This essay original appeared in The Worlds of James Buchanan – Thaddeus Stevens, ed. Michael J. Birkner, Randall M. Miller, and John W Quist, LSU Press, (2019), 82-108. “General Jackson is dead”: Dissecting a Popular Anecdote of Nineteenth-Century Party Leadership…
Category: Antebellum Era
ESSAY –After 1850
This chapter originally appeared in in Fugitive Slaves and Spaces of Freedom in North America, 1775-1860 ed. D.A. Pargas, U Press Florida, (2018), 93-115. After 1850: Reassessing the Impact of the Fugitive Slave Law Matthew Pinsker The 1850 Fugitive Slave…
IMAGE –Bingham’s Stump Speaking
This classic composition by George Caleb Bingham (1811-1879) was part of a trio of “Election Paintings” that any classroom might use to illustrate the highs and lows of antebellum American democracy. The spread of universal suffrage for adult white…
ESSAY –Lincoln’s Catty Letters
This op-ed by Matthew Pinsker appeared in Time.com on President’s Day 2014 as a way to introduce readers to some of the new Lincoln documents that had been discovered in recent years. Several of the links take readers to the full…
ESSAY –Lincoln Theme 2.0
In 2009, Matthew Pinsker published a state-of-the-field essay on Lincoln studies for the Journal of American History (“Lincoln Theme 2.0”), which argued that the digital revolution was fundamentally changing the way scholars research and write about Abraham Lincoln’s life and career. The…
ESSAY –Interpreting the Upper-Ground Railroad
The essay excerpted below originally appeared in Max van Balgooy, ed., Interpreting African American History and Culture (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), 75-88. It argues for a more sophisticated understanding of interpreting Underground Railroad sites, one that emphasizes how open much…
ESSAY –1860 in Springfield, Illinois
House Divided Project intern Don Sailer produced a vivid description of the 1860 Election Day in Springfield, Illinois. Sailer doesn’t mention this fact in his concise post, but Abraham Lincoln only barely won his hometown in 1860, prevailing over Stephen A.…
ESSAY –Boss Lincoln
The essay by Matthew Pinsker originally appeared in The Living Lincoln, a collection of essays edited in 2011 by Thomas Horrocks, Harold Holzer, and Frank Williams in 2011 for Southern Illinois University Press. The essay analyzes newly discovered documents that…
ESSAY –Underground Railroad and Coming of War
This essay by Matthew Pinsker originally appeared History Now (Winter 2010), an online magazine of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. It offers a concise explanation for why the Underground Railroad should be considered a primary factor in the coming…
ESSAY –Man of Consequence
This essay originally appeared in Illinois History Teacher 16 (2009), pp. 16-33. It offer a compact overview of how Abraham Lincoln rose to power during the antebellum political crisis. Man of Consequence: Abraham Lincoln in the 1850s By Matthew Pinsker “The…