Category: Antebellum Era

ESSAY –General Jackson is Dead

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…

ESSAY –After 1850

This chapter originally appeared 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 Law…

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 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 –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 –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…