Reckoning with History

Jim Downs is the Gilder Lehrman–National Endowment for the Humanities Professor of Civil War Era Studies and History at Gettysburg College. He is also the editor of the journal Civil War History.Erica Armstrong Dunbar is the Charles and Mary Beard Distinguished Professor of History at Rutgers University. She serves as the national director of the Association of Black Women Historians.T.K. Hunter (1956–2018) was a historian of slavery and freedom in the Atlantic world who taught a wide variety of courses at Western Connecticut State University, Princeton University, Columbia University, Montclair State University, Horace Mann School, Manhattan College, Brooklyn College, the New School, and City College of New York.Timothy Patrick McCarthy holds a joint faculty appointment at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is also the Stanley Paterson Professor of American History in the Boston Clemente Course in the Humanities.

To recover a long-buried past in the archives is to experience the most extraordinary joy. But, as Reckoning with History shows so beautifully, doing true justice to the past is at the real heart of what it means to be a historian. This moving volume reminds us all why the writing of history matters so very much to the world we live in and to the one we hope yet to make.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction, by Jim Downs, Erica Armstrong Dunbar, T.K. Hunter, and Timothy Patrick McCarthyPart I: Archives1. Looking for Ona Judge: An Unfinished Story of Freedom, by Erica Armstrong Dunbar2. “Like People in History”: Why Social History Matters to the LGBT Community, by Jim DownsPart II: Revisions3. American Founders Reconsidered: The Case of Thomas Jefferson and Henry Christophe, by Ashli White4. The Civil War, Slavery, and the Problem of Neutrality, by April E. Holm5. Historians, Lincoln, and “the Ruining of America," by Matthew Taylor Raffety6. In Search of the Costs of Segregation, by Elizabeth A. Herbin-TriantPart III: History Matters7. Why Historical Film Matters, by Kellie Carter Jackson8. A Mob Museum Matters, by Michael Green9. On Living History and Stories Unfinished, by Timothy Patrick McCarthy10. In the Matter of Worth: The Value of Black Lives and the Law, by T.K. HunterEpilogue: Eric Foner: Historian of American Freedom, by Katrina vanden HeuvelContributorsIndex