Missouri Compromise of 1820: Annotated
The “compromise” attempted to answer the question of whether the Missouri territory would be admitted to the Union as a “slave” or “free” state.
The Power of Pamphlets in the Anti-Slavery Movement
Black-authored print was central to James G. Birney’s conversion from enslaver to abolitionist and presidential candidate.
Does Adultery Justify Murder?
There’s a popular (mis)perception that, prior to the rise of modern legal systems, a husband was considered justified in killing a straying wife.
Searching for Home in Hmong American Writing
Two significant poetry anthologies deterritorialize home, showing that for Hmong Americans, home can be a process of moving and running despite living in a place.
Birth of the Corporate Person
The defining of corporations as legal “persons” entitled to Fourteenth Amendment rights got a leg up from the fight over a California anti-Chinese immigrant law.
A Cold War Baby: Happy Birthday, Alvin!
The submersible Alvin is sixty years old this year. Numerous overhauls and upgrades have kept the craft going down (and coming back up!).
The Annotated Oppenheimer
Celebrated and damned as the “father of the atomic bomb,” theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer lived a complicated scientific and political life.
Using False Claims to Justify War
Hardly the recent innovation it’s frequently mistakened to be, deception as a path to war has been used by American presidents since the 1800s.
A Flood of Tourism in Johnstown
Days after a failed dam led to the drowning deaths of more than 2,200 people, the Pennsylvania industrial town was flooded again—with tourists.
Two William McKinley Autopsies
The 1901 assassination of US President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo revealed the abysmal state of race relations in America.