COLDHEARTED
Jeremiah Hamilton was a rapacious, double-dealing millionaire in 19th-century America. But Wall Street never let him forget he was black.
Eric Herschthal, a history doctoral student at Columbia University, has written for The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, and elsewhere.
HIDDEN HISTORIES
African American slaves and Native American tribes were often collateral damage in the war for independence.
HORRIBLE TRUTH
Capitalism in the U.S. owes much of its start to slavery, which in turn owed much of its success to government handouts.
Breeched
Did Hamilton have gay sex? Was Jefferson in love with his slave? Each generation sees in the sex lives of the Founding Fathers what it wants to see.
Bondage
Who should get the most credit for ending slavery in America and Great Britain? A landmark new book argues that blacks did far more for their own emancipation than previously appreciated.
Racy
In the American Revolution a woman named Deborah Samson donned men’s clothes and fought the British. Now transgender novelist Alex Myers has told her story and explores sexual identity in the 18th century.
United We Stand
When historian Simon Winchester became American, he decided to set out to understand how the country developed. His new book tells the story of the men who shaped and united America. He talks to Eric Herschthal about what he found.
Not Just the South
Was slavery just as harmful in its benign form in the colonial North as it was in the prerevolutionary South? Eric Herschthal on a new history.
Plantation Blues
Barbados presaged all British slave settlements. Andrea Stuart talks to Eric Herschthal about the island’s—and her family’s—tormented history.
Station to Station
The Great American Railroad War claims that Gilded Age journalists took on railroad tycoons—the equivalent of today’s Wall Street fat-cat bankers—and won. But Eric Herschthal says the press was no hero.