There was nothing inevitable about the transformation of Arlington House, a National Park Service historic site, into a Confederate shrine. In this post I share new research about the legislative history behind that transformation.
Galveston, Texas, is rightly celebrated as the birthplace of Juneteenth, the nation's newest federal holiday. But this post shares newly (re)discovered evidence about Houston's important role in the holiday's origins.
A post about why academics might want to get more involved with editing Wikipedia now and then.
Three states waited to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment until the twentieth century. This post tells the stories of why they finally ratified when they did, and considers that history in light of another amendment whose history has yet to end.
Abraham Lincoln has long been known as one of the nation's most eloquent orators. But what passage from another orator did he single out as a favorite---enough to save it in his wallet?
This post debunks one of the quotations most often attributed to Harriet Tubman on the Internet and shows that the quotation says more about those who use it than about Tubman herself.