Damian Pargas is Professor of the History and Culture of North America at Leiden University. This interview is based on his new book, Freedom Seekers: Fugitive Slaves in North America, 1800–1860 (Cambridge University Press, 2021). JF: What led you to...
freedom
Tomasky: The Right’s view of liberty during this pandemic is “incompatible with human life”
Michael Tomasky is the editor of The New Republic. Here is a taste of his piece, “The Right Wants to Freedom Us to Death”: Future historians—that is, if future historians are actual historians and not a bunch of hired-gun fascist...
Is this what Ronald Reagan meant by a “shining city on a hill”?
Today as I read New York Times writer Jamelle Bouie’s recent column on vaccines, I was struck by these words. Is it any surprise that millions of Americans treat this fundamentally social problem — how do we vaccinate enough people...
The United States of America: Are we reaping what we’ve sown?
Don’t mess with the rights of Americans. We are individuals. We are free. Mask and vaccine mandates are tyrannical. They are un-American. Don’t people know that the Bill of Rights is divinely inspired? I am not convinced that the kind...
The CPAC vocabulary. Defining terms.
I am teaching the American Revolution this semester. The other day, as we were reading and interpreting some primary documents, I asked the students to notice how the writers of these documents all seemed to use a similar political language....
Pope Francis’s scathing critique of American life
Yesterday at The New York Times, Pope Francis published an excerpt of his new book Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future. He offers a devastating critique of the selfishness that we Americans try to pass off as...
Wednesday night court evangelical roundup
What have Trump’s evangelicals been saying since our last update? It looks likes COVID-19 was present at Robert Jeffress’s Sunday morning political rally at First Baptist-Dallas. Newt Gingrich is on the Eric Metaxas Show today talking about his new book Trump and the American...
“Said No American Soldier Ever”
The title of this post comes from my friend Phil Levy:...
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...
American Slavery and American Freedom at Princeton University
As some of you know, I was at Princeton University last week for the Gilder-Lehrman Institute of American History summer seminar on colonial America. Each year the teachers take a tour of colonial-era Princeton. One of our stops is the Maclean...
Trees and American History
In American history they have represented freedom and unfreedom. Here is Stony Brook historian Jared Farmer at the Oxford University Press blog: Extralegal violence committed by white men in the name of patriotism is a founding tradition of the United...
The Author’s Corner with Loren Schweninger
Loren Schweninger is Professor Emeritus of History at UNC Greensboro. This interview is based on his new book Appealing for Liberty: Freedom Suits in the South (Oxford University Press, 2018). JF: What led you to write Appealing for Liberty? LS: For many years I have been interested...
Jefferson, Secession, and Monuments
Last night on CNN, host James Lemon had African-American public intellectual Michael Eric Dyson on his program. Lemon asked Dyson to respond to the comments Donald Trump made yesterday about historical monuments. Trump said: So this week, it is Robert...
Is Freedom a Biblical Concept?
Earlier today I posted a piece from Rod Dreher’s blog about patriotic worship. At the end of the piece I was struck by Dreher’s “update” in which he published a message he received from one of his readers. Here it...
“Of thee I sing”
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJA1QRND3aw&w=560&h=315]...
National Endowment for Humanities Funds Courses on "Enduring Questions"
Donald Trump’s current budget proposal will eliminate government funding for the humanities. This means that local communities and American citizens will need to come up with other ways to fund programs like this: In 2016, the National Endowment for the...
Quote of the Day
“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” -Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus”...
Benjamin Carp on Edmund Morgan's "Slavery and Freedom"
As some of you may recall, Edmund Morgan’s 1972 Journal of American History article “Slavery and Freedom” won the 2016 Junto Blog “March Madness” tournament for the best journal article in early American history. Over at Process: A Blog for American History...