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In an exchange of letters between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams (while both were still serving in Europe – Jefferson in France, Adams as the first U.S. minister to England), reflecting on the newly ratified Constitution in 1787 and the powers given to the President: Jefferson: “ …A bad edition of... »

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Life, Liberty and the Fact of Slavery – N.Y. Times Alone at his desk at Poplar Forest, where more than a hundred slaves labored in the fields beyond his window, Jefferson had written one of the most impassioned denunciations of his life, decrying slavery as an extreme depravity: The whole commerce between master and... »

Jimmy Carter committed political suicide by telling the American people that austerity and reason could lead us to future health. Ronald Reagan preached greed and god. The American people practiced group denial, chose Reagan and modern America was born. The Reagan mythology was created to support and perpetuate that denial. Now the political right calls... »

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These embarrassments that the Quakers suffer’d from having establish’d and published it as one of their principles that no kind of war was lawful, and which, being once published, they could not afterwards, however they might change their minds, easily get rid of, reminds me of what I think a more prudent conduct in... »

One thing that drives me batty is when historians talk, or write, about their subject matter in the present tense. And I go completely bonkers when they mix their tenses — especially when they do it in the same sentence. Then I become homicidal! Telling a historical narrative in the present tense is a... »