"May Be the Only Founding Father Who Wouldn't Be Baffled or Outraged by America as We Know It Today"

"During America's crucial first years, as the battles were fought to define American notions of freedom, and decide who should have it, Burr was the most powerful voice calling the young country to actually live up to its radical ideal of freedom for all."

In the wake of Hamilton-mania, Carey Wallace in Time defends Aaron Burr.

"Investments..., Credit..., Property, Commodities and Capital"

"In 'Benito Cereno,' Melville retold these events with some significant ­changes. Omitting what Grandin calls 'Delano’s nearly yearlong hounding' of the Spaniard for what he considered his due compensation for the rescue, he emphasized Cereno’s lingering shock and Delano’s impenetrable insouciance. He focused on the leader of the slave rebellion, whose corpse, after his trial and hanging, was decapitated, with the head impaled on a spike in the main plaza of Lima so all could contemplate his 'voiceless end.'"


Andrew Delbanco in The New York Times reviews Greg Grandin’s Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World.

The Legend of Black Ajax

"So ended the life of a man who—for a brief moment—was as famous as Napoleon but, thanks to the trickery and prejudice of his ­opponents, died forgotten and alone."

In a December 2010 Daily Mail article, David Leafe recounts the story of boxer Tom Molineaux.

Young Man Eloquent

"Today, he writes a concise 109-character entry on the weather and his current location: 'Thick fog. Scanty Wind. On George’s Bank. Lat: 42-34. Read Massillon’s Careme Sermons 2 & 3. Ladies are Sick.'"

Amy Farnsworth of The Christian Science Monitor reports that the Massachusetts Historical Society has started a Twitter feed reprinting John Quincy Adams's diary of an 1809 trip to Russia.

The World's Greatest Englishman

"In the first years of the 19th century political radicals latched onto Paine's attacks on 'Old Corruption' and how they might dismantle the privileged aristocratic rule inherited from the 18th century. These ideas spoke to artisans and small producers and laid the foundations to 19th-century examinations of wealth and its distribution, even if Paine's analysis which attacked the landed aristocrat would later be replaced by an indictment of the capitalist."

David Nash in History Today recalls Thomas Paine on the bicentennial of Paine's death.

Vote Federalist

The Adams in 1800 Committee produces an ad on YouTube to attack presidential candidate Thomas Jefferson.

And Gil Troy reviews Edward J. Larson's A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America’s First Presidential Campaign in The New York Times.