Eric Foner

"South Carolina led the southern walk-out from the 1948 Democratic National Convention."

"The more fiercely the Confederacy fought for its independence, the more bitterly divided it became."

"In effect, the Klan was a military force serving the interests of the Democratic party, the planter class, and all those who desired the restoration of white supremacy. It aimed to destroy the Republi…"

"History, however, is not a linear narrative of progress. Rights may be won and taken away; gains are never complete or uncontested, and popular movements generate their own countervailing pressures."

"The United States was not the only nation to experience emancipation in the nineteenth century. Neither plantation slavery nor abolition were unique to the United States. But Reconstruction was."

"Shortly before the 1860 election, Frederick Douglass offered a succinct summary of the dilemma confronting opponents of slavery like Lincoln, who worked within the political system rather than outside…"

"American ideas about freedom certainly resonate abroad. Eastern Europeans embraced them after the collapse of Communist rule. Indeed, the years since 1989 have witnessed an unprecedented international…"

"Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. challenged the underlying premise of prevailing Civil War scholarship. The South, he pointed out, had shown no evidence of a willingness to end slavery; indeed, over time it ha…"