RealClearHistory Articles

Soon, America will celebrate its 250th birthday. As the day approaches, we can look back at the commemorations of four milestone anniversaries to provide context for our celebrations to come. We start with July 4, 1826, the 50th celebration of American independence. At the time, the nation had 24 states and about 11 million people. To mark the occasion, businesses closed, cannons fired, parades rolled and fireworks lit the sky. In small towns and growing cities, dignitaries mounted hastily built platforms to hold forth on the young nation’s short history.  In New Orleans,...

As the United States marks the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding, many Americans are reflecting on the revolution’s legacy by visiting historical exhibitions, attending regional fairs, and watching battle reenactments. Some, however, are wondering how everything might have been different by exploring the possibility of the revolution’s failure. In recent months, journalists, bloggers, and other writers have explored whether George Washington’s forces might have lost key early battles – from the Battle of Long Island to the Battle of...

A visitor standing at the intersection of D’Evereux Drive and Liberty Road today would find little reason to linger. Cars pass through the traffic light. Businesses line the road. The sounds are those of any American town going about its day. Nothing suggests this quiet crossroads was once one of the most consequential sites in the American South. Nearly two centuries ago, thousands of enslaved men, women, and children stood here against their will. Some had been marched hundreds of miles from Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Others had endured weeks or months of uncertainty...

In segregated twentieth-century Natchez, Mississippi, power wore predictable faces: white, male, and respectable, at least on paper. Yet one of the town's most influential figures fit none of those categories. Ten blocks from City Hall, in a modest white house at 416 North Rankin Street, a different kind of power thrived. It was quieter, unlicensed, and defiantly female. The house belonged to Nellie Jackson and behind its doors operated one of the most infamous and paradoxically respected brothels in the South. What makes Nellie Jackson historically significant isn't simply that she ran a...

For nearly 35 years, H. W. (Harry) Crocker III ran the editorial department at Regnery Publishing—America’s then-leading conservative book publisher—in a storied career that made him an indispensable shaper of the conservative movement of the last half century (and included, for a while, doing double duty as editor of that one-time beacon of the conservative movement, The Conservative Book Club, and taking on journalistic stints as senior editor of The American Spectator, columnist at The National Catholic Register, and much else besides). His authors included everyone from...

The conventional way to mark a 250th birthday is to call the Founders “visionaries,” to say they saw around corners and anticipated the country we became. These authors would push back on that, gently. The founders were brilliant, but they were not prophets. They wrote with quill pens by candlelight and traveled by horse. They could not have anticipated most of what their country would become. And they didn't have to. Two and a half centuries later, we're still reaching back to the documents they left behind to answer questions they never thought to ask. That isn't a failure of...

What if the greatest investment in history wasn't a stock… but a country? As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, much of the reflection will focus on politics, culture, and global leadership. There's another lens less discussed, yet just as consequential: America as the most successful long-term investment in history. From its earliest days, America wasn't just founded as a nation. It was funded as an idea. The first colonies were financed by joint-stock companies, early ventures that pooled capital in pursuit of uncertain but transformative returns. That spirit of...

As America prepares to celebrate its 250th birthday, the country is once again revisiting the presidents who shaped the Republic.  Some are remembered for triumph and progress. Others for scandal or national division. Thanks in part to Netflix’s new series, “Death by Lightning,” more Americans are learning about a president who never truly got started. James Garfield served only 200 days before an assassin’s bullet cut his presidency short in 1881. Today, most Americans remember him, if at all, as one of four presidents killed in office.  That may be one of...

The Executive Order President Trump signed last year on National Parks, Smithsonian museums, and monuments was designed to counter those who attempt to “rewrite our Nation’s history.” Another EO included the Institute of Museum and Library Services, which often supports exhibits at private sites. Historians and media outlets huffed, calling his EO’s a “disturbing attack” that pushed a “distorted narrative.” But as we approach our 250th anniversary as a nation, it’s increasingly clear that Trump had a convincing case. Particularly since...

If asked to name the richest county in America in 1860, most people would guess New York, Massachusetts, or Pennsylvania. They'd be wrong. On the eve of the Civil War, that distinction belonged to Adams County, Mississippi – home to Natchez. According to 1860 census data, Adams County ranked at or near the top nationally in per-capita wealth, a remarkable distinction for a county on what was then America's southwestern frontier. Contemporary accounts and historians have often described Natchez as having more millionaires per capita than any other American city. At a time when one...

Writing more than 20 years after the Battle of Cold Harbor, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant stated, “I have always regretted that the last assault at Cold Harbor was ever made.” Grant’s regret was an understatement of what occurred on June 3, 1864, at that Virginia crossroads named after a British inn that once offered overnight lodging to travelers. Cold Harbor offered a preview of what would occur on a much larger scale fifty years later on the Western Front in the First World War. Confederate Gen. Evander Law later wrote of the fighting at Cold Harbor on June 3,...

Gerrymandering election districts is not new in American politics. Drawing election district lines and other manipulation of voting districts to gain a partisan political advantage has a long history, beginning with the earliest years of the American republic.  Article I, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution left it to Congress and the states to determine how states would elect members of the House of Representatives. For the most part, Congress has taken no action, leaving it to the states to establish the rules. In the first election under the new Constitution, the states used two basic...

One region of America is never fully allowed to move on from its past. America rightly examines difficult chapters of its history. Every region has sins, failures, and injustices that deserve honest study. New England profited from the slave trade. Northern cities practiced segregation and discriminatory housing policies well into the twentieth century. Western expansion came at tremendous cost to Native American peoples. Yet no region's history remains under such persistent public scrutiny as that of the South. There's a reason for that. The Civil War was the deadliest conflict in American...

Postwar motorcycle clubs weren’t born from crime. They were built by veterans trying to recreate a world they had just left behind. The men who formed the first motorcycle clubs after World War II were not organized criminals. They were infantrymen, tankers, scouts, MPs, mechanics, and couriers returning from the most mechanized, high‑adrenaline war in human history. They came home to a country that expected them to settle quickly into stable, domestic lives – but many found the pace and structure of civilian life no longer matched who they had become. Returning veterans often...

This year marks the 90th anniversary of the loss of an architectural wonder in South London. At 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 30, 1936, staff reported that fire had broken out at the vast Crystal Palace at Sydenham Hill, Upper Norwood. This Victorian glass and iron masterpiece, opened by Queen Victoria in 1854, faced catastrophe. A force of 438 firefighters and 88 fire engines attempted to fight the conflagration, but strong westerly winds fed the fire beyond all control. Interior wood flooring and fittings soon fueled the blaze. Flames leapt hundreds of feet high. First, the 384-foot-long glass transept...

When was the last time you saw a teenage boy with a book in his hand? A phone, alas, probably all the time. But a book? Unless a teacher stuck it there, you’re as likely to find a boy holding an abacus as reading a book. But one man in North Carolina is out to change that. Andrew M. Dare (a pseudonym, because he disdains celebrity, and because he doesn’t actually exist, being in fact the creation of Tony Daniel and David Afsharirad) is an adventurer who has climbed mountains in Nepal, surfed and sailed around the world, and challenged his body in Ironman competitions. Now he has...

No, the Continental Congress did not first vote for independence on July 4, 1776. Seven weeks earlier, on May 15, Congress authorized the thirteen former colonies to adopt constitutions and establish sovereign state governments. This authorization was a de facto declaration of independence. The newly formed states assumed the exclusive right to govern, make laws, and manage internal affairs. Radically, the resolution required each state to replace King George III with the people as the supreme sovereign.  Talk of independence was in the air as the Revolutionary...

Mayfair is one of London’s most extravagantly well-heeled districts and has a long and fascinating history. Its name derives from a boisterous local fair held annually between 1686-1764, and it became a wealthy and fashionable part of London’s West End after redevelopment by the Grosvenor family in the 18th century. Mayfair encompasses approximately one square mile of prime London real estate and includes fine Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian residential streets, churches, and garden squares. Today, this City of Westminster district is world famous for high-end shopping and...

The Long Telegram of February 22, 1946, by the deputy to the United States Ambassador in the Soviet Union George Kennan, was a conceptual turning point in the history of the Cold War. Written by a professional diplomat, it wielded a direct influence on the shaping of U.S. policy towards the Soviet Union. The Long Telegram served as a long-lasting intellectual foundation of U.S. policy towards the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War. A conceptual tour de force, Kennan’s Long Telegram was aimed at clarifying the objectives of the Soviet Union. It did so by combining historical analysis...