Slavery Abolition

Altitude is a column by POLITICO founding editor John Harris, offering weekly perspective on politics in a moment of radical disruption. Before Herbert Hoover earned a reputation as a tragic failure, he had a reputation for heroic success — a can-do businessman who arrived in the presidency with no previous…

President Trump praised Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee as the 'greatest strategic military mind perhaps ever' in a meeting with top officials amid the Charlottesville crisis in 2017 - before taking them on a tour of the Lincoln Bedroom, a new book revealed.  In 'Front Row at the Trump Show,' ABC…

Not Fighting for Slavery There is no chain so heavy or yoke so oppressive as that which men will unwittingly place upon their own necks, or bend their necks to receive, while being beguiled and led along by liberty shriekers under their pretended banner of freedom. – William Watson On…

By Dele Sobowale NOTE 1: Ordinarily, this page would not carry tables or charts. Those belong on the Business/Economic pages. But part 2 can best be understood by summarising the message in a table. If “a picture is worth a thousand words”, then a table is worth ten thousand words.…

But in 1862, the federal government doled out the 2020 equivalent of $23 million—not to the formerly enslaved but to their white enslavers. In 1870 a black woman named Henrietta Wood sued the white deputy sheriff who, nearly two decades earlier, kidnapped her from the free state of Ohio, illegally…

View photosClick here to read the full article. The title of Netflix’s miniseries “Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker” implies that it’s not entirely a factual retelling of the pioneering entrepreneur, philanthropist, and activist’s life. In fact, the influence fundamental to Walker’s remarkable story barely exists…

Yesterday, a friend and I were commiserating (digitally, of course) about the uncertainty -- and, in some places, misery -- of the virus pandemic sweeping the world. He quoted one of the most famous lines in the Bible: “Thy will be done.” It’s a calming phrase for Christians, one appearing…

In 1863, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln wrote a scathing letter to his top Union general, who had squandered a chance to end the Civil War. Then Lincoln folded it up and tucked it away in his desk. He never sent it. Lincoln understood that the first action that comes to…

The story of how Congress helped win the Civil War – a new perspective that puts the House and Senate, rather than Lincoln, at the center of the conflict. This brilliantly argued new perspective on the Civil War overturns the popular conception that Abraham Lincoln single-handedly led the Union to…

Dramatized in the major motion picture Amazing Grace, the story of William Wilberforce is the remarkable account of how one man’s vision, courage, and relentless pursuit of justice brought freedom to thousands and changed the course of history. “That the greatest and most successful reformer in all history is almost…