about the insurrection that just happened […]
The Author’s Corner with Andrew Lang
Andrew Lang is Associate Professor of History and Graduate Coordinator at Mississippi State University. This interview is based on his new book, A Contest of Civilizations: Exposing the Crisis of American Exceptionalism in the Civil War Era (The University of […]
OK, I’ll play the Bernie Sanders meme game
HT: Nate McAlister
Like Biden, Abraham Lincoln also faced the potential of violence on Inauguration Day
Here is historian Ted Widmer at The Washington Post: Washington had been unusually angry in the weeks preceding Inauguration Day. Seven states had already left the Union; a mob had tried to attack the Capitol on the day Congress met […]
Mike Pence quotes Ecclesiastes; says it is time for the nation to heal
Last night the House of Representatives asked Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment. He refused to do it. Here is the letter he sent to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi: The next to last paragraph caught my attention. […]
Thoughts on Biden’s speech tonight
This morning Joe Biden became the president-elect. Tonight he celebrated. Kamala Harris spoke first and then introduced Biden. I live-tweeted: Harris began with John Lewis. Who is John Lewis? Get up to speed with these posts. Harris gave a shoutout […]
The 1860 election led to Civil War, but it was decided fairly
Here is historian Ted Widmer at The New York Times: On Nov. 6, Lincoln was duly elected. But his percentage of the popular vote was very small (39.8 percent) — below even Herbert Hoover’s in 1932, when Hoover lost in […]
Did Abraham Lincoln infect his valet with smallpox?
Trump may not be the only president to spread a deadly disease. Here is Michael Rosenwald at The Washington Post: On his way home from delivering the Gettysburg Address in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln was overcome by a splitting headache. […]
Biden at Gettysburg
Joe Biden was in Gettysburg on Monday and he gave a pretty good speech. Watch: Let’s remember again that Lincoln’s call for unity and healing and the binding of wounds came after the Confederacy was all but defeated. Biden is […]
“I hope this person believes this. Some days I am not even sure I do.”
Like most people, I sat down early Tuesday evening, November 8, 2016, to watch election returns fully expecting that, by the time I went to bed, Hillary Clinton would be declared the country’s first female president. Instead, I saw my […]
We deserved last night’s debate. We didn’t deserve last night’s debate.
Last night the nation got the debate it deserved. Last night a nation suffering through coronavirus deserved better. I think both of these things can be true at the same time. The first 2020 presidential debate was a disaster. It […]
How Abraham Lincoln challenged the power of the Supreme Court
How did Abraham Lincoln challenged a Supreme Court dominated by pro-slavery ideologues? Princeton historian Matthew Karp answers this question in his latest piece at Jacobin. Here is a taste: Across the late 1850s, Lincoln argued that “the American people,” not the Supreme […]
What if Trump refuses to give up power?
Clarkson University political scientist Alexander Cohen says that “American democracy will survive” if Trump decides to contest the election of 2020. He points to five previous contested elections: 1800, 1824, 1876, 1960, and 2000. In all five cases, democracy survived. […]
GOP Convention: Night 3
Yesterday was my first day of face-to-face teaching since March. I am not yet in “classroom shape,” so I was exhausted by the end of the day. Mentally, I was still reeling from multiple technology failures (mostly due to my […]
When the United States held elections in the middle of a Civil War
As historian Calvin Schermerhorn writes, the “1864 elections went on during the Civil War–even though Lincoln thought it would be a disaster for himself and the Republican Party. Here is a taste of his piece at The Conversation: The outlook […]