Could we assume that this lowly agent of a midsize flour dealer on the lower Delaware was behaving like Jay Gould a hundred years later?

Rice revolutionized life in Carolina, making the colony the richest in British North America. South Carolina also became home to the American mainland’s most brutal slave regime.

There was only one source of value in coin, Locke was saying, and that was its silver content.

Jefferson used the library he sold to Congress as a self-fashioning project to shape his legacy and the way he wished to be viewed by posterity.

When it came to women being federal employees, Jefferson could not see the light for the lighthouse.

Brothel guides’ positive descriptions of well-behaved, mannered, self-conscious brothelgoers suggested that if such genteel, respectable men allowed themselves to enjoy the sexual pleasures for sale in American cities, then why couldn’t the reader himself?

Nineteenth-century Americans abandoned the traditional English phrasing of “standing” for election and begin to describe candidates who “run” for office. The race was on.

“[N]o matter how progressive, or how much it seemed to reflect a vibrant spirit of competition, of Darwinian triumph and bootstrap optimism, boxing still suffered from an image problem.”

Presented as part of the special Politics Issue

Early northern black church voting may be the missing link in our understanding of black political consciousness and civic mindedness.

Presented as part of the special Politics Issue

There were far more Democrats in the 1850s who still supported the antiquated honor code that justified dueling than there were Whigs.