1964: The Election that Turned American Politics Tribal
By James A. Morone
The Latest 
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Trump Inflamed the American "War of Sections." What Comes Next?
Steve Suitts
2020 shows the south is arguably still the key region in American politics, but it may not be a stronghold of white conservative politics for long.
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Kamala Harris and the Modern Vice Presidency
Richard Moe
Kamala Harris seems poised to exert influence over policy and legislation as vice president. In this sense, she will carry forward the evolution of the office, according to a former vice presidential chief of staff who contributed to the development of the "modern vice presidency."
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Misremember the Alamo
Douglas Sackman
Like most Americans, when Trump tries to "remember the Alamo," he gets it all wrong. His recent visit to Alamo, Texas was 240 miles south of the mission so holy to many Texans, but it was closer in spirit than Trump probably realized.
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Will Eugene Goodman Share the Fate of Frank Wills?
Adam Henig
Congress and the nation have celebrated the heroic actions of Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman, who distracted a mob to give members of Congress time to reach safety. When his momentary fame fades, Goodman deserves better than another unexpected hero, Watergate security guard Frank Wills.
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Biden's Inaugural and the Return of History
Paul J. Welch Behringer
Joseph Biden's inaugural address signals a willingness to return to learning from history that may encourage the empathy and humilty elected officials need to solve the nation's problems.
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"Hands Off Until He Was Safe Over": David Reynolds Urges Biden to Look to Lincoln
James Thornton Harris
Historian David S. Reynolds recently published Abe: Abraham Lincoln and his Times, a cultural biography that shows how the 16th president was shaped by the many social currents swirling in the young United States.
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Vice Presidential Loyalty and Independence
Ron Faucheux
As the Trump era comes to an end, Vice President Pence is paddling his own boat. Where he goes is now up to him––and him alone.
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Cheese to Chalk: Can Democracies be Compared to Dictatorships?
Leonid Luks
A German historian argues that American scholars and commentators have for years been too quick to equate antidemocratic measures taken by Republicans with Hitler's seizure of dictatorial power, dismissing ample research on the nature of totalitarian regimes. The last three months have shown that America's core institutions are not weak enough to be crushed.
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Historians Pay Tribute to Hank Aaron
HNN Staff
Hank Aaron, an all-time great of baseball and for many years its all-time leader in home runs, passed away at age 86 on January 22. Historians recall him as a player, an advocate for civil rights inside and outside the game, and a man who was uneasy being made into a symbol of progress against racism.
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George Washington Resisted the Siren Call of Absolute Power
Jan-Benedict Steenkamp
George Washington is celebrated for his refusal to continue past two terms as President. But his earlier actions in refusing the leadership of a military coup against the Continental Congress in 1783 put the new nation on track to have civilian leadership under law.
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The Roundup Top Ten for January 22, 2021
The top opinion writing by historians from around the web this week.
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Confronting "Who We Are"
Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson
The Capitol riots should prompt consideration of how racism is sustained by mainstream institutions and operates through everyday patterns of thought and action, as much as in open eruptions of violence.
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Pardon Me?: The History of the Washington Territorial Government and the Self-Pardon
Michael Schein
The question of self-pardons by an executive isn't a theoretical one. It was resolved – in the negative – by events in the Washington territory in 1856.
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Biden Isn't the First President to Have to Change Tracks en Route to Inauguration
Jeff Rogg
The threat of violence forced Joe Biden to cancel plans to travel from Wilmington to Washington by Amtrak, as he famously did during his Senate years. The decision recalls Lincoln's efforts to avoid the (possibly apocryphal) Baltimore Plot.
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The Politics of an Inauguration Unlike Any Other
Michael A. Genovese
Joe Biden's inauguration will be unlike any other, but he will need to draw on inaugural traditions of declaring purpose and invoking solidarity if he is to begin to repair national division.
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The History of Skipping a Successor's Inauguration
Michael Patrick Cullinane
Trump's decision to skip Biden's inauguration might seem like a mere petty gesture. But it harkens back to previous episodes that reflected times of deep division and political conflict.
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The Free Press and Democracy in a "Murder the Media" Age
Wendy Melillo
Journalism as a profession needs to embrace its historical role as a guardian of democracy and refuse to let objectivity work as a shield for authoritarianism; authoritarians won't accept a free press anyway.
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The Great Evasion
Lawrence Wittner
Joe Biden should reverse the nation's long dereliction of duty in leading the world toward nuclear disarmament and reducing the threat of nuclear war.
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The Long Overdue End of the “Serious Conservative"
Charles J. Holden
Two darlings of the conservative movement – Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley – found themselves in hot water last week after supporting the false narrative of election fraud that inspired the Capitol rioting. It's part of a long legacy of media-anointed "serious conservatives" whose smarts have been inflated.
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Donald Trump’s Situational Fascism
Gavriel Rosenfeld
Rather than engage in an unproductive debate about whether Donald Trump is or is not a bona fide fascist, scholars should consider the events of January 6 (and Trump's role in inciting them) as emergent, contingent results of the interplay of factors latent in American liberal democracy.
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Were Trump's Pardons Even Legal?
James D. Zirin
Almost all the pundits, constitutional lawyers, and members of the professoriate are laying down their arms, largely conceding that the President has broad powers to pardon anyone in the world, with the possible exception of himself. But are they giving too much away?"
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Banana Republic or Nut Country? January 6 Put American Exceptionalism in Perspective
Frank P. Barajas
American political elites have responsed to the Capitol riot by comparing it unfavorably to something that would happen in a "banana republic." The historical record of American interference in Latin America and of our own domestic tumults shows that we may not be bananas, but have had our fair share of nuts.
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Restoring Civil Society by Executive Order?: An Inaugural Reverie
John L. Godwin
Joe Biden should defend the First Amendment right to peaceable assembly by a temporary emergency order criminalizing the carrying of firearms at public protest events and make clear that the threat of force is not part of the democratic process.
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The Problem with a Self-Pardon
Robert J. Spitzer
It is likely that the issue of a president's ability to pardon himself will be contested in short order. A constitutional scholar of the presidency explains why such an action cannot be countenanced in a society of law.
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Blog
The Cult of the Lost Cause and the Invention of General Pickett
Ann Banks
George Pickett – Major General George E. Pickett – was our family’s marquee Confederate relation, distant cousin though he was. Every schoolchild in America has heard of him...
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The Roundup Top Twenty for January 15, 2021
This week was extraordinary. Historians have been working overtime to put current events in perspective. It was impossible to pick the ten best, so we're featuring a double dose of the top opinion writing by historians and about history from around the web.
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Teddy Roosevelt and Josh Hawley's History Lessons
David Goldfischer
Josh Hawley wrote a 2008 biography of Theodore Roosevelt balancing praise of the former president's vision of democracy with condemnation of his grasping for power. One wonders how the author of this book could have acted as the Senator did on January 6.
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Editor's Note on Coverage of the Capitol Riot and Related Events
Michan Connor
The events of January 6 and their ongoing political fallout have dictated changes to HNN's publication schedule this week.
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A Modern Day Lynch Mob Invaded the Capitol on January 6
Guy Lancaster
When the Capitol rioters took selfies and posted their exploits on social media, they worked from the same expectation of impunity as drove participants in Jim Crow lynch mobs.
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Black Women Have Been Important Party and Electoral Organizers for a Century
Alison M. Parker
Black women's political organizing was a key to Joe Biden's victory and the Democratic Senate victories in Georgia; these episodes are part of a long historical tradition of activists using partisan politics to press for racial and gender equality.
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Historians, Insurrectionists and Fragile White Folks
James Brewer Stewart
A historian of abolition and an advocate of racial justice argues that historians must reject the psychological framework of some recent popular antiracist books and learn from the history of activists embodying Frederick Douglass's call for a "moral revolution" through engagement with others.
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Trump's Nero Decree
Frank Domurad
Adolf Hitler coped with the realization of incipient defeat by ordering the destruction of vital infrastructure in Germany as vengeance against a people who had, he believed, failed him. Donald Trump has been taking a similar approach to the nation's infrastructure and the COVID response (except for the border wall).
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A New "Trump Precedent" Under the 25th Amendment?
Devan Charles Lindey
If the vice president and cabinet invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Donald Trump from the powers of the presidency, it would set a new precedent in the largely uncharted territory of dealing with Presidential incapacity.
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Public Speech and Democracy
Sandra Peart
American leaders have failed to support public speech that sustains disagreement without violence. That culture of speech must be rebuilt for democracy to survive.
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Will the Republicans Take the Fascist Option?
Kevin Matthews
Before this past week, too many in the GOP seemed too willing to choose the fascist option. Now they have seen what it looks like and where it leads. The question Republicans must answer is simple: Will they choose fascism anyway?
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Introducing Ann Banks' New HNN Blog "Confederates In My Closet"
"After the 2016 election, the Civil War came for me, and there was nothing quaint about it. As a reinvigorated white supremacy began sweeping the country, I knew it was time to take the Confederates out of the closet."
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Blog
How I got into This
Ann Banks
For decades I harbored in the back of my office closet an archive I inherited from my father’s Alabama kin. Wills bequeathing family oil portraits; yellowed newspaper clipping...
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Images of the Capitol Riot Reflect a National Crisis
Danielle Taana Smith
Treating Trumpism as an aberration rather than as the eruption of deep-seated impulses to bigotry and violence is a dangerous delusion.
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Jefferson's Other Legacy: Religious Liberty
Cameron Addis
Thomas Jefferson's critics have pointed out his ownership of slaves as reason to question his continued relevance as a symbol of freedom. But his commitment to religious liberty helped to prevent violent sectarian conflict and should be honored.
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Historical Rhetoric Resurfaced in Georgia's Runoff Election
Alicia K. Jackson
Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock didn't just defeat their Republican opponents on January 5, they defeated a number of racist tropes that have characterized Georgia politics since Reconstruction.
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Blog
Humphrey and Biden: One Presidential Scholar's Two Political Heroes
Ronald L. Feinman
Hubert Humphrey was the author's first political hero; Joe Biden carries forth many of Humphrey's qualities to lead the country in a time of crisis.
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Leaders Have Shirked Responsibility When Pandemics Affected Presidents
Robert Brent Toplin
It's a matter of speculation whether his illness with COVID-19 has contributed to Trump's recent behavior, but it's not unlikely. It's another episode showing the need for rigorous attention to the issue of presidential incapacitation.
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Lessons for Today from FDR and the Progressives?
Walter G. Moss
Drawing lessons for Joe Biden's fraught entry to the presidency from FDR requires considering some unexpected virtues like empathy and humor.
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Will VMI Move Further Toward Change and Away from Stonewall Jackson?
Wallace Hettle
Removing the statue of Stonewall Jackson from campus is just one step that the Virginia Military Institute must take toward separating itself from the Lost Cause myth and serving all Virginians.
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Roundup Top Ten for January 8, 2021
The top opinion writing by historians or about history from around the web this week.
News
- Washington History Seminar TODAY: Claudio Saunt's "Unworthy Republic"
- The Bonnie and Richard Reiss Graduate Institute for Constitutional History Seminar Spring 2021 Session (Virtual)
- Hank Aaron's Lasting Impact is Measured in More than Home Runs
- Hank Aaron's 715th, Called by Vin Scully
- Washington Must Treat White Supremacist Terrorism as a Transnational Threat
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