Elektratig

For some reason (or no reason, I suppose), it never occurred to me that Preston Brooks actually needed that cane he brought with him when ...

A reference in Shearer Davis Bowman's At the Precipice: Americans North and South during the Secession Crisis , led me to take a look a...

A witchy illustration for your Halloween enjoyment, entitled The Little Magician & the Modern Witch of Endor (1848): Another satire on...

John Kerry once again lashes out at the hoi polloi: “It’s absurd. We’ve lost our minds. We’re in a period of know-nothingism in the country,...

I have long thought that the worst decision made in the Civil War was the first: Jefferson's Davis's directive to open fire on For...

I see that the creators of Online Schools have been kind enough to include this blog on a list of 50 Resources for Students Attending Onli...

An alert film buff spots footage showing a time traveler talking on a cell phone in 1928 . You explain it - I can't. Via The Corner ...

I still think the J.Q. Adams - Andy Jackson contest of 1828 should get the nod for the nastiest presidential election, but Reason makes...

They [Obama and Democratic congressional leaders] passed a health care bill that was the most unpopular major legislation passed by Congress...

As described in the last post, the Senate appointed the eight members of the Clayton Committee on Thursday July 13, 1848. The Committee pe...

In July 1848, the Senate was mired in contentious debate over how to organize the huge swaths of territory that the United States had acqui...

Over at Frances Hunter's American Heroes Blog, FH has an excellent post on Old Tippecanoe : Forgotten Giant: William Henry Harrison, Pa...

In A Slaveholders' Union , George William Van Cleve argues that southerners voted in favor of the Northwest Ordinance - including its ...

George William Van Cleve's A Slaveholders' Union can be maddening. By way of example, Van Cleve argues that the Northwest Ordinan...

Virtually all New Yorkers, I expect, know the name "Gowanus" via the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn. Likewise, I expect that most Ne...

I was looking at some early state constitutions the other day and noticed something in New Hampshire's constitution of January 5, 1776 ...

George William Van Cleve's A Slaveholders' Union includes an interesting discussion of English law concerning slavery leading up t...

At the beginning of his new book A Slaveholders' Union: Slavery, Politics, and the Constitution in the Early American Republic , George...