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A biannual publication offering insights into the use of digital historical collections

American History

Speaking Out in Thunder Tones: Black Chosenness and “Our Government” in the Earliest African American Newspapers

In the fall of 1836, a fastidiously well-dressed New Yorker was elected President of the United States. One year later, the country was in the midst of a devastating economic depression, the forced removal of Native Americans from the southeastern states was in full swing, and the regime of slavery...

Anticipating a National History for a New Republic

Historical writing in the eighteenth century has not received much attention from scholars of the period in recent years. Nevertheless, the long revolutionary era witnessed an unprecedented explosion of historical cultural production, both in the form of traditional histories and in other emerging cultural forms such as early American poetry...

Two Women Who Spied During the American Civil War: Going Undercover with Belle Boyd and Pauline Cushman in the Archive of Americana

In July 1861—just three months after the bombardment of Fort Sumter—unabashed Southern sympathizer Rose O’Neal Greenhow of Washington, D.C., was already engaged in espionage on behalf of the Confederacy. Well-placed in Washington society—and adept at bleeding information from the many men who found her attractive—Greenhow learned that Union troops under...

A True Tale of Adultery, Murder, and Dismemberment in Black Women's History

The torso discovered on the bank of a pond just outside of Philadelphia was headless and limbless. The head had been severed at the fourth vertebra, one arm had been chopped off at the joint, the other cut crudely through the shoulder; the midsection had been sawed midway so that...

Gas! Gas! Gas! Anesthesia History in Early American Newspapers, Pamphlets and Broadsides

In the past newspapers, pamphlets and broadsides have been underused sources for research in medical history. Digital access has made these materials much easier to find and use. This piece examines three significant documents and explains their value to the history of anesthesia: an 1800 newspaper article found in Early...

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