Portside

President Wilson unleashes repression of peace advocates. Republican Party denounces slave trade as a ‘crime against humanity.’ First compulsory public education. Camden draft protestors acquitted. Wiretapping gets the nod. Amnesty for Confederates.

Sudan is in yet another civil war. Can it put military rule behind it once and for all?

Today, on Presidents’ Day, we rightly celebrate Abraham Lincoln for helping end slavery. But we shouldn’t forget the unstoppable force that also brought down the Slave Power: the several million slaves who left the plantation, many of whom joined the Union Army.

U.S. officials are trying to preserve a truce that has reduced violence and created the possibility for a negotiated settlement to the war.

The American media needs to call this movement what it is, fascism, and demand accountability and answers from the thousands of Republican politicians nationwide who refuse to repudiate it.

The Republican transformation of the federal judiciary in the 1860s and 1870s served the party well in the Civil War. But in the end, Lincoln and Grant’s high court appointments ended up being disastrous for civil rights.

At the close of the Civil War, people recently freed from slavery in Charleston honored fallen Union soldiers. A battered U.S. was faced with the task of burying and honoring the 600,000 to 800,000 Union and Confederate soldiers who had died.

The Civil War was a revolutionary upheaval that crushed slavery and stoked hopes of a broader emancipation against the rule of property. We should draw on that memory today for struggles against racism and capitalism.

I would be failing future generations if I did not to write about who owns the narrative of our country’s evolution. It is difficult to have productive discourse about liberty and justice in this country if we don’t first have command of basic truths