Identities Archives | What It Means to Be American

The Heartbreaking Love Letters That Spurred an Ohio Blacksmith to Join John Brown’s Raid

Dangerfield Newby’s Enslaved Wife Wrote Increasingly Desperate Missives That Inspired Her Husband to Join the Abolitionist Rebellion

by Eugene L. Meyer
October 13, 2019

Every October 16 marks the anniversary of John Brown’s historic raid on Harpers Ferry in West Virginia in 1859. Accompanied by 18 supporters, Brown, a radical abolitionist, hoped to seize the federal arsenal at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers and foment a slave rebellion that would ultimately bring down the South’s “peculiar institution” of slavery.

Every year at the anniversary there is much ado about Brown, whose failed raid is often described as the spark that ignited …

When Did Americans Go Crazy for Celebrities?

In 1849, a Riot Between 10,000 Fans of Two Rival Actors Left 27 People Dead

by Susan J. Douglas and Andrea McDonnell
October 6, 2019

May 10, 1849, New York City. Twenty-two people lay dead and 150 were injured in the deadliest event of its kind in the city up to that point. The cause was not a workers’ uprising or political clash. What came to be known as the Astor Place Riot resulted from a feud between two well-known actors—or, more accurately, between their fans.

At the time, the New York Tribune expressed disbelief that so many people could be killed or injured because “two …

When Philadelphia’s Foul-Mouthed Cop-Turned-Mayor Invented White Identity Politics

From 1972 to 1980, Frank Rizzo Led a Blue-Collar Backlash Against Civil Rights—in the Guise of Law-and-Order

by Timothy J. Lombardo
September 26, 2019

Philadelphia’s City Hall was the largest municipal building in the United States when it opened in 1901. Its most outstanding feature towered 548 feet above the street below: a 37-foot-tall statue of William Penn, keeping watch over the city he founded. For most of the 20th century, the tip of Penn’s cap was the tallest point in what once was the fourth largest city in the country.

The grand building, with its elaborate stonework, also provided a fitting home for …

The Man Behind Montana’s Contradictory, Confusing, and Occasionally Crazy Political Culture

In the First Half of the 20th Century, US Senator Burton K. Wheeler Was Deeply Independent—and Often Confrontational

by Marc C. Johnson
September 12, 2019

There is an old line that “Montana is really just a small town with a very long Main Street.” It’s a state with 147,000 square miles and just over a million people, yet everyone seems to know everyone, or at least everyone knows someone who knows someone you know. The six degrees of separation in Montana are rarely more than two degrees.

Montana’s small-town dynamic, combined with sprawling geography and a rich and often-rough history, have shaped a political culture …

Eliza Hamilton’s Excellent Five-Month Steamboat Ride From New York to Wisconsin

In 1837, the 80-Year-Old Widow of the Late Treasury Secretary Was Delighted by the Beauty of the Nation

by Tilar J. Mazzeo
August 1, 2019

The musical Hamilton introduced theatergoers to Eliza Schuyler, the wife of Alexander Hamilton, and her sisters Angelica and Peggy. But there is much more to Eliza’s American life than we can see in the musical. When her distant cousin, James Fenimore Cooper, wrote about life on the Hudson River frontier in The Last of the Mohicans, he might as well as have been describing her girlhood. Later, as part of that generation who fought for, and won, American independence, Eliza …

How Did 19th-Century Ax Murderer Lizzie Borden Become a Household Name?

The Wealthy Yankee’s Brutal Crime Went Unpunished, Infuriating an Increasingly Diverse and Egalitarian Public

by Joseph Conforti
July 22, 2019

The Lizzie Borden murder case abides as one of the most famous in American criminal history. New England’s crime of the Gilded Age, its seeming senselessness captivated the national press. And the horrible identity of the murderer was immortalized by the children’s rhyme passed down across generations.

Lizzie Borden took an ax, / And gave her mother forty whacks. / When she saw what she had done, / She gave her father forty-one.

While there is no doubt that Lizzie Borden …

The Once-Enslaved Kentuckian Who Became the ‘Potato King of the World’

After His Emancipation, Junius Groves Walked 500 Miles to Kansas Where He Made a Fortune and Built a Community

by Peter Longo
July 8, 2019

Junius Groves started life as an enslaved person in Kentucky. By the time of his death, he would be celebrated, by those fortunate enough to know his story, as an exemplary builder of community, and as the “Potato King” of Kansas and beyond.

Groves was born in 1859 and emancipated by the Civil War. Around 1880, when he was 19, Groves walked from Kentucky to Kansas City, Kansas, with other former slaves at his side. It was a 500-mile walk that …

Why America’s First Saint Stopped Trying to Convert Her Neighbors to Catholicism

In the Early 19th Century, Elizabeth Seton Concluded That Proselytizing Undermined Social Harmony

by Catherine O’Donnell
July 1, 2019

Elizabeth Seton, for whom hundreds of Catholic parishes and schools are named, was the first native-born American citizen to be made a saint in the Roman Catholic Church. Her 1975 canonization was the result of decades of labor by admirers who sought evidence of Seton’s “heroic virtue”—and miracles. Those admirers, who oversaw Seton’s presentation in Rome, also shaped an enduring story about the society in which Seton, who was born in 1774 and died in 1821, lived.

Emphasizing Seton’s courage …

How Sicilian Merchants in New Orleans Reinvented America’s Diet

In the 1830s, They Brought Lemons, Commercial Dynamism, and a Willingness to Fight Elites

by Justin Nystrom
June 20, 2019

When I started writing a book exploring the crucial contributions that Sicilians had made to New Orleans food culture, I sat down to talk with fabled restaurateur Salvatore “Joe” Segreto. “You’re not going to do one of those “who killa da chief?” histories, are you?,” was the first question he asked me.

Segreto referred to a familiar catcall heard by Italian kids growing up in New Orleans, forged in the bloody aftermath of the assassination of the city’s police Chief …

The Flamboyant 19th-Century Creole Aristocrat Who Built New Orleans’ First Suburb

Bernard Marigny Is Famous as a Swashbuckling Gambler, but His Real Estate Developments Shaped the City’s Character

by Scott S. Ellis
May 16, 2019

In the New Orleans pantheon of colorful personalities, Bernard Marigny is one of the caricatures: an arch-Creole with a sword in one hand and deck of cards in the other. His persona was said to be that of “swashbuckling gambler, duelist, and playboy.” High living and careless with money, his best-known but apocryphal trait was lighting his cigars with $100 bills. Less remarked upon, but far more significant, were his roles as real estate developer, politician, and slave holder.

Indeed, …