Power and the Proviso
To the considerable annoyance of President James K. Polk, in 1846 a freshman Pennsylvania House Democrat named David Wilmot introduced
The 'Lords of the Loom' Try to Hold the Union Together
In December 1860, panic began to ensue in industrial Massachusetts as trade between the North and the South ground to
Mythologizing Lincoln, Then and Now
Although both the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and the Illinois state constitution prohibited slavery, that didn't stop some
Montgomery's "Conversational Parliament" Reveals Confederate Divisions Off the Bat
Jefferson Davis was elected Confederate president in 1861 even though said he'd prefer a military assignment. Other Southern
North British Origins of Backcountry Violence
When Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina beat abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts senseless with his cane, banker and
Southerners Warily Follow a Copperhead's Moves
Historian Frank L. Klement wrote The Limits of Dissent: Clement L. Vallandigham and the Civil War during the Vietnam War,
'Negrophobia' in the Antebellum North
Historian C. Vann Woodward wrote in his classic book The Strange Career of Jim Crow that one "of the
Why the Confederates Banned the African Slave Trade
One of the more counterintuitive features of the Confederate Constitution is that, unlike the original U.S. Consitution, it enshrined
Do Wars Settle Constitutional Questions?
So far we've been looking at Southern fire-eaters like Edmund Ruffin and Robert Barnwell Rhett – and their fiery
Britain's Near-Intervention in the American Civil War
One of the most intriguing "what ifs" of the Civil War concerns how differently things might have gone
