Part 2 of The American Revolutionaries’ International War Against Slavery: 1765-1767 (For Part 1, click here ) By Colin Lowry In early January of 1765, Prime Minister George Grenville was determined to whip the American colonies into complete dependence on Britain, and he devised the Stamp Act in an effort to […]
By Nancy Spannaus December 26, 2019—It’s about time. Five prominent U.S. historians have come forward to challenge some egregious errors in the NY Times’ 1619 Project, a major intervention on the issue of American slavery’s role in the United States which the Times published in August of this year. The […]
By Nancy Spannaus July 4, 2019—There was perhaps no more ardent supporter of the Declaration of Independence than Abraham Lincoln. He saw the Declaration as the moral foundation of the nation, upon which the Constitution was based. Thus, no matter how much the United States population fell short of its […]
By Nancy Spannaus June 16, 2019—In my Internet scanning today, I happened to note that it is the anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s famous “House Divided” speech, which was given at the Illinois State Republican Convention in 1858. This was the convention which nominated Lincoln to run against Stephen Douglass for […]
By Nancy Spannaus May 20, 2019–George Washington’s “Grand Idea” of uniting the country through developing the Potomac River as the gateway to the West, was the subject of a lively book talk last night. Author Joel Achenbach spoke to a group of approximately 30 people about his book The Grand […]
Part I. Ben Franklin and Massachusetts Lead the Way (Part 2 is now available here.) By Colin Lowry March 19, 2019 In the original draft of the Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and John Adams, is a paragraph condemning King George III of Britain for the […]
A Book Review by Nancy Spannaus No Property in Man: Slavery and Antislavery at the Nation’s Founding Sean Wilentz Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2018, 349 pp. March 5, 2019—I can say without hesitation that anyone writing about the history of slavery in the United States should read […]
By Nancy Spannaus Jan. 30, 2019—Abraham Lincoln was right when he declared that, at the time of the Declaration of Independence and the founding of the Constitution, it was widely expected that slavery was on the wane, and would soon die out. That broad sentiment is actually a matter of […]
By Nancy Spannaus Nov. 12, 2018—Three days ago, my husband and I attended a local event sponsored by the Edwin Washington Project, a non-profit devoted to documenting the history of education during the era of segregation in Loudoun County, Virginia, where we live. The speeches on the struggle waged to […]
by Angela Vullo March 27, 2020–Those of us who are baby boomers, might remember the famous sketch by Jack Benny from the 1960s. A mugger stops the comedian in the street and says, “Your money or your life”. After several seconds, when Benny does not respond, the mugger says, “Well?” […]
By Nancy Spannaus March 18, 2020—American journalist Andrew Spannaus updated his report on the fight against the coronavirus in Italy yesterday. His conclusion: The country is “on the brink” of seeing its hospital system overwhelmed. (His full report can be found on Consortium News) Given that Italy is a G-7 […]
Hamilton’s Economics Aimed to End Slavery
By Nancy Spannaus October 23, 2019—Growing publicity for the off-Broadway play “The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda,” which seeks to rebut the presentation of Alexander Hamilton as an abolitionist, has inspired me to write my own rebuttal. I assert that Alexander Hamilton’s economics aimed to end slavery, from the very beginning, […]