John Harris is McDonald-Boswell Assistant Professor of History at Erskine College. This interview is based on his new book, The Last Slave Ships: New York and the End of the Middle Passage (Yale University Press, 2020). JF: What led you...
anti-slavery
The Author’s Corner with Eric Herschthal
Eric Herschthal is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Utah. This interview is based on his new book The Science of Abolition: How Slaveholders Became the Enemies of Progress (Yale University Press 2021). JF: What led you to write The Science...
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...
David Barton says 19th-century Christians who used the Bible to defend slavery were “the exception, not the rule”
Watch: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Osdm3oaBbJI&w=560&h=315] There are a lot of historical problems with this video, but the one of the most overt problems is Barton’s claim that most 19th-century Americans were abolitionists. Apparently Barton believes that those who used the Bible to...
What an anti-slavery newspaper said about white Jesus
Remember a couple of weeks ago when court evangelical Eric Metaxas said Jesus was white? Me too. Here is Peter Manseau, the curator of religion at the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History: H. Ford Douglas — born into slavery, escaped...
Who freed the slaves?
Princeton historian Matt Karp talks with Jacobin magazine’s Megan Day and Micah Uetricht about his recent Catalyst essay, “The Mass Politics of Anti-Slavery.” This is a wide-ranging discussion about abolitionism, Karl Marx, Abraham Lincoln, the Republican Party of the 1850s, and contemporary politics....
Tuesday night court evangelical roundup
What have Trump’s evangelicals been saying since our last update? Rudy Giuliani shares a tweet from a spokesperson for Liberty University’s Falkirk Center. Notice how Giuliani uses Jenna Ellis’s tweet of Psalm 27 to make a political statement. When he says “we all...
Tuesday night court evangelical roundup
What have Trump’s evangelicals been saying since yesterday’s update? Franklin Graham is on the stump for Trump. This is from his Facebook page : In the last presidential election in 2016, I reminded people across the country that the election was not about...
How the history of white evangelical racism has led to Donald Trump’s election and continues to shape support for his presidency
I begin with a caveat. This post is not implying that all white evangelicals are or have been racist. Many white evangelicals have been anti-racist and have fought hard to curb systemic racism in American life. But, as I argued...
The Author’s Corner with Michael E. Woods
Michael E. Woods is currently Associate Professor of History at Marshall University. Starting in August 2020, he will be Associate Professor of History and Director/Editor of the Papers of Andrew Jackson at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. This interview is...
The Author’s Corner with Ryan McIlhenny
Ryan C. McIlhenny is an independent scholar living and working in Shanghai, China. This interview is based on his new book, To Preach Deliverance to the Captives: Freedom and Slavery in the Protestant Mind of George Bourne, 1780–1845 (LSU Press, 2020)....
Five New Digitized Manuscript Collections at the William L. Clements Library
They are: African American History Collection, 1729-1966 (bulk 1781-1865) at: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/a/africanamer/ Lydia Maria Child Papers, 1831-1894 at: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/child/ Fort Wayne Indian Agency Collection, 1801-1815 at: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/f/fortwayne/ Henry James Family Correspondence, 1855-1865 (bulk 1859-1865) at: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jameshenry/ Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society Papers, 1848-1868 at: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/r/rochester/...
Some Thoughts on the Opposition to the 1619 Project
We introduced readers to The New York Times 1619 Project in this post. It now looks like there are some people who do not like the newspaper’s attempt to observe the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. Here are a few...
Thoughts on Michael Gerson’s “The Last Temptation”: Part 2
Read Part 1 of this series here. Read Gerson’s Atlantic piece here. Anyone who reads my work knows that I am a big fan of George Marsden‘s essay “Human Depravity: A Neglected Explanatory Category” in Wilfred McClay’s ed., Figures in the Carpet: Finding...
Happy Birthday Frederick Douglass
Today marks 200th anniversary of the birth of slave-turned-abolitionist Frederick Douglass. On his birthday I want to call your attention (HT: Library of America) to Douglass’s April 1865 address to the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in Boston. Here is a taste...
Help Transcribe Anti-Slavery Documents at the Boston Public Library
Learn more here....
Another Court Evangelical Doubles Down on Trump’s Charlottesville Remarks
Over at the Federalist, a writer named Daniel Payne has a piece titled “Trump Spoke Truth About ‘Both Sides’ In Charlottesville, And The Media Lost Their Minds.” As the title suggests, this piece defends Trump’s remarks on Tuesday and seems...
Trump’s War on the Press in Historical Context
Over at “Made by History,” a history blog at The Washington Post, University of Alabama history professor Joshua Rothman offers some historical context for the Trump administration’s attacks on the news media. Here is a taste: Accused of being purveyors of...
“The Impending Crisis”
Over at Time, National Book Award winner and historian Ibram X. Kendi introduces us to Hinton Rowan Helper, the author of The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It (1857). Kendi compares the influence of Helper’s book to Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Here...
Romans 13 in American History
I wrote a little bit about Romans 13 and the American Revolution in Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?: A Historical Introduction. Over at The Anxious Bench, Chris Gehrz notes that this New Testament passage was also used frequently in...