The newspapers of 1857 would have you think so! Following his election in 1856—a bitterly contested election just five years before the outbreak of the Civil War—President-Elect James Buchanan was holed up in the nation’s capital, forming...
Can the dead commit a crime? Until the late 19th century, residents of New England thought so, given the trail of corpses that littered local communities from Massachusetts to Vermont. Gaunt, wasted, afflicted by bloody, painful symptoms,...