When I began writing for this website a year ago, it was an expression of my love for history. I had just finished reading through 200 years of American history in the form of presidential biographies, and I was desperate to find an outlet to turn the three years of
Prohibition came out of nowhere - at least in the high school curriculum. In the lull between the Spanish-American War and the Great Depression was an offbeat sideplot about the time the United States banned the recreational consumption of alcohol. It didn’t help that the timeline for Prohibition coincides
A few weeks ago I took advantage of the nice weather and decided to stop by the Virginia Museum of History & Culture. Springtime is a perfect time to visit the various museums in the “Museum District” of Richmond, as is my right and privilege as someone who does not
I will occasionally get asked who my favorite president is, and I always answer the same: James Monroe is my favorite pre-Civil War president because he had a clear forward vision for the country’s place in the world, and Rutherford B. Hayes is my favorite post-Civil War
Mentioning the Watergate Scandal of 1972 conjures up a different picture depending on your age. For those who lived through it, they remember sitting in front of their television sets as their implicit trust in the office of the president was eroded night after night with the release of new
A few weeks ago I was driving through Fredericksburg, VA and took the opportunity to visit the James Monroe Museum and Memorial Library. It’s a small, single level museum, housed in what is believed to be one of Monroe’s offices during his time as a lawyer. Street parking
When I began writing this, it was a scathing critique of how I have noticed that historians treat the presidents immediately before the civil war to a double standard regarding slavery - they’re considered weak if they compromise on slavery (“kicking the can down the road”) but also considered weak
One of the more controversial presidents among classical and modern historians, Woodrow Wilson’s administration from 1913-1921 was a cacophony of moving parts. At home, labor was becoming restless and the demographic shifts of the Great Migration flared racial tensions in city centers. Next door, Mexico was in the
Over the past 3 years, I’ve read biographies of every United States president in order from Washington through Reagan. This comes as no surprise to anybody in my life as every conversation inevitably loops back to the collapse of the Federalist party or John Tyler’s “betrayal” of Henry
One of the most important things a president does is before they even take office: appoint a cabinet. In the early republic this was not a particularly daunting task, as the talent pool was small and based on geographic politics. If you’re a Democratic-Republican president you’ll find