In 1870 in response to the Fifteenth Amendment, the…

“Liberal” in the nineteenth-century United States and Europe designated people who in many, but not all, respects would be called conservatives in the twenty-first…

— Richard White

“I have known tolerably well, a good many “successful” men—“ big” financially—men famous during the last half-century, and a less interesting crowd I do…

— Richard White

“Sound familiar? Rutherford B. Hayes was someone who thought that attracting opposition from nearly every direction meant that he was right. James A. Garfield,…

— Richard White

“A European visitor in the 1880s remarked that the only sense not offended by American cooking was hearing.”

— Richard White

“At least on paper, Congress had dramatically enlarged federal power and black rights. In December 1866 only about 0.5 percent of black adult males…

— Richard White

“You can't trust the government to do anything right-except, of course, to conspire and cover up. Then it becomes diabolically efficient. The very people…

— Richard White

“Sumner asserted that without equality of citizens before the law and full consent of the governed, a government could not be considered republican. It…

— Richard White

“In 1800 the United States had a birth rate higher than any ever recorded for a European country, but it fell steeply and consistently…

— Richard White

“What was developing in the South was a coercive labor system, which although not slavery, was not free labor either. It depended on extralegal…

— Richard White

“Collectivizing risk and considering the community as a whole rather than the individual was a form of “communism,” but the practice paradoxically allowed people…

— Richard White