30 quotes
In 1863, the United States is really the only free-standing democracy in the world. That all across the stage of world history the forces of reaction have been on the march, ever since Napoleon Bonaparte.
Interview with Andre Damon (2013)
Slaves who ran away in Pennsylvania to join Sir William Howe's occupation of Philadelphia or who ran away in Virginia to join Lord Dumore's "Ethiopian Regiment" found themselves dumped by their erstwhile allies in Nova Scotia or sold back into slavery in the Bahamas.
Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction (2012)
[T]he very people who write so disparagingly about it either do not understand it, or I suspect even more, understand it all too well and do not like the implications of it.
What we see in Lincoln is a collection of the virtues we think are most important in a democratic leadership.
Interview with Tom Mackaman (2013)
The real crime of white supremacy was not that it put up statues, or even that it made speeches, but that it attacked citizens and passed laws.
Free Speech and Its Present Crisis (2018)
The cotton nabobs had made the South a no-go area for the Constitution...
Bullwhip Feudalism (2018)
It thus became vital to the peace of the planters' minds that the frustrations of the "crackers," "sandhillers," or "poor white trash" be diminished or placated at all costs. This involved, first and foremost, keeping the bogeyman of race ever before the nonslaveholders' eyes, for whatever hatreds the poor whites nursed against the planters, they nursed still greater ones against blacks.
Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction (2012)
Reverence for free speech is deeply embedded in American life, but speech cannot be protected unless those who acknowledge its value set aside their partisan differences for a moment and trust one another enough to say that the outrages against free speech must end.
Free Speech and Its Present Crisis (2018)
[V]ery little has changed in the fundamental ideology of the Democratic Party since Jackson's day.
Good Democrats and Bad Democrats (2006)
Abraham Lincoln was a repo man.
Lecture (2017)