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Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction by Fergus M Bordewich

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KLAN WAR: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction

Articles and Book Reviews by Fergus M. Bordewich

IDEAS: Election 2024


IDEAS: Election 2020

  • Fergus on why Biden's VP pick could change history. Op/Ed at Inside Sources
    Some VPs have done well but others have been embarrassing failures, or worse. But historically, it is important, even urgent, for Americans to remember that vice presidents can and repeatedly since the 19th century have had a significant effect on our democracy. Read More.

IDEAS: Covid19

  • How Free Black People Helped Fight America's First Epidemic and Transformed the Nation's Capital. Essay at Time.com
    Americans never saw it coming. Hardly anyone in Philadelphia, the nation’s temporary capital, noticed the first to die in the summer of 1793, a few weeks after the celebration of Independence Day: a few foreigners, an oyster seller in the waterfront slums. When more poor began to die, respectable people shrugged it off as a passing “putrid fever” brought on by rotted fish or perishables heaped on the docks. Then the young, healthy wife of a Baptist minister died, then at an ever-accelerating pace businessmen, ministers, magistrates, law officers, federal officials, men and women, the old and the young, masters and servants, the pious and the dissolute alike. It quickly became clear that no one was safe. Read More.

The American Congress

  • Madison and the Invention of Congress: Members of the first Federal Congress had to create a new government almost from scratch. Article in American Heritage.
  • Congress Has Always Been Partisan and That's a Good Thing: "You Never Find Quiet Except Under a Tyranny." Even in the midst of all-out war, Lincoln recognized Congress as the primary repository of the people’s will, and he understood that the Founders never intended the president to be beyond the reach of its authority. Article in Time Magazine.
  • Congress Fights the Civil War: America faced its greatest crisis in 1861 as the nation literally unraveled and the rest of the world wondered whether its experiment in self-determination would succeed. Article in American Heritage.

American Civil War, Slavery, and American History

  • Back in the American Pantheon: The man who did so much for the antislavery cause was once regarded as a dangerous zealot. No more. Review in The Wall Street Journal of Thaddeus Stevens: Civil War Revolutionary By Bruce Levine
  • An American Tragedy: By 1898, North Carolina’s largest city was a thriving mixed-race community—and so a target of the state’s white supremacists. Review in The Wall Street Journal of Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup Of 1898 And The Rise Of White Supremacy by David Zucchino
  • Slavery in Jamaica: Anatomy of an Uprising: Back-breaking labor, an oven-hot climate, whip-bearing overseers and a planter class eager to exploit slave labor. Jamaica exploded in rebellion—and the empire struck back. Review in The Wall Street Journal of three books on slavery in Jamaica.
  • Snapshots That Changed Minds: The sudden popularity of photography led abolitionists to cannily use images of light-skinned children born into slavery, like 7-year-old Mary Mildred Williams, to stoke outrage and gain sympathy for their cause. Review in The Wall Street Journal of three books on how photography helped end slavery.
  • The Cost of Conciliation: President Andrew Johnson said death was ‘too easy a punishment’ for General Robert E. Lee. But by 1868 he had declared a full amnesty. Review in The Wall Street Journal of The Lost Indictment Of Robert E. Lee: The Forgotten Case Against An American Icon by John Reeves
  • The Scourge of War, A Long March into Myth: Sherman was an erudite, complicated man, far from the monster created by Southern apologists after the Civil War. Review in The Wall Street Journal of The Scourge Of War: The Life Of William Tecumseh Sherman by Brian Holden Reid
  • The Underground Railroad was no Fantasy: The often-mythologized network that helped slaves escape to the North was America's first interracial mass movement. Review at WSJ.com of the Amazon Prime Series "The Underground Railroad."
  • Master of the Merry-Go-Round: The man behind every morning's must-read for the capital's movers and shakers: hated, admired, feared. Review at WSJ.com of Donald Ritchie's book "The Columnist," a biography of journalist Drew Pearson.
  • Walter Ralegh: Architect of Empire: Sir Walter Ralegh was a swashbuckling pirate, poet, colonizer and courtier who founded a doomed settlement. Review at The Wall Street Journal of Alan Gallay's book.
  • John Marshall, a Man 'Without Precedent': A lifelong Federalist, the Supreme Court chief justice served besides presidents who saw him as an enemy of their values. Review at The Wall Street Journal of Joel Richard Paul's book.
  • Friends and Foes of the 19th Amendment: Rabble rousers, politicos and earnest reformers assembled in Nashville in the heat of July 1920 to decide the fate of women’s suffrage. Review in The Wall Street Journal of The Woman’s Hour by Elaine Weis
  • Lost American Religion: An ecstatic religious uprising inspired hope in battered native tribes. It also led to the massacre at Wounded Knee. Review in The Wall Street Journal of God’s Red Son by Louis S. Warren
  • How America’s Civil War Changed the World: How the last 150 years would have been different had the North not freed the slaves and saved the Union.
  • The Children of Manifest Destiny: Andrew Jackson drove a convoy of chained slaves. It was known as a ‘coffle.’ [article at WSJ]
  • The Election That Saved the United States. A victory for George McClellan in 1864 would have meant Southern independence and no emancipation of the slaves.
  • The Underground Railroad on "the Essential Civil War Curriculum": Its political and moral importance both in antebellum America and as a forerunner of modern Civil Rights activism far outweighs its legendary romance.
  • Great Inauguration Moments: For two centuries, presidential inaugurations have provided transcendent moments that echo louder than the oath of office.
  • Alexander Hamilton’s Capital Compromise: How a backroom deal placed the nation's capital on the Potomac
  • A Capitol vision from a self-taught architect: The story of the West Indian abolitionist who designed the United States Capitol
  • Full Circle: Inaugurating a New President in The City Built by Slaves
  • The Rescue of Henry Clay: A long-lost painting of the Great Compromiser finds a new home in Washington
  • The Real Gangs of New York: Martin Scorsese takes on the rough and tumble of antebellum NY
  • Buried Treasure in a Cornfield: A Missouri family discovers a time-capsule of mid-19th century America
  • History's Tangled Threads: Faking the history of the Underground Railroad
  • Interview: Bordewich on slavery and the Underground Railroad
  • Interview: Bordewich talks about the Lincoln Douglas debates
  • Interview: Bordewich talks about John Brown's raid.
  • Interview: Bordewich on the myth of "black Confederates"
  • Civil War Veterans Come Alive: Library of Congress Audio and Video Recordings

Native American Issues


Travel and the World beyond the United States


book REVIEWS