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Articles by Eric Herschthal
The American Revolution Is Not Complete Original
It was telling that the last pop culture sensation to tackle the American Revolution—the 2015 musical Hamilton—felt that the best way to make the nation’s founding legible to modern audiences was to cast a Founding Father as a plucky immigrant. So distant was their world from ours that its creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda, seemed to think that audiences could only relate to the founding if it was retrofitted into more contemporary terms.
The American Revolution Is Not Complete
13 hours ago The author of several books, including AMERICAN CAPITALISM, A THEORY OF PRICE CONTROL, and THE GREAT CRASH, 1929, JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH is professor of economics at Harvard. He spent his boyhood on the Canadian border close to Detroit and within range of the legends which have overlaid the …
Do Liberals Need to Practice Originalism, Too?
All these debates might have been confined to law journals and classrooms were it not for the fact that we now have a Supreme Court dominated by conservatives, most of whom subscribe to some form of originalism. The response of many liberal pundits has been, as it often has, to argue that originalism is just conservative politics masquerading as history. But a few legal scholars have argued that liberals should embrace originalism themselves.
Do Liberals Need to Practice Originalism, Too?
Generate Key Takeaways Not so long ago, originalism seemed safely contained. Ascendant during the Reagan era, originalists argued that the Constitution should be interpreted according to its original meaning, but when liberals dominated the Supreme Court, not many people outside of the academy felt the need to pay much attention. Still, the academic debates were revealing.
Racism Isn’t the Only Cause of the Racial Wealth Gap
Hector Rivers Sr. was born into slavery on the Sea Islands of South Carolina, but in 1883, two decades after the Emancipation Proclamation, he was free and was able to buy what became 100 acres from his former enslaver’s widow, Susan B.V. Hay. Though he had little capital, the freed Black community where he lived pooled their meager savings to help one another buy land, and Rivers received an additional loan from Hay at 10 percent interest, which allowed him to afford the $250 farm.
What If Reconstruction Didn’t End Till 1920? Original
In the past few years, the period in American history known as Reconstruction has become increasingly prominent in the public consciousness. The dominant academic narrative is now mainstream: Immediately after the Civil War, the victorious Republican Party passed three major constitutional amendments that not only emancipated the nation’s four million enslaved people but also gave Black Americans citizenship and Black men the right to vote.
Harriet Tubman and the Most Important, Understudied Battle of the Civil War
Harriet Tubman and the Most Important, Understudied Battle of the Civil War Published February 26, 2024 On June 2, 1863, not long after midnight, 300 recently escaped slaves, all armed and with at least one woman among them, invaded a stretch of rice plantations along the Combahee River in South Carolina. When the armed Black rebels arrived, the slaveholders fled, but their enslaved workers refused to follow them.
Harriet Tubman and the Most Important, Understudied Battle of the Civil War Original
On June 2, 1863, not long after midnight, 300 recently escaped slaves, all armed and with at least one woman among them, invaded a stretch of rice plantations along the Combahee River in South Carolina. When the armed Black rebels arrived, the slaveholders fled, but their enslaved workers refused to follow them. Instead, at least 727 of them followed the rebels to nearby boats, which ushered them to a military camp, declared them free, and armed those able to fight.
Grappling With the Overthrow of Reconstruction
In 1885, 14 years after white vigilantes stormed their homestead, Hannah and Samuel Tutson, both formerly enslaved, were living in St. Johns, Florida, a small town near the state’s northeastern coast. Hannah was now in her mid-fifties, her husband, Samuel, in his mid-sixties, and two of their three children, 20-year-old S.L. and 15-year-old Mary, still lived with them.
How the Right Turned “Freedom” Into a Dogwhistle
On April 23, 1967, George C. Wallace sat for a television interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, ready toreintroduce himself to America.
A Reckoning With How Slavery Ended
In 1955, C.
The Storm Over the American Revolution
The summer of 1755 was a terrible time for George Washington. The 23-year-old Virginian slaveholder was serving as an aide to the British general of North America, Edward Braddock, in the Battle of the Monongahela. At the time, colonists like Washington still considered themselves proud subjects of the British Empire. But the routing that Washington was about to receive set in motion the steady unraveling of the imperial relationship.
The Fate of Confederate Monuments Should Be Clear
Skip Navigation TNR_brand monogram_blackCritical Mass_wordmark_blackCritical Mass_wordmark alternate_black In the year since the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer, and the mass protests that followed, Confederate monuments have come down with astonishing speed.
The Storm over the American Revolution
; SOURCE: The New Republic 11/18/2021 Historians in the News tags: slavery, historiography, American Revolution, democracy, Native American history, Woody Holton by Eric Herschthal Eric Herschthal is an assistant professor of history at the University of Utah and author of The Science of Abolition: How Slaveholders Became the Enemies of Progress. The summer of 1755 was a terrible time for George Washington.
Perspective | Black Americans have always understood science as a tool in their freedom struggle
Over the past two months, polling data has increasingly upended fears of Black vaccine hesitancy. Yet even as health practitioners and activists argue that lack of access — not desire — might largely explain lower Black coronavirus vaccination rates, news reports continue to fixate on vaccine hesitancy as a primary culprit.
The Incalculable Debt That America Owes Black People
The long-standing idea of paying reparations to Black Americans for the costs of slavery, segregation, and other racist policies has lately gotten a boost. President Joe Biden has endorsed a commission to study the subject, and on February 17 the House Judiciary Committee heard testimony on H.R. 40, which would create such a commission.
Even The Hummus Is Haute
Einat Admony’s new Nolita restaurant could pass for any of the stylish new spots that dominate the downtown dining scene: there is the rustic-chic wood ceiling, the exposed glass kitchen, the linen-less tables surrounded by well-appointed book shelves. Then there’s the clientele: trendy women in Grecian-strap sandals and funky summer dresses; guys with plaid shirts, skinny jeans and thick plastic-frame glasses.
The Elusive Promise of the Underground Railroad
Skip Navigation TNR_brand monogram_blackCritical Mass_wordmark_blackCritical Mass_wordmark alternate_black For enslaved Black Americans contemplating escape before the Civil War, the North increasingly looked like a bad option. Though Northern states had abolished slavery by the early nineteenth century, free Blacks were denied the right to vote, had limited employment options, and endured legal segregation. Much of the Midwest restricted free Blacks from even entering.
Could the United States Break Up?
Skip Navigation TNR_brand monogram_blackCritical Mass_wordmark_blackCritical Mass_wordmark alternate_black In the wake of Brexit and Trump’s election, manyAmericans began to ask if the United States might soon break apart. In 2016, progressive activists in Portland, Oregon, submitted a petition calling for a statewide vote on secession; that same year, a poll showed that 26 percent of Texans supported state independence.
A Nightingale in the Lion's Den
I first met Kaya Genç at his home in Istanbul. It was 2017, and I lived a short walk away, up and down a few steep, sloping streets in the city's historic core of Beyoglu. The district is a collision course of ideologies, where family grocers and underground factories compete with vegan restaurants and vintage clothiers.
An Early Case For Reparations
When we think about slavery, we tend to imagine freedom as its natural opposite. But this makes it difficult to comprehend the actual conditions under which un-enslaved African Americans actually lived before and even long after the Civil War. For the 12 percent of African Americans who were not enslaved in 1860—nearly half a million people—the closest parallel we have today might be the refugee or undocumented worker—stateless, citizens of no nation, “a problem” widely seen as needing a fix.
How Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Novel Reckons With the Past
Eight years ago, Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote an essay in The Atlantic asking why so few black people studied the Civil War. Coates noted that he himself had only recently become an avid reader of Civil War history, and along with it, a student of the larger system that propelled it into motion: slavery.
How Slavery Gave Capitalism Its Start
Perhaps the most durable myth about slavery is that it was utterly incompatible with capitalism. Well before historians in the twentieth century began legitimating the idea, abolitionists suggested the disconnect themselves. In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe portrayed slave-traders as underfinanced, disreputable fools—the furthest thing from competent, successful businessmen. Even Karl Marx, no friend of capitalism, believed that wage labor would destroy slavery.
Eric Herschthal: What we get wrong about the roots of slavery in America
Four hundred years ago, Sir George Yeardley, the governor of the fledgling colony of Virginia, bought “20. and odd Negroes” from an English pirate named John Jope. Having attacked a Portuguese slave ship on its way to Mexico, Jope – technically a privateer, or a government-sponsored pirate – found 350 enslaved Angolans chained inside the fetid, overcrowded ship. Jope took as many Angolans as he could, then made his way to Hampton, Virginia, where Yeardley bought several of them.
Common misconceptions about slavery in America
Eric Herschthal Published Feb 20, 2019 at 8:00 am (Updated Feb 20, 2019 at 8:12 am) A chain of slaves travelling from the interior: armed guards oversee six African captives' forced march to a slave port. During the march the captives’ neck braces were never removed (Illustration courtesy of the Library of Virginia.) Eric Herschthal Four hundred years ago, Sir George Yeardley, the governor of the fledgeling colony of Virginia, bought “20 and odd Negroes” from an English pirate named John Jope.
Perspective | What we get wrong about the roots of slavery in America
How we remember the origins of American slavery shapes the fight for racial justice today A pair of slave shackles are on display in the Slavery and Freedom Gallery in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture during the press preview on the National Mall on Sept. 14, 2016.
What we get wrong about the roots of slavery in America
Eric Herschthal, The Washington Post Published 9:45 am CST, Tuesday, February 19, 2019 Four hundred years ago, Sir George Yeardley, the governor of the fledgling colony of Virginia, bought "20. and odd Negroes" from an English pirate named John Jope. Having attacked a Portuguese slave ship on its way to Mexico, Jope - technically a privateer, or a government-sponsored pirate - found 350 enslaved Angolans chained inside the fetid, overcrowded ship.
The Wizardry Of Amos Oz
In Amos Oz’s new novel, or more accurately novel-in-short-stories, the sense of dread, of profound existential unease, is unmistakable. No character in Oz’s fictional Israeli village, Tel Ilan, where all the stories in “Scenes from Village Life” are set, is happy. No one is even remotely content with his lot. Arieh Zelnik is disgusted with the developer who’s trying to buy his mother’s home, one that’s been in the family for generations.
How Fears of a Slave Revolt Drew the South into the War—the Revolutionary War
How fears of a slave revolt drew the South into the war—the Revolutionary War. Thomas Jefferson listed Dunmore’s Proclamation as one of his grievances against the British in an early draft of the Declaration of Independence. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Throughout 1775, tensions had been rising between Virginian patriots and their royalist governor, Lord Dunmore. The War of Independence had broken out earlier that year, in Lexington, Mass., but not a single shot had been fired in the South.
Portraits Of Israelis As Young Men
The case is sometimes made that when it comes to telling truths about Israel — be they good, bad or ugly — it’s probably best to have a Jew do it. But Kehinde Wiley, a gay black artist from South Central Los Angeles, may be offering the definitive rebuke to that notion. His new exhibit at The Jewish Museum, which opened this month, features 14 enormous, princely portraits of Israelis — Ethiopian Jews, Ashkenazis and Arabs.
When Violence Broke Out in Congress
Donald Trump may threaten his political enemies with tweets, but he has nothing on antebellum congressmen. In the three decades before the Civil War, members of the House and Senate routinely threatened each other with violence, and often acted on it too. They brawled on the House floor; they faced off in duels; they fired shots in Congress. They beat each another senseless with canes.
New York’s First Black Millionaire
Jeremiah G. Hamilton, a mid-19th-century Manhattan millionaire, made his fortune the usual ways people did back then. He speculated in real estate, defrauded insurance companies, and protected his assets by filing for bankruptcy whenever a deal went south. He was a ruthless businessman with no trace of ethics, but that made him, by Wall Street standards, utterly unexceptional. What was exceptional was that he was black. In Prince of Darkness: The Untold Story of Jeremiah G.
Why Trump Could Pardon Jack Johnson When Obama Wouldn’t
Lass/Getty Images Former world heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson, circa 1930s On May 24, when Donald Trump pardoned Jack Johnson, boxing’s first black heavyweight champion, for a century-old criminal conviction motivated by racial malice, it was hard to tell what gave him more satisfaction: that he could exonerate a once world-famous athlete, or that he could exonerate himself from charges of racism.
Opinion | Frederick Douglass’s Fight Against Scientific Racism
Opinion Feb. 22, 2018 Image Frederick Douglass in the 1870s. Scientists, he wrote, sometimes “sacrifice what is true to what is popular.” The 200th birthday of one of America’s greatest thinkers, Frederick Douglass, is being celebrated this month. Douglass is remembered as many things: a fugitive slave who gained his freedom, an abolitionist, an advocate for women’s rights, a gifted writer and orator.
The KKK’s Attempt to Define America
Gordon does not claim that the second Klan got rid of its racism. Rather, in the 1920s it broadened its racism to include other groups it deemed “un-American,” and adapted it to the particular historical moment. As women became more involved in politics—as many as one in six Klan members were women—Klan leaders folded its racism into issues they thought women would be interested in. Many women believed the group’s false allegations that Catholic priests were secretly treating nuns as sex slaves.
The Making of an Antislavery President
Given that the Missouri debates dominated Congress’ attention for nearly two years, however, Adams’s remarks are not particularly surprising, nor unique. Thomas Jefferson realized something similar, famously writing at the time: “This momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror.
A Revolutionary Torah
In August 1776, George Washington and his troops retreated to Manhattan Island. The British had just routed his rebel army in Long Island, and Washington tried desperately to hold onto what little perch of New York he could. But by November, the British expelled his army from Manhattan, which the British occupied throughout the Revolutionary war.
New President, Same Old Deal: The Parallels Between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Donald J. Trump
New President, Same Old Deal: The Parallels Between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Donald J. Trump An evaluation of the first 100 days of the new President of the United States has become a tradition of sorts in America; it serves as a metric by which traditional media, politicians, scholars, and the general public assess the president’s projected policies.
The Missing Link: Conservative Abolitionists, Slavery, and Yale
We’re living in one of those moments that doesn’t happen often: elite universities are suddenly interested in their slave-related pasts. Or at least they’re pretending to be—heaven knows the public relations disaster they’d find themselves in if they ignored student-driven demands for a public reckoning. Whatever the motivations, the trend is unmistakable. Earlier this month, Harvard held a high-profile conference on the university’s links to slavery.
Race and Civil Rights Dramas in Hollywood
This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of Stanley Kramer’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, starring the iconic Sidney Poitier. During the 1960s, when the film was released, Hollywood produced few movies about the political activism that comprised the civil rights movement. Instead, the movie industry turned to Sidney Poitier to offer representations of black middle-class respectability and colorblind racial discourse in hopes of changing the hearts and minds of whites across the country.
Malcolm X, The Lover
Malcolm X has been represented by mainstream culture as an emissary of hate and a man who was the very embodiment of radical violence. Both the conservative cultural politics of the Nation of Islam combined with the limitations of mainstream culture in understanding or imagining the complexities of Black love have conspired to create Malcolm X’s legacy as one that largely eschews the question of love, erotic or otherwise.
A Mind to Stay: A New Book on Black Landowners
A Mind to Stay: A New Book on Black Landowners This post is part of my blog series that announces the publication of selected new books in African American History and African Diaspora Studies. Today is the official release date for A Mind to Stay: White Plantation, Black Homeland, published by Harvard University Press. The author of A Mind to Stay is Sydney Nathans. He is Professor Emeritus of History at Duke University where he taught for forty years.
The Racial Fault Lines of American History in Trump’s America
The Racial Fault Lines of American History in Trump’s America Three months ago, Americans voted in their presidential election. It was to be an event that would showcase the strength of American democracy and the triumph of American ideals. However, in an unanticipated upset, the country’s white majority trumped the wider diversity of the electorate to enshrine Donald Trump into the presidency.
How the Revolutionary War Was Actually America’s First Civil War
Skip to the content Books Stop me if you’ve heard this before: After nearly a decade of war, Americans declare victory and pull back their forces. But the rollback is only followed by more carnage as innocent Americans are killed in unimaginably grisly ways. Meanwhile, an economic depression ensues, with only the wealthy and well-connected seeming to escape. A groundswell of populist anger erupts, and a new cadre of leaders emerges promising to fix a rigged system.
Alan Taylor’s American Revolutions, reviewed.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: After nearly a decade of war, Americans declare victory and pull back their forces. But the rollback is only followed by more carnage as innocent Americans are killed in unimaginably grisly ways. Meanwhile, an economic depression ensues, with only the wealthy and well-connected seeming to escape. A groundswell of populist anger erupts, and a new cadre of leaders emerges promising to fix a rigged system.
When All Men Were Created Separate, But Equal
In this context, colonization went from being a marginal idea in the 1780s to a central plank of the white antislavery platform in the 1820s. In 1816, national antislavery leaders formed the exclusively white American Colonization Society in an effort to answer the question that befuddled northerners as much southerners: What to do with blacks after slavery?
'The Invention of Nature' positions Alexander von Humboldt as the godfather of environmentalism
For all the good that came out of the Paris climate summit earlier this month, one major question remained unanswered: What do fully developed nations owe the ones still catching up? India, the largest developing nation, demanded that advanced economies like the United States grant them more “carbon space” – more leeway to pollute – while they modernize.
New York’s First Black Millionaire
Jeremiah Hamilton was a rapacious, double-dealing millionaire in 19th-century America. But Wall Street never let him forget he was black. Jeremiah G. Hamilton, a mid-19th century Manhattan millionaire, made his fortune the usual ways people did back then. He speculated in real estate, defrauded insurance companies, and protected his assets by filing for bankruptcy whenever a deal went south.
History of America by Glenda Gilmore and Thomas Sugrue.
Not too long ago, you could write a general history of the United States in the previous century as a story of ever-increasing wealth, power, and equality. Quite a few historians did. Even after the dot-com bust and Sept. 11, it seemed that at least since the Second World War, America was moving inexorably toward greater prosperity, healing its racial wounds, and exporting its brand of democracy all across the globe. Many assumed the nation’s upward trajectory would continue unabated.
The American Revolution’s Losers Weren’t All British
Pawns of the colonists, the British, and other colonial powers with a stake in North America, African American slaves and Native American tribes were often collateral damage in the war for independence. The story of the American Revolution has been so often told that it’s sometimes hard to believe there’s anything new left to say. Even those traditionally left out—women, Native and African Americans, the poor—have seen their lives folded into the revolution’s history in recent decades.
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