Did you know that more than twice as many books have been written about Abraham Lincoln than weeks have passed since his death almost 150 years ago? With Passover beginning at sundown, we’re honoring Lincoln’s legacy by exploring an untold aspect of his personal life and political career: his friendships with Jews. During his tenure…

To celebrate the upcoming opening of our groundbreaking exhibition, Lincoln and the Jews on March 20, Harold Holzer, the Roger Hertog Fellow at the New-York Historical Society and Chief Historian to the exhibition, has signed on as this week’s guest blogger. In his post, he highlights the show and the exciting history it illuminates. So…

On November 7, 1944, Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected to an unprecedented fourth term as president. Now we know that Presidents may not seek more than two terms, so what let FDR serve for 13 years before he died in office in 1945? President George Washington famously refused to seek a third term in office. His…

On May 17, 1973, the United States Senate Watergate Committee convened to begin the investigation on the Watergate scandal. The year before, five men were arrested for breaking and entering into the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters, and President Nixon’s campaign office was implicated. From May 17 through August 7, the hearings were broadcast on national…

On February 27, 1860, Abraham Lincoln stood before a crowd at Cooper Union on 8th Street in New York City, attempting to convince a strongly Democratic city that he, a Republican, deserved the presidency. Until then he was thought of mostly as a country lawyer, but his speech at Cooper Union let New York Republicans…

America’s 32nd President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was born in Hyde Park, NY this day in 1882. Roosevelt  is greatly remembered for leading the US through a depression and WWII, and his wife Eleanor’s humanitarian efforts. However, he is also known as our only physically disabled president, and founder of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (now…

Most people think of New York as the center of all that is liberal and progressive in America, with strong, Dutch-instilled values of tolerance permeating the culture. However, New York is also a place of business, and before the Civil War that meant it dealt heavily with the business of slavery. In December 1860, South…

On October 11, 1884 Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was born on West 37th Street in New York City. By the end of her life, she would be known as the longest serving First Lady of the United States, and Harry Truman would nickname her “First Lady of the World” for her humanitarian efforts. But she began…

  New York Magazine recently warned that the 2012 presidential election could be the ” most negative in the history of American politics.” Granted, negative messages have more ways of reaching the American public than ever, with internet and Television advertising. but negative campaigns are an unfortunate tradition of the American political scene. The New-York Historical…