The Latest Breaking News from the Civil War

Ever since the United States government’s unfulfilled promise of giving every newly freed Black American “40 acres and a mule” after the Civil War, descendants of the enslaved have repeatedly proposed the idea of redistributing land to redress the nation’s legacies of slavery.

A new museum is opening in Texas highlighting the lives and service of Medal of Honor recipients from the Civil War to the global war on terrorism

Mary Surratt, the building’s owner, would become the first woman executed by the US federal government

Political violence is hardly new to America. Since the country’s inception, gunmen have shaped its political landscape, from the Civil War to the Ku Klux Klan, to high-profile assassinations and the bombing of federal buildings. Yet the threat of political violence has deepened in recent years and intensified during the…

There’s one question I get every time I give a talk. I’m a curator of political history at the Smithsonian Institution, and when I discuss the deep history of political division in our country, someone in the audience always asserts that we can’t possibly compare past divisions to the present,…

It's the deadliest conflict that Lebanon has experienced since the end of the civil war in 1990. In the space of just a few days, Israeli air strikes have killed more than 1,000 people and left thousands wounded, with civilians making up a large part of the casualties. The violence…

Lebanon's former central bank governor, Riad Salameh, has been arrested in Beirut. Once lauded for reviving the country's economy after the civil war, Salameh's later years in office were marred by allegations of financial crimes including embezzlement and money laundering. Plus, the trial against Martin Winterkorn, the former CEO of…

Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election not only failed, but some of them also rested on a misreading of the U.S. Constitution, as our new analysis argues. The relevant constitutional provision dates back to just after the Civil War, and contemporaries recognized it as…

I first visited Lebanon in 1978, three years into the civil war and six years before Theodore Ell was born. I mention this because, despite the fact our experiences of this fascinating country were at different times, his impressions and judgements in his excellent new book Lebanon Days – which…