“ Pedigree was the centerpiece of Supreme Court chief justice Roger B. Taney’s majority opinion in the Dred Scott decision (1857). Though this case assessed whether a slave taken into a free state or fe… Nancy Isenberg
“ More than any other colonial founder, Oglethorpe made himself one of the people, promoting collective effort. Nancy Isenberg
“ Every era in the continent's vaunted developmental story had its own taxonomy of waste people-unwanted and unsalvageable. Each era had its own means of distancing its version of white trash from the m… Nancy Isenberg
“ For most Americans of the eighteenth century, it was assumed impossible for a servant to shed his lowly origins; the meaner sort, as one newspaper insisted, could never “wash out the stain of servilit… Nancy Isenberg
“ When you turn an election into a three-ring circus, there’s always a chance that the dancing bear will win. Nancy Isenberg
