Elektratig

I’m about half way through John C. Waugh’s On the Brink of Civil War: The Compromise of 1850 and How It Changed the Course of American Histo...

In the fall of 1846, New Yorkers would vote for governor, lieutenant governor and congressmen, in addition to state legislators. Anti-Rente...

Most standard accounts of the Free Soil movement date the birth of the Free Soil Party to the Buffalo Convention held in August 1848. The W...

"The cat's striking appearance is normal, for him."

Although I read The Corner regularly, somehow I missed this recent entry by Allen C. Guelzo. In just a few words, Guelzo says something i...

Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution authorizes Congress to "establish . . . uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies thro...

In my last post , I reviewed a speech that David Wilmot delivered on the tariff in July 1846. This post continues and concludes that review...

I’ve suggested before that David Wilmot seems to be a ghost. In most narratives he appears out of nowhere, tosses his famous Proviso like...

You probably know about the Sedition Act of 1798 , which expired in 1801. Did you know the Federalists attempted to enact a sequel in 1801 ...

Sorry. I know David Blight is an icon, but I've got to get this off my chest. I've listened to the first two of Professor Blight...

A recent post by Jonathan Adler Zywicki at Volokh reminded me that I never recommended Todd J. Zywicki's excellent articles on the Seve...

Having posted several quibbles concerning minor inaccuracies and inconsistencies in Jonathan H. Earle’s Jacksonian Antislavery and the Polit...

These two articles look interesting: Seth Barrett Tillman, The Puzzle of Hamilton's Federalist No. 77: It Turns out that Hamilton was Ri...

At Wig-Wags , Rene Tyree has a fantastic tip on a site called Academic Earth , which has downloadable lectures by leading academics. Since...

I was struck by this observation by Jonathan H. Earle : Without the lifeblood of constant agitation to nourish its ranks, the Free Soil move...

An article in Slate entitled Lincoln's Laws of War has generated some interesting commentary by Volokh conspirators Eric Posner and Il...

In honor of Presidents' Day, National Review has solicited fourteen commentators to identify their favorite presidents and briefly expl...

In a recent post , I included a map identifying David Wilmot's congressional district as covering the three counties in white above. I ...

In the the latter half of the 1840s, a United States Congressman (Senator or Representative) took the floor of his chamber and delivered an ...