In recent decades, Abraham Lincoln’s reputation has not fared particularly well in the black community. Ebony magazine editor Lerone Bennett, Jr., famously argued that Lincoln was a proslavery white supremacist, while Julius Lester wrote that African Americans “have no reason to feel grateful to Abraham Lincoln. Rather, they should be angry at him.”
DEFENDING ORTHODOXYMykhailo Cherenkov’s pain and anger are deeply personal (“Orthodox Terrorism,” May). Anti-Ukrainian separatists have occupied the Baptist university that he used to head in Donetsk. They have also taken over forty Protestant churches in eastern Ukraine and have killed or . . . . Continue Reading »
The single most important event of constitutional interpretation in American history was the Civil War. The war was, of course, so much more than simply an act of constitutional interpretation. Fought from 1861 to 1865, it was the most devastating war in America’s history, resulting in the deaths . . . . Continue Reading »
After the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education ordering the desegregation of public schools in Topeka, Kansas, lawsuits promptly were brought to dismantle legally sanctioned segregation in other states. One of these was Arkansas. There, Governor Orville Faubus and . . . . Continue Reading »
There was some puzzlement among John Stuart Mill’s contemporaries that he should publish his tract On Liberty, with its deep concern for the tyranny of public opinion, when the press in England was the freest in the world and the public life of the country was vibrant with controversy in politics . . . . Continue Reading »
The beginning of the ninth century of the millennium now almost past was promising enough. The Congress of Vienna in 1815 marked, at long last, the end of the Napoleonic wars and heralded a period of enduring peace-peace under the auspices of emperors and monarchs of dubious legitimacy and . . . . Continue Reading »
According to a bit of street wisdom that has worked its way into the national vocabulary, “You got to walk the walk, not just talk the talk.” But since the opposite of everything is frequently, if not always, true, we might, on the matter of explicitly Christian rhetoric and the American public . . . . Continue Reading »
Revolt against Destiny: An Intellectual History of the United States by paul a. carter columbia university press, 331 pages, $24.95 The only thing really wrong about this thought-provoking book is its subtitle. Whatever else it may be —and it is actually several fine things — it is not . . . . Continue Reading »
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