Here is the Columbia University historian on how to think historically about 17th-century Virginia:
slavery
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 Sharon Ann Murphy
Sharon Ann Murphy is Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History and Classics at Providence College. This interview is based on her new book, Banking on Slavery: Financing Southern Expansion in the Antebellum United States (University of Chicago […]
The Author’s Corner with Carl T. Bogus
Carl T. Bogus is Professor of Law Emeritus at Roger Williams University. This interview is based on his new book, Madison’s Militia: The Hidden History of the Second Amendment (Oxford University Press, 2023). JF: What led you to write Madison’s […]
The Author’s Corner with Leslie A. Schwalm
Leslie A. Schwalm is Professor Emeritus of History and Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Iowa. This interview is based on her new book, Medicine, Science, and Making Race in Civil War America (University of North Carolina […]
The Author’s Corner with Kimberly R. Kellison
Kimberly R. Kellison is Associate Professor of History & Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Baylor University. This interview is based on her new book, Forging a Christian Order: South Carolina Baptists, Race, and Slavery, 1696–1860 […]
David Waldstreicher brings his “blunt intellectual style” to a biography of Phillis Wheatley
Here is Jennifer Schuessler at The New York Times: Around 1772, Phillis Wheatley, an enslaved teenager in Boston, sat down to write a poem called “On Being Brought from Africa to America,” which began with praise for the “mercy” that […]
The Author’s Corner with Kathleen M. Brown
Kathleen M. Brown is David Boies Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. This interview is based on her new book, Undoing Slavery: Bodies, Race, and Rights in the Age of Abolition (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023). JF: What […]
Episode 109: “The Voice and Faith of Sojourner Truth”
In this episode we talk with historian and biographer Nancy Koester about her new book on nineteenth-century abolitionist and women’s rights advocate Sojourner Truth. Our discussion focuses on Truth’s lifelong pursuit of a just society, a deeper knowledge of God, and […]
Should Princeton University remove its statue of former College of New Jersey president John Witherspoon?
I’ve spent a little time studying Princeton University’s history over the years. My first book was on a Witherspoon student who studied at Princeton (then the College of New Jersey) between 1770 and 1772. My second book covered Witherspoon’s role […]
The Author’s Corner with John Rodrigue
John Rodrigue is Lawrence and Theresa Salameno Professor in the Department of History at Stonehill College. This interview is based on his new book, Freedom’s Crescent: The Civil War and the Destruction of Slavery in the Lower Mississippi Valley (Cambridge […]
Goodbye Roger Taney
Earlier this week my U.S. history survey students answered a final exam essay question on the short-term causes of the American Civil War. I haven’t graded their essays yet, but if their blue books do not contain something about Roger […]
On the slaveholder Jonathan Edwards and the Christians who read him
This past weekend a couple of folks called my attention to tweets from Joash Thomas. According to his Twitter bio, he is the National Director of Mobilization & Advocacy for the International Justice Mission (IJM) of Canada. I have great […]
The Author’s Corner with Elliott Drago
Elliott Drago is Editorial Officer of the Jack Miller Center. This interview is based on his new book, Street Diplomacy: The Politics of Slavery and Freedom in Philadelphia, 1820-1850 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022). JF: What led you to write Street […]
William Tecumseh Sherman: emancipator of the enslaved
Here is historian Bennett Parten at Zocalo Public Square: Americans get Sherman’s March all wrong. Ask anyone who’s seen Gone with the Wind, and they’ll tell you that U.S. General William T. Sherman’s roughly 250-mile march from Atlanta to Savannah marked […]
One of the last children of enslaved Americans dies at 90
His name was Daniel R. Smith. Here is Harrison Smith at The Washington Post: Growing up in the 1930s, Daniel R. Smith would listen to stories from his father, as young boys often do. He was not supposed to hear […]
The Author’s Corner with Patrick Luck
Patrick Luck is Assistant Professor of History at Florida Polytechnic University. This interview is based on his new book, Replanting a Slave Society: The Sugar and Cotton Revolutions in the Lower Mississippi Valley (University of Virginia Press, 2022). JF: What […]
William & Mary’s monument to the enslaved
More and more colleges and universities are coming to grips with their connections to slavery. Here is historian Jody Lynn Allen at Perspectives on History: In the 1930s, William & Mary (W&M) constructed a four-foot brick wall around the oldest […]
Slavery was the cause of the American Civil War
Most historians agree with the title of this post. So do many Americans. But there are others who still claim that the Civil War was about something other than slavery. Watch: Yesterday I showed this video to my Civil War […]
The Author’s Corner with Jane Hooper
Jane Hooper is Associate Professor of History and Director of Undergraduate History Programs at George Mason University. This interview is based on her new book, Yankees in the Indian Ocean: American Commerce and Whaling, 1786–1860 (Ohio University Press, 2022). JF: […]