Determining America’s National Myth Will Determine the Country’s Fate

The Ethno-Nationalist Vision of the United States Will Not Just ‘Slink Off Into the Night’

Alexander Hamilton had no illusions about what would happen to Americans if the United States collapsed.

If the newly drafted Constitution wasn’t ratified, he warned in Federalist No. 8, a “War between the States,” fought by irregular armies across unfortified borders, was imminent. Large states would overrun small ones. “Plunder and devastation” would march across the landscape, reducing the citizenry to “a state of continual danger” that would nourish authoritarian, militarized institutions.

“If we should be disunited, and the integral parts should either remain separated, or … thrown together into two …

The Amazing Life of America’s First Full-Time Black Activist | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

The Amazing Life of America’s First Full-Time Black Activist

David Ruggles Was a 19th-Century Renaissance Man, Visionary Political Leader, Savvy Street Fighter, and Healer    

After he escaped from slavery in Baltimore in early September 1838, Frederick Bailey was broke, homeless, and scared. As he huddled among barrels in New York City’s Chambers Street dock, …

Frederick Douglass’s Love-Hate Relationship With America

Historian David Blight Tackles the Great Abolitionist’s Contradictions and His Enduring Legacy

From his youth, as a slave growing up in antebellum Maryland, Frederick Douglass saw the double-ness of American life. He recognized the gulf between the nation’s enlightened principles and its …

Why Abolitionist Frederick Douglass Loved the Photograph

He Considered It the Most Democratic of Arts and a Crucial Aid in the Quest to End Slavery and Achieve Civil Rights

Suddenly, it seems, the camera has become a potent weapon in what many see as the beginning of a new civil rights movement. It’s become a familiar tale: Increasingly, blacks …