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On November 21, 1789, the people of the state of North Carolina ratified the United States Constitution. On May 29, 1790, the people of…
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In the last two decades, the Electoral College has come under harsh, though derivative, criticism as a result of the presidential elections in 2000…
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On the afternoon of April 30, 1789, George Washington stepped onto the balcony of the freshly-renovated and renamed Federal Hall on Wall Street in…
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Author’s Note: Selections from all resolutions and working drafts are italicized. Most of what we know about the framers’ discussions comes from James Madison’s…
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For every historian, there’s an event that makes them feel good every time they read about it. We asked our contributors: What event from…
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On Saturday September 17, 1938 New York governor Herbert H. Lehman and 5,000 others assembled in Poughkeepsie to observe the sesquicentennial of the Empire…
On this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews Andrew Schocket, professor of history at Bowling Green State University about the original research he and two…
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It wasn’t really their fault, they said. Slavery, men of the founding generation liked to argue, was brought to the colonies by Britain. It…
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Quarters: The Accommodation of the British Army and the Coming of the American Revolution by John Gilbert McCurdy (Cornell University Press, 2019) Question: “Why did…
Speaking at South Carolina’s ratification convention in 1788, Charles Pinckney derided the Articles of Confederation as a “miserable, feeble mockery of government.” Pinckney was…
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The charge was leveled often in his own time, as it has been ever since: James Madison is and was a hypocrite—a man inconstant…