James Oakes teaches American History at the CUNY Graduate Center. His latest book is The Scorpion's Sting: Antislavery and the Coming of the Civil War.
The New York Times’s 1619 Project claimed to reveal the unknown history of slavery and racism in the United States. It ended up helping to distort the real history of slavery — and the heroic struggle against it — for a generation.
The Civil War wasn’t just a struggle against the South. It was an ideological battle within the heart of Northern society.
Remembering the life and legacy of the great historian Judith Stein.
Abolitionists gave us the vital idea that some things should not be for sale.
The antislavery project couldn’t think beyond the market — and that failure haunts progressive politics.
The Republicans were emancipators — from start to finish.
A leading Civil War historian challenges the new orthodoxy about how slavery ended in America.