Overview The creation of the U.S. Constitution over the summer of 1787 and its subsequent ratification during the following year was a revolution equal in magnitude to the contest for American independence declared against Great Britain in 1776. Americans tend to…
Category: Memory
1880s
Overview As a young teacher at the Hampton Institute in the late 1870s and early 1880s, Booker T. Washington was responsible for helping to instruct and assimilate Native American or Indian men. The complexity of this assignment –a black teacher…
1860s
Overview When Booker T. Washington recalled the outbreak of the Civil War, he claimed that “every slave on our plantation felt and knew that, though other issues were discussed, the primal one was that of slavery.” Washington’s memory of life as young slave…
IMAGE –Leutze’s Washington Crossing
This most famous American painting was created by a German painter named Emanuel Leutze, originally in 1849 and then again in 1851. The story behind his motivation for painting this image provides a helpful connection between American and European revolutionary movements. Teachers…
ESSAY –Emancipation Moments
The essay excerpted below originally appeared in Emancipation at 150: The Impact of Emancipation, a special e-book anthology produced in 2013 on the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation by President Lincoln’s Cottage and the US Commission on Civil Rights. Emancipation…
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 –Myth of Rivals
In 2008, Matthew Pinsker produced an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times that challenged the way then President-Elect Barack Obama was interpreting the popular study of the Lincoln Administration (Team of Rivals) by presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. Pinsker’s short essay has been…
IMAGE –Revere’s Boston Massacre Engraving
This famous engraving by Paul Revere depicting the riot in Boston on March 5, 1770, which resulted in the deaths of five colonists (including Crispus Attucks), what the patriot artisan calls here, “The Bloody Massacre perpetrated in King Street, Boston…
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…