Sinha also greatly enlarges the temporal boundaries students are accustomed to (1865 to 1877), by covering the end of the nineteenth century—including labor reform movements, the subjugation of Native American tribes in the West, and the rise of American imperialism—into the Progressive era with the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment.

Happy New Year!

One of the most persistent myths in American history is the idea that the election of Andrew Jackson in 1828 […]

Well, of course he was. American historical narratives have always told us so, and recent prize-winning tomes that agree on […]

Every recent presidential election cycle, about the time a campaign goes negative, newspapers run a story like the one in the […]

Myths about early American politics certainly abound, but different ones operate in different quarters of the culture.

: Graphics in Nineteenth-Century America”

Cartoonists manipulated the meaning of the revolution metaphor for their own mischievous designs.

WERE EARLY AMERICAN ELECTIONS FOR WHITE MEN ONLY?

Presented as part of the special Politics Issue

Whatever the first amendment may say about the separation of church and state, religion has had a place in American politics, for better or worse, since the very founding of the nation.

: Graphics in Nineteenth-Century America”

Several cartoons from the presidential campaign of 1848 show Salt River as a foreboding obstacle for all who seek the nation’s highest office.

“Impracticable the electoral college surely is. And it is precisely because of its improbable construction that today’s electoral college remains one of the least altered institutions established by the Constitution of 1787. . .”

2016 will mark not just the election of the forty-fifth president of the United States, but also the 200th anniversary of the creation of the first ever lobbying agency in the national capital, an agency that was founded by a Delaware factory manager named Isaac Briggs.

When the ballots were certified on January 13, 1842, the people of Rhode Island found themselves with two constitutions.

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.

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

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

Across the pantheon of presidential elections in early America, few have stressed the themes of sex and gender so spicily as the heated contest of 1856. It was a year of many firsts.

As I read this book in the midst of yet another presidential election cycle, it was nearly impossible not to find strong parallels between these figures and our own presidential candidates.

Indiana’s Infidel Congressman Locals refer to southwestern Indiana as “The Pocket,” but politicians know this region by a more ominous […]

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We ought to be asking ourselves what kind of democracy we want and what kind of democracy a particular leader or movement is offering.

For Brooks, antebellum political abolitionists—not the Populists, not the Progressives—deserve to be remembered as “the most important third-party movement in American history.”

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[The County Election] also parodies the men in the crowd, who are divided…by the moral valence of their characters…

In an election year where claims to transparency seem deeply opaque, Foutch recalls the moment when the way to save democracy was clear as glass.

Almost every child in the United States learns who John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, and Andrew Jackson […]

It is fair to say that had the election in Virginia’s Fifth District gone the other way, the nation’s early political history would have been considerably altered.

“As matters now stand,” he sadly concluded, “there is a United North against a United South, and both marching to the field of blood.”

More than two centuries into our national experiment, it is still a vexing question: What is popular sovereignty? Who are […]

U.S. citizenship and suffrage have not always been two sides of the American coin. . . . the voters who elected presidents from George Washington to Abraham Lincoln included many thousands who were not United States citizens.

Presented as part of the special Politics Issue

The disputed result of the 2000 election brought questions of materiality and meaning, which are frequently studied in academic settings, to the streets and the courts.

Common-place injects a new issue into the political campaign as the 2016 presidential race enters its final stage.

May 27, 2008 Are You Smarter Than an Eighth Grader? No, you’re not. Here are the questions Isaac had to […]

Historians, find the pattern Assuming there is one, besides electoral fear. Any thoughts? Any other maps this resembles?   September […]

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Before the secret ballot became the national standard, election ballots were a vivid genre of print ephemera.

April 28, 2008 End-of-the-semester blues Travel and end-of-the-semester workload issues have kept me off of here a little longer than […]

We learn how, when, and where High Federalism began to alienate Americans with its disturbing encroachments on the most basic forms of democracy and dissent.

My students and I had fun discussing political geography today.  For instance, take a look at these two maps side […]

Presented as part of the special Politics Issue

The emphasis of our special issue is two-fold: scholarly perspectives on political phenomena that connect the early American republic with the present, on the one hand; on the other […] an expansion of readers’ definition of what counts as “political history.”

March 31, 2008 Barack Obama, Glenn Loury, and the American Historical Narrative Over at TPM Cafe, former black conservative Glenn […]

February 29, 2008 Seems Like Old Times, I: Nationalizing the state militias One of the features I have planned for […]

    <<One of many glamorous moments of the 1988 Al Gore campaign that I did not see. Scene of […]

Presented as part of the special Politics Issue

The layout of a voting machine harbors implications about meaning, about what is and what is important, and therefore harbors politics in its broadest sense.

October 2008

I have long thought that now-President Obama’s reputation as an orator was little inflated, more by a media and public […]

July 29, 2008 Tennessee church shooter targets conservative historical fiction It appears that the angry white guy who shot up […]

August 29, 2008 Vice Grip . . . on the media’s imagination, blogosphere included. Finally, we come to the sense-shattering […]

The 1824 Presidential Election  is one of the most well remembered, primarily because it is the only election ever forced into the House of Representatives because no candidate succeeded in getting a majority of electoral votes (different from the 1800 Presidential Election in which two candidates got a majority, thus forcing the passing of the 12th Amendment).

January 31, 2008 Goody Bags Bad The eloquently nasty James Wolcott made a sharp comment on the historical contribution to […]

This page presents some of the same links that appear on my original home page, along with some new ones, […]

Things have not been as active as they might have been around here because we are busy are completing what […]

Hillary Clinton’s opponents really need to hold her to her claims about her experience, and make sure she owns up […]

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