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Political cartoons have long served to provoke public debate, illustrating opinions of the day for the masses. From early in the 19th century, arguments over voting rights—who votes and who counts the votes—have been depicted in cartoons, especially with the rise of illustrated newspapers and magazines with a national circulation before the Civil War.
Featuring examples of published cartoons from the MHS collections as well as other libraries and foundations, this exhibition illustrates how cartoonists helped to tell the story of voting rights in the United States. In addition to many drawings by Thomas Nast, the most influential American political cartoonist in the decades following the Civil War, this exhibition features modern reinterpretations of these topics by editorial cartoonists, including Herblock (Herbert Block), Tom Toles, Bill Mauldin, and the work of current Boston-area artists.
Explore the online exhibition at www.masshist.org/whocounts.
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Thomas Nast defined American political cartoons in the decades following the Civil War. His illustrations popularized icons such as the Republican elephant, the Democratic donkey, and even the modern image of Santa Claus. This exhibition highlights Thomas Nast’s remarkable impact through a cartoon biography created by local artists.
Explore the online exhibition at www.masshist.org/thomasnast.
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This panel brings together the work of two historians investigating the Caribbean. Casey Schmitt’s paper explores the intersection of warfare and human trafficking in the 17th century. Unmet demand for enslaved labor in smaller markets coupled with near-constant warfare among major European powers in the region reinforced practices of raiding and captivity. Schmitt’s paper shows how the lure of seizing captives facilitated manning expeditions during wartime, and demonstrates the centrality of violence against enslaved communities to 17th-century warfare. Carrington-Farmer’s paper explores how 18th century New Englanders diversified their thriving equine breeding and exportation business in an effort to meet an increasing demand for mules in the West Indies. Whilst New England's foray into mule breeding never reached the success of its horse enterprises, the lengths that farmers and merchants went to start a breeding program demonstrates how wider Atlantic markets drove New England’s economy.
The Pauline Maier Early American History Seminar invites you to join the conversation. Seminars bring together a diverse group of scholars and interested members of the public to workshop a pre-circulated paper. Learn more.
Please note, this is an online event held on the video conference platform, Zoom. Registrants will receive an email with links to join the program.
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1864. A ship leaves its New England port carrying a USCT regiment to fight Confederates on the Louisiana front. But on the way, a showdown takes place when Pvt. John Green refuses his commanding officer's order to cut his hair, protesting that it was contrary to his religion. In the events that follow, a revealing picture of black self-assertion in the making of freedom emerges, one too often hidden by a Civil War master narrative. This paper tells John Green's story, and asks how we might look at emancipation differently when we view it through his dreadlocks.
The African American History Seminar invites you to join the conversation. Seminars bring together a diverse group of scholars and interested members of the public to workshop a pre-circulated paper. Learn more.
Please note, this is an online event held on the video conference platform, Zoom. Registrants will receive an email with links to join the program.
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Before Civil War greenbacks and a national bank network established a uniform federal currency in the United States, loosely regulated banks saturated the early American republic with upwards of 10,000 unique and legal bank notes. Joshua R. Greenberg shows how ordinary Americans accumulated and wielded the financial knowledge required to navigate interpersonal bank note transactions and argues that the shift from state-regulated banks and private shinplaster producers to federally authorized paper money in the Civil War era led to the erasure of the skill, knowledge, and lived experience with banking that informed debates over economic policy.
Please note, this is an online event held on the video conference platform, Zoom. Registrants will receive an email with links to join the program.
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Free and enslaved Black women have been rendered nearly invisible in the historical and
popular imagination of the antebellum steamboat world. This essay examines how enslaved and free Black women negotiated power and place in this environment that was fraught with danger, but also brimming with opportunity. Hines argues that Black women who were unmoored from plantation landscapes by way of the western rivers trouble prevailing tropes of gendered mobility and immobility that pervade scholarship on slavery in the United States
The History of Women, Gender, & Sexuality Seminar invites you to join the conversation. Seminars bring together a diverse group of scholars and interested members of the public to workshop a pre-circulated paper. Learn more.
Please note, this is an online event held on the video conference platform, Zoom. Registrants will receive an email with links to join the program.
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All are welcome to join us for this FREE virtual event!
Lights and gatherings are an especially meaningful symbol of hope, celebration, warmth, and remembrance for many at this time of year. In this historic presidential election year, be inspired through an exploration of how the holidays come alive at the White House.
Dr. Jonathan Sarna, the Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis University, will discuss the tradition of Hanukkah celebrations at the White House.
Stewart McLaurin, President of the White House Historical Association, will discuss the 2020 White House Christmas ornament commemorating President John F. Kennedy.
As an added bonus, the 2020 White House ornament will be available to purchase at a discount from December 1 to 10. Details will be sent with event registration confirmation.
View the invitation:
Images: U.S. Army LTC Rabbi Shmuel Felzenberg lights the Menorah during a Hanukkah reception Thursday, Dec. 6, 2018, in the East Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead.). 2020 White House Christmas ornament.
closeWhen the Confederacy faced mounting military setbacks from 1864 to the end of the war, the Confederate government worked to advance the boundaries of warfare far beyond the South—and even beyond the United States. Lake Erie appealed to the Confederacy because the Union prison, Johnson’s Island, was located there and housed Confederate officers. There were plots planned and carried out by the Confederacy to release prisoners and use them as the force needed to attack the Union from the opposite direction—the North.
Please note, this is an online event held on the video conference platform, Zoom. Registrants will receive an email with links to join the program.
Americans have been telling two very different stories about the Pilgrims. One is the tale of brave religious refugees who established Thanksgiving and democracy in the New England wilderness. The other is the story of unscrupulous invaders who betrayed their Indian allies, stole their land, and went to war against them. John G. Turner narrates a more complex history in They Knew They Were Pilgrims, tracing the contested meanings of liberty – and slavery – in the seven-decade history of Plymouth Colony.
Please note, this is an online event held on the video conference platform, Zoom. Registrants will receive an email with links to join the program.
closeIn Cross of Snow, Nicholas Basbanes reveals the life, the times, the work--the soul--of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a man who shaped the literature of a new nation with his countless poems, sonnets, stories, essays, translations, and whose renown was so wide-reaching that his deep friendships included Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Julia Ward Howe, and Charles Sumner. Highlighting research materials from the MHS archive, Basbanes will frame Longfellow’s life and work in the context of 19th century literary Boston.
Please note, this is an online event held on the video conference platform, Zoom. Registrants will receive an email with links to join the program.
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